A fortune 500 tech manufacturer, with global offices that develops and sells a wide variety of hardware and software components to consumers, SMBs and large enterprises regularly conducts sales enablement training for its salespeople around the globe.
They had developed a home-grown learning management solution which its salespeople had come to depend on for learning the ins and outs of new products. With an NPS score of >80%, the existing system – “Accelerate” – is a highly successful, core part of the company’s sales process. However, the client sought an auxiliary system to complement Accelerate, which had more of an agile, light touch approach for training its salespeople. This case study shows how Bites can complement an existing LMS system to “fill in the gaps” in a way that’s simple, highly effective, and ultimately helps employees to upskill and improve on their core competencies.
Complimenting, rather than detracting
The challenge in this case was enhancing the existing Accelerate system to offer a wider range of content types that supported a variety of use cases and viewers, without throwing out what they had already built and ensuring that it was seamlessly integrated into the existing processes.
This challenge was heightened since Accelerate already had a wealth of features. It was used for rolling out webinars and other in-depth training materials such as lectures and decks on specific use cases.
The engagement of employees had been high. Webinars and lectures were a good solution for long and detailed training, but for on-the-go employees looking to freshen up their skills, a more mobile and concise format was required.
Consequently, there were some knowledge gaps which Accelerate – for all its heavy duty features – was not able to easily address. Primarily, this involved synthesizing the key takeaways from the webinars and lectures, or other training content, in a way that was accessible, simple to use, and mobile friendly.
A novel approach
The customer sought a way to easily reinforce and refresh the training content that was delivered through Accelerate’s heavy duty content. The team was also aware of the value of having a variety of tools; sometimes a full webinar did the trick, but sometimes employees needed a primer or a quick review. Different people prefer different types of content, adding an element of personalization to their training activities.
So they created Bites to summarize and reinforce the rollouts of new products. They used existing materials that were already on Accelerate, and easily transformed them to short-form videos with Bites’ creator app. By reusing some of the existing materials, they were able to create content quickly while keeping the cost and effort low.
According to Sarah Boden, Sales Enablement Manager, Bites worked well for her team because “employees love the format, the mobility, and that it’s short and easy to digest”. They began rolling out Bites to 500 employees, and the results were positive with 82% of employees saying that they use Bites for training regularly.
In addition to the high metrics for engagement, it was possible to see the excitement of employees in the comments section, with some bites having up to 90% of viewers leaving comments in the discussion section.Bites integrated with the familiar channels employees were already using, so they didn’t need to download another app. This meant that Sarah was able to share Bites via WhatsApp, SMS or Email, and employees were then able to conduct their training on Bites’ in their preferred platform.
Reach employees the way that suits them
Sarah was able to choose the channel which was most commonly used in each region. For EMEA-based employees that was WhatsApp, and in the US email was preferred. Sarah was then able to measure her team’s progress globally, irrespective of location or which channel was employed.
Over time, the client came to use Bites in a range of additional ways, such as when they enlisted the top salespeople to create Bites where they could share their best practices for selling the latest products. Bites also became the platform used to inform employees about the features of new products, as well as share customer case studies.
A symbiotic relationship
According to Sarah the reason that Bites was able to complement their existing desktop-oriented solution, Accelerate, was precisely because of its bite-sized nature. Being able to host a 45 minute lecture or an interactive webinar on Accelerate, and then reinforcing the content with Bite-sized units lasting 3-5 minutes was a great way to improve knowledge retention for employees. Additionally, employees were always able to access this content on their mobile personal knowledge base, to revisit for a refresher whenever they needed to.
Key Benefits to customer:
- Equipped remote workforce with highly engaging materials
- Plugged knowledge gaps left by LMS, quickly, easily and at a low cost
- Another tool in their training arsenal put customer ahead of competition by investing in employees
- Reached employees globally through the communication channels most used in their region (e.g. WhatsApp in EMEA or e-mail in US)
- Reused and reformatted existing materials into short Bites: low cost, high reward strategy
- Wide range of use cases for Bites beyond original intention of sales enablement (once you have Bites you can use us for anything)
- Easily got the full picture of employee progress with the dashboard
Conclusion
Being able to deploy a “hybrid approach” to training employees was an innovation by the client. Using their existing learning communication system, and pairing it with Bites’ instant knowledge sharing solution helped the client make sure that its sales team were reaching their full potential even when they were remote. Bites can serve as a standalone training option, with features such as playlists to digest big ideas in small Bites and can serve as a complementary platform to a traditional LMS as this case study shows.