n 2004, Toyota Motor Europe was in a quandary. It was releasing an increasing number
of new vehicle models each year, each with long lists of environmentally friendly
technologies and other manufacturing selling points, and the amount of training
necessary for its sales, marketing and engineering teams also was surging. Toyota’s
sales and marketing organizations in countries across Europe needed quick, easy
access to product training before new models were released to the public. But Toyota
Motor Europe had no centralized way to deliver that content.
Brussels, Belgium-based Toyota Motor Europe combines three prior Toyota entities
on the continent and is responsible for the company’s marketing, sales, manufacturing,
and research and development there. It works with 29 independently held national
sales and marketing companies based in 48 countries scattered across Europe. At
the time, each company had its own system for collecting and disseminating new product
information.
According to Sann René Glaza, Toyota Motor Europe’s
senior manager for the Learning Technologies Group, some of the more established
national marketing and sales companies had their own e-learning or classroom-based
systems and fully staffed training departments, while others, particularly those
in emerging markets, had little or no formal training in place. Adding further complications
was the fact that product and training materials had to be translated into 30 different
languages to meet all of their needs.
"Every country launched new products in their own way,
with their own training and sales events, which was not cost-effective," Glaza says.
"It was imperative that we develop an entirely new network to get the same product
information out to all of the local sales and marketing companies."
To manage the flow of information and streamline the
education process, Toyota Motor Europe implemented a centralized learning management
system developed by Certpoint Systems, a global learning management software solution
provider headquartered in Roslyn Heights, New York, with offices in Belgium. The
new system, branded Toyota Connect, includes access to frequently updated e-learning
modules, content management tools, online registration, assessment tracking and
an integrated user-friendly authoring tool to develop unique regional content.
"We really wanted to make this something that the marketing
and sales companies could manage on their own," Glaza says of the new system. "We
have a grand total of four people in training and support [at Toyota Motor Europe
headquarters]. It was important for us to be able to concentrate on refining the
curriculum."
Road show
The greatest challenge in developing the learning system
for Toyota Motor Europe was that it had to be both centralized and decentralized,
says Kenneth Fung, senior vice president for Certpoint. "Each sales and marketing
group was autonomous with different maturity levels, staff size and languages, but
they all needed access to the same global content."
Each national marketing and sales company would also
have to pay for access to the new system—and participation was not mandatory.
Going into the project, Glaza knew it would be a hard
sell. "I’ve found, as a program manager, that getting people to embrace e-learning
is much more about change management," she says. "It’s bigger than making people
to use the system; it’s about changing the way they think about getting information."
Toyota Motor Europe began to introduce the system in
early 2005, and to ease into the change, Glaza went out on the road with her IT
people and representatives from CertPoint to educate executives, managers and training
managers about Toyota Connect and the value it would bring to their businesses.
"We demoed the system and showed them the time and cost savings," she says. At the
end of the presentation, Glaza’s team asked for letters of commitment from the national
marketing and sales companies.
"It was a difficult process," notes Fung, who was a
member of the road show. "They had to see the value of the system and it took a
while to convince people."
As part of the lure, Toyota Motor Europe gave all of
its national marketing and sales companies access to a "light" version of Toyota
Connect, so that they could try out the e-learning content. Once they bought in
fully, they could take advantage of all the courses and assessments, as well as
the tracking, notification, learning management and authoring tools. At that point,
the marketing and sales companies could decide which functionalities to use, how
they wanted to track assessments and which courses they would make mandatory for
personnel.
Key members of each country’s training staff were also
brought into headquarters for a three-day training session on how to use the system
and the authoring tools.
"It was all part of the change management process,"
Fung says. "The change management is almost as important as the technological pieces,
because if you are not able to get buy-in and convince people to change their behavior
and attitude about learning, what’s the point?"
By the end of the road show, 26 markets had signed up,
Fung says. "That’s incredible for a non-mandatory tool that they have to pay for."
Leveling the playing field
Today, through Toyota Connect, Toyota Motor Europe’s
central training office develops core content that is disseminated to all of the
regional offices, where the course material is translated and tweaked for local
users by regional training personnel. Each national marketing and sales company
has its own domain and the ability to localize its content. But the core content
is the same across Europe.
"In this way, they all receive the same training to
ensure the message we are giving our retailers is consistent in quality," Glaza
says. "It really does help to maintain our brand image. Even if they make some minor
tweaks and changes to localize the material, we can still maintain control of the
message."
The translation tools in the system have also delivered
valuable benefits to local dealers. Before the e-learning system, it took the national
marketing and sales organizations 10 weeks to translate course content and new product
information from headquarters, which meant training materials often weren’t ready
until well after a new model hit the market. With the Toyota Connect templates and
tools, the translations can be completed in several days. "That means they are getting
product knowledge to sales people 90 percent faster," Fung says.
Early success
Many of the national marketing and sales companies saw
early success with the new system, particularly those in France, who have been the
greatest champions of the system, Glaza says. They participated in an early pilot
program, measured results and shared their numbers with the rest of the organization.
Their measures of success include the reduction of a
four-day classroom training course to two days, replacing the two days of instruction
with e-learning modules. The marketing and sales companies estimate each day an
employee spends in off-site training is the equivalent of
1,000 billable time,
and there are 12 to 20 participants in each session. "That savings adds up quickly,"
Fung says.
The dealers in France have also seen a 90 percent reduction
in administration time for training because employees sign up directly for courses
online and receive automated confirmations and notifications of courses, eliminating
the need for the training department to handle course management.
"Toyota France was able to show significant numbers
in terms of time and administrative savings," Glaza says. "That helped us generate
a lot of excitement."
Even more impressive were the success stories coming
out of emerging markets. Romania in particular saw great results among early adopters,
and used those early successes to persuade skeptical managers to more fully embrace
the system.
Camelia Strete, training manager for Toyota Romania,
says that prior to 2006, her group offered only classroom training and had no tools
or system for self-study. When Toyota Connect was launched, she attended the three-day
training and was so excited that she went back to Romania and delivered a presentation
on the new system at a dealer conference, showcasing its benefits and educating
managers on the technology they would need to invest in—including computers and
office space—to give employees access to the new content.
Unfortunately, her enthusiasm for e-learning wasn’t
contagious. "They didn’t say it out loud, but a lot of managers were reluctant,"
she says. Most of the dealers agreed to implement the system, which launched in
February 2006 in Romania, but their usage of the e-learning modules varied significantly.
To prove the system’s value, Strete spent the next year
collecting information about usage and impact among local dealers. In December 2007,
she went out on a road show of her own with a graph that she was certain would change
the minds of those reluctant dealers.
The graph ranked dealers in order of the amount of time
their employees spent online, and compared it with the same list of dealers in order
of sales rankings.
"The two rankings were extremely close," Strete says.
Her data showed that those national marketing and sales companies that spent the
most hours training had the highest sales. "It was very realistic for them. It showed
the direct link between training and sales results."
That presentation won over the managers, whom Strete
relies on to foster a work environment that places value on learning.
"So much of e-learning is about management’s attitude,"
she says. "If managers encourage people to use the training and reward them for
it, the whole team will do it. That’s when you see results."
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