Sales training offers e-Learning teams a wonderful opportunity to connect their work to the bottom line. This is especially true when e-Learning provides instruction that improves the performance of the sales force in front of clients. How much would it be worth to a company to be able to develop sales skills and knowledge with an improved rate of successful transfer — without taking the sales team away from the customers for excessive amounts of time?
This is the story of how one global organization did just that with an approach that provided a complete performance support plan, including structured learning online and off, real-time electronic performance support, and other human engineering interventions. It is mainly the story of how a collaborative effort created a performance support tool available within Microsoft Outlook for real time training and guidance. You could think of this as workflow learning, supercharged.
The problem
Microsoft’s Worldwide Enterprise sales force faces the challenges and unique opportunities of today’s technology environment. Working in tightly integrated teams in a diverse, globally deployed organization, the sales force must rapidly respond to customers in an extremely competitive marketplace. In this article, we use the term “readiness” to refer to a state in which the sales force has the skills, knowledge, and capability to provide this rapid response.
Enterprise and Partners Group (EPG) Worldwide Readiness is the group within Microsoft charged with providing learning and performance support to the entire Enterprise sales force. Until recently, the approaches EPG Worldwide Readiness used included formal classroom training, online learning, and a variety of performance support components including job aids, help systems, and online resources.
The customer relationship management (CRM) system, which was scheduled for a major upgrade in the fall of 2004, is one of the tools used by sales. EPG Worldwide Readiness partnered with The Mosaic Company, a custom training and performance consulting firm, to connect with Microsoft’s Enterprise sales force in order to gauge the effectiveness of past readiness efforts. The pointed and direct response was clear — past readiness efforts to develop requisite skills and knowledge took too much time away from customers, and was difficult to transfer back to the workplace.
This feedback was consistent with studies that indicate formal training often results in only a 10% to 15% successful transfer of skills and knowledge to the workplace. With the anticipated CRM upgrade, and with the goal of increasing effective customer face time, a new approach was required.
Global audience — regional needs
Microsoft’s sales force is 6,000 strong. They face the classic challenge of a worldwide organization: to balance the economies of standardization with the flexibility that allows employees to meet the diverse needs of customers.
The readiness provided by EPG must
take into account not only regional procedural variations; it also must
accommodate the many languages represented in the Microsoft world community.
English is the dominant language, but if readiness is to be effective it will
also have to support the regional linguistic nuances in Europe, the Middle
East, Latin America and
Readiness — a moving target
Start with the challenges presented by taking readiness to the user and providing a solution to a worldwide audience. Then multiply this by the number of tools, processes, and initiatives that are undergoing constant change driven by the dynamic nature of the market.
But we’re not done yet. For example, in addition to using a specific CRM, Microsoft also provides its sales force with related tools that cover everything from providing additional functionality beyond the scope of the CRM, to productivity tools that enable the sales staff to update their accounts remotely and then re-synchronize their data when they connect to the network. Addressing the readiness requirements of several interrelated tools, sometimes down to the task level, let alone those associated with the processes, requires a solution that is flexible, adaptable, and scalable.
The solution
As an industry leader, Microsoft recognizes that learning is a crucial success enabler, and that readiness solutions must better enable users to learn what they need when they need it. Above all, the sales force needs a solution that adapts to their learning needs, and is delivered to where they spend a large part of their day.
This need drove the EPG Worldwide Readiness vision for real-time readiness as part of an integrated strategy with five components:
- Performance Analysis — defining competencies, identifying skills and knowledge gaps
- Real Time — providing immediately accessible readiness and support
- Structured Learning — instructor-led, e-Learning, blended learning
- Events/Resources — deployment workshops, different conferences, white papers, communities of practice, peer-to-peer, mentoring
- Evaluation — learning effectiveness framework to measure business impact
Distributed content model
Most of these components were established approaches, and already played a key role in delivering readiness to the field. However, we still needed to create and launch the Real Time component — referred to in this article as Distributed Content. This component specifically called for the design of information in discrete chunks, written in “natural language” (simple and clear terminologies familiar to everyday users) to enable rapid online consumption. It also specified the empowerment of users to manage their own learning, as they need it in their natural environment and within their daily workflow.
The initial expression of Distributed Content was the implementation of embedded content within the CRM tool, as in a Help Files system (see Figure 1). This was in itself a breakthrough extending beyond typical industry readiness initiatives.
