ASTOUNDING COMPLETION RATES WITH VIDEO-BASED ELEARNING
A Case Study on Service Sales Planning Process Training for a Manufacturing Major
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THE SUMMARY
The Challenge: Develop engaging ‘Service Sales Planning Process’ training to introduce employees to a new planning process, that motivates learners to complete it.
CommLab India’s Solution: eLearning with real employee videos transitioning into animated videos.
The Result: The mix of real and animated videos with avatars of real employees was a huge hit with learners, and the completion rates were all that could be hoped for!
THE CLIENT
Our client is a multinational plant equipment manufacturer based in Switzerland, focusing on healthy food and clean mobility through three divisions – Grains & Food Solutions, Consumer Foods Solutions, and Advanced Materials.
With their 12500 strong workforce, the client has a presence in over 140 countries with more than 100 service stations, 30 manufacturing sites, and 25 application centers, and has generated revenues of CHF 2,70 billion in 2021.
They contribute significantly to feeding the world’s population through their process technologies and solutions. Each day, two billion people enjoy foods produced on our client’s equipment. And one billion travel in vehicles manufactured with parts produced with their machinery, with 50% of all new cars worldwide having die-cast components produced using their technology.
THE RELATIONSHIP
The client first became aware of CommLab India’s services through our blogs, newsletters, and webinars. They tried us out in 2015 with an eLearning project worth €4,000. And when they saw the quality of our work, our iterative process that meant minimal infringement on SME time, the high learner engagement, and increased course completion rates, they continued to partner with us.
Of course, the fact that CommLab India offers a variety of services (classroom to eLearning and VILT conversion, Flash [legacy courses] to HTML5 conversion, and eLearning translations), all under one roof, was a big plus! Our ability to roll out large numbers of courses, within timelines, and at a pricing that works, and our expertise in most of the popular eLearning authoring tools (Articulate, Lectora, Captivate, iSpring, dominKnow, etc.) also helped.
We had started with one project and one stakeholder in 2015. By 2022, the numbers had grown to 195 projects and 24 stakeholders from different divisions in the organization.
Amazing? We think so too!
THE REQUIREMENT
The client’s requirement was to introduce their service sales employees to a new streamlined service sales planning process and the automated tool that supports the process through a ‘Service Sales Planning Process’ training. The main challenge for this type of training was motivating the learners to complete the training.
How does an organization in the unique position of converting global challenges into sustainable business keep its workforce engaged and interested in a training on the new ‘Service Sales Planning Process’?
The stakeholder wanted the employees to relate to and be engaged with the course content. To this end, she had the idea of using real videos with real employees in the course, interspersed with animations that had vector avatars of the very same employees. But she was not very clear about the concept and how the videos with real employees transitioned into animations with vector avatars.
The brief also included translating the training with subtitles into 4 different languages (German, Simplified Chinese, European Spanish, and European French) after the English course. And translations being one of our core services, CommLab India ticked all the right boxes.
They wanted the course developed in six weeks, with an additional 3 to 4 weeks for translations.
Rapid eLearning Solutions to Fast-Track Employee Learning
Train your learners anytime, anywhere, in any format, on any device!
THE SOLUTION
Based on the client requirements, CommLab India decided on an avatar-based guided approach for the eLearning. They worked to turn the stakeholder’s idea into reality, using videos of real employees along with animated videos with vector avatars of the same employees. The plan was to use short snippets of real videos and transition them into animated videos.
Sounds complicated?
Not for Team CommLab India! A dedicated project manager, two instructional designers, two courseware developers, and a visual designer worked on the course.
Because of the need to use real videos along with animations in the eLearning, a variety of tools were chosen to develop the course – Vyond, Illustrator, Photoshop, Camtasia, and Adobe Captivate. It did help that we had experience and expertise with using all of them.
Vyond is a great tool that helps create characters to fit any context – from specific jobs and workplaces to casual environments. The visual designing team found it challenging but fun to create vector characters in Vyond based on the actual employees in the videos. They had to look like the employee, dress like the employee, have the same hairstyle, accessories, etc.
What was more challenging was creating the backgrounds for the animated videos – backgrounds that had to have the look and feel of the client’s office premises. The team used Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to create virtual backgrounds that matched the ones in the real videos. Adobe Illustrator is one of the most popular and reliable design software for creating vector graphics, sketches, drawings, and artwork.
And transitioning the real videos into animated videos? Camtasia to the rescue! It helped to smoothly transition real videos into Vyond ones in the course.
Finally, after developing and integrating the videos, the course was developed in Adobe Captivate – the go-to authoring tool for eLearning-virtual reality responsive courses.
There was a bit of confusion initially because this was a novel approach and the inputs were being frequently updated. But all thanks to the stakeholder (our single point of contact) for providing very clear feedback during review meetings. We could complete the entire project (one English course and four translated versions) in about two and half months.
THE RESULTS
The course was very well received by the learners. This is the feedback we got from the stakeholder.
Rapid eLearning Solutions to Fast-Track Employee Learning
Train your learners anytime, anywhere, in any format, on any device!
THE REVIEWS
Rapid eLearning Solutions to Fast-Track Employee Learning
Train your learners anytime, anywhere, in any format, on any device!