- 4 MIN READ -
Enterprise customers with locations scattered across the globe and an international learner base face complex challenges when it comes to training. Sandler Training tackled this challenge head on to get its Sandler Online platform back on track to be able to deliver online courses to tens of thousands of international clients from over 275 local training centres.
Sandler Training Success At A Glance
How They Did It |
The Results |
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The Lambda Solutions development team built a custom web service plugin |
Complete Ease of Use LMS is now compatible with all devices and operating systems, enabling Sandler to deliver courses to 37,000+ learners from 300 classrooms seamlessly |
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This allows communication between Totara Learn and the separately hosted Drupal website |
Successful Launch During transition, Sandler didn't lose any of the 8,000 user records and grew user base by 3,500 users each month during initial launch |
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With the Lambda team's help, Sandler rebuilt their outdated SCORM and compliance-driven courses into modern interactive online courses |
Increased Revenue & Adoption Increased online learning revenues dramatically; time spent learning, active users & new registrations (up by 50% over previous levels). |
Key Business Challenges and Solutions & Results
1. Complex Proprietary Learning Management System
Key Business Challenge:
Proprietary Learning Management System (LMS) too complex and cumbersome for administrators, managers and learners to use
Sandler Training had been using a proprietary LMS and users were very disappointed and frustrated with the complexity of the solution. Students were bogged down by too many clicks and too many compliance-driven permissions to easily access the content. Clients struggled with adoption and trainers found the platform cumbersome to use.
The system was so non-user friendly that the required participation from clients and trainers dwindled. “Instead of being the innovative solution we envisioned, the Sandler Online platform became a frustrating side note,” said Mike Montague, Vice President of Online Learning & Development for Sandler Systems, Inc.
Solution/Result:
Migrated to open source LMS with zero down time
Sandler chose to work with Lambda Solutions to migrate to a Totara Learn/Zoola Analytics solution due to its top-rated support service, extensive knowledge of Totara Learn open source platform, world class hosting on Amazon Web Services with a 99.9% uptime guarantee, built-in reporting capabilities of Zoola Analytics and development expertise of the team.
The implementation included migration from the proprietary LMS to Totara Learn and a build of a Drupal site to facilitate the storefront and user management. With the complexity of the user hierarchy, the Drupal site required custom integration to Totara Learn to ensure the users entering the LMS were assigned to the right permissions that controlled which level of access they could have.
2. Manual Tasks and Reports
Key Business Challenge:
Loss of time and productivity of team members having to deal with manual, tedious processes
Sandler’s previous LMS was locked down, requiring many hurdles to be jumped through before any changes could be made. Before adopting the Totara Learn and Lambda Analytics solution, many of the user management and course enrollment tasks had to be done manually, requiring Sandler head office employees to spend many tedious hours administering the site. Sandler’s need was to solve this challenge by integrating with an eCommerce and user portal (Drupal) to empower trainers and their end users to use self-service.
Solution/Result:
The new platform removed the technology barrier to allow the LMS to disappear and for the content and learning to take the lead
Now that the LMS is compatible with all devices and operating systems, user engagement has soared. Staff can more easily assign courses and monitor participation and clients can login and start learning within two or three clicks to any resource.
3. Losing Competitive Advantage
Key Business Challenge:
Losing competitive advantage and market share. Lack of reporting capabilities.
Sandler Training is the largest sales, leadership and customer service training development company in the world. Sandler earned this enviable position over the past 40 years by offering distinctive, non-traditional selling systems and highly effective sales training methodology. These programs have empowered sales professionals in small and mid-sized companies as well as Fortune 500 organizations worldwide.
Due to the frustrations and complexity of their old system, Sandler’s bottom line began to be affected as sales had flattened over the past three years. An additional big challenge the training company had was with reporting. “Because our old LMS was so compliance driven, the reporting output was pretty good but the amount of clicks trainers, managers and administrators had to go through to create reports was frankly, ridiculous. It was such a loss of productivity,” stated Mike Montague.
Solution/Result:
Even though the migration was complex, the original setup and launch was deemed be successful and Sandler was able to bring over 8,000 user records without missing a beat, even for a day.
Sandler saw impressive results in the first year of implementation. Its online learning revenues increased dramatically and adoption and engagement were up by almost 200%. Time spent learning, active users, logins per month, activities complete and new registrations per month are all up over 50% from previous levels. Customized reports have been built to enable managers and administrators to generate reports in minutes.
Is your company bogged down with disparate systems and an LMS solution that is working against you instead of being an all-star learning platform that engages users? Read the full Sandler Training case study to learn how to free your learning programs to gain user adoption and increase revenues.