Figure 1 Siebel Help Screen with embedded content
But this approach by and in itself
could not meet the readiness needs. The requirement was to provide the
worldwide
- Leverages current technologies
- Is accessible online and offline
- Is found in the application where users spend most of their time, namely Outlook
- Is designed for effective, rapid online consumption
- Addresses the readiness needs from a global and regional perspective
- Is efficient and cost effective
No problem!
With little more than two months before deploying the upgraded CRM, EPG Worldwide Readiness continued its partnership with Mosaic to develop the application and associated content that is now named COMET (Content Object Manager Enterprise Terminal). COMET leverages the capabilities of SharePoint Portal Server, and is delivered either as an Outlook folder integral to Customer Explorer installation or independently configured as a folder within Outlook.
COMET within Outlook
In order for COMET to be successful, it had to meet certain requirements. First, it could not utilize custom programming. This may seem odd, given that its use and support would be by one of the leading software manufacturers in the world. But it was important to one of the authors of this article, Mahnaz Javid, that, while COMET would push the envelope as a learning solution, it needed to do so in a way that would not require special computing support. In fact, the requirements specified that COMET should use “off the shelf” technology so that Microsoft’s internal IT department (OTG) could support it. OTG supports the COMET server and database. This approach maximizes reliability and data integrity — critical factors for an application crucial to the EPG worldwide sales force.
It was also important that, though COMET might be accessible via internal portals or Web sites, it not be viewed as “just another portal or Web site or etc.” This was actually quite easy to accomplish. By tapping into functionality available through Share-Point Portal Server and Outlook, COMET’s folder-based navigational method is familiar to all Windows users. Moreover, the COMET search method is designed so that a search result is persistent — a user returns to the content page automatically rather than having to navigate back to the page.
It was also essential that COMET be available offline. Although Microsoft’s sales force is as connected as any sales force can be, they also need to have access to readiness material when not connected. This may be due to physically being unable to connect, for example in a cab traveling to a client meeting, or due to low-speed bandwidth connections that exist in remote areas of the world. COMET even has the capability of writing a compact disc for further offline use.
Figure 2 is a screenshot of COMET, wrapped within Outlook (see Figure 2).
Figure 2 COMET Welcome Screen
Delivering “natural” content
Delivering content in natural language is only part of the solution. People do not learn in a vacuum, but in the context of what they need to do to get their job done. The content therefore must communicate naturally and contextually — in other words, the content consists of concise, effective information that reflects where the user is in regard to the process and task at hand.
To do this, content display and meta-tagging indicate the relevant role, specific stage in the sales process, and tool used to execute the task. This results in clear reinforcement for users, and supports efficient searching by presenting content in work contexts. Figure 3 highlights the visual treatment of COMET content.
Figure 3 COMET display of Role, Microsoft Sales Process (MSSP) stage, and tool information
COMET views
Figure 4 Sample COMET views
One can also access COMET content through different views to meet a variety of learning and search preferences including Course, Task, Process and Tools. This makes content accessible in the way that is most intuitive to the user. The screen shot in Figure 4 shows the different views available to the learner.
The Course View makes the content available in a way that is familiar to many users. If a user wants to learn about a tool (CRM, for example), and how Microsoft wants the tool to be used, this view presents the content in logical assemblies of topics that build upon one another, organized and supported by curricula and course maps so the user can navigate easily through the content. COMET also provides a link to the learning management system (LMS) for those users who want to get credit for taking the course or courses. It is important to note, however, that feeding the LMS database is secondary to fulfilling the user’s skill and knowledge needs.
But what if the user just wants to know how to complete a task? Or maybe she’s developing a proposal in the Proof part of the sales process, but is unclear regarding what she should do to complete that part of the process — that’s where the multiple views of COMET provide the support necessary.
Task, Process, and Tool Views are made up in large part with Quick Guides — succinct instructions and templates that will guide a user very specifically through what’s necessary to do her job. Content organization provides just what is needed to minimize the time it takes to learn about the task, so the user can concentrate on doing the task.
But there are additional features such as direct search capability using key words which enable the user to search for content within COMET, content indexing to allow search alphabetically, and tips and simulations so the users can get help with those tasks — if they want it. The concept of giving the users a choice about the level of involvement, or even how much time they have to learn, is fundamental to the power and effectiveness of COMET.
