www.sumtotalsystems.com Success Profile “We directly attribute the improvement in cus- tomer satisfaction to the learning manage- ment system… We needed technology that would help us assess our employees’ know- how and deliver the appropriate learning when we found gaps.” — Lori Willban ks Senior Sales Training ManagerFast Facts Industry: High Technology Countries: USA and Global Users: 1,600+ SumTotal Product: SumTotal Learning Ariba, Inc. Sunnyvale, CA, USA www.ariba.com Measuring and Improving Employee Competencies to Increase Performance and Customer Satisfaction BUicHg■ Identify workforce strengths and weaknesses ■ Measure and improve sales and consulting staff competencies ■ Deliver blended online, self-paced and classroom learning ■ Build specialized e-learning for new hires Ui■ Ariba deployed Learning Management from SumTotal ® to assess talent and deliver highly targeted blended learning to increase employee competencies rU■ Boosts employee skills and c ompetencies ■ Increases customer satisfaction ■ Closes gaps in sales force’s knowledge ■ Enhances consulting force’s expertise MUrd iMPrvcMPciAriba delivers sourcing, procurement, and commodity expertise to help organizations optimize their spending processes and supplier relationships. Companies that want to squeeze value from every dollar spent on services, materials and goods often turn to Ariba to help build better contracting, procurement and payment processes. Ariba has grown considerably since its acquisition of FreeMarkets, Inc., an auction-based supply-chain management software firm, and now has more than 1,600 employees. As Ariba grew, its management team needed to identify the organization’s strengths and weaknesses, particularly among its sales and consulting staff. The company wanted to build a program for measuring and improving the competencies of its Commercial organization.
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8/3/2019 Ariba Case Study: Learn how Ariba got more for its money with SumTotal and blended learning.
“The skills of the Commercial organization had never been evaluated formally,”
said Lori Willbanks, senior sales training manager for Ariba. “We lacked a window
into the skills possessed by our sales and consulting staff. And we needed
technology that would help us assess our employees’ know-how and deliver the
appropriate learning when we found gaps.”
According to Willbanks, Ariba hoped to identify the traits and business acumen that
make people in the Commercial organization a success. Knowing this would mean
Ariba could recruit people with the right skills, build targeted training for them once
hired, and coach them to perform at increasingly higher levels.
Ariba started its Competency Development program to create professional
competency models for the Commercial organization, and online courses about
the products sold by the Commercial organization. The initial challenges of this
program were to deploy content creation tools and a learning management system
(LMS) to deliver education and assess talent using the Internet.
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The goal of the Competency Development program was to ensure that employees in
the Commercial organization had the right skills to excel at their jobs. “To get there,
we employed a ‘blended learning model,’ a mix of online, self-paced and classroom
instruction, designed to increase the sales and consulting team’s skill level, while
keeping them in the field as much as possible,” explained Willbanks.
The company deployed the SumTotal learning management system, dubbed
AribaWISE, to help measure the Commercial organization’s competencies. The
SumTotal learning management system (LMS) includes a competency module as
well as a program for defining business goals for the organization and measurement
strategies for Ariba’s executives.
Ariba used the LMS to analyze responses from the Commercial organization on levels
of competency across a range of measures. Within the sales team, for example,the responses showed that the top three competencies were impact, flexibility, and
the ability to persuade, while the bottom three competencies (or areas they scored
themselves lowest) were product knowledge, business acumen, and organizational
acumen. The consulting team’s competencies — strengths and weaknesses — largely
mirrored the sales force’s responses.
“After identifying the gaps for the Commercial team,” said Willbanks, “we created a
training plan to improve their skills.” For example, to help the Commercial organization
better understand Ariba’s products and solutions, the company quickly designed 20
Web-based courses that covered Ariba’s solutions. The content for each course was
designed to help a sales executive achieve better results. “A typical course would
outline the business problems our solution would solve, including success stories,”
Willbanks explained. “Each course contained quizzes to check how well a sales
person retained the instruction.”
Along with the 20 Web-based courses, the company licensed 39 off-the-shelf courses
to teach leadership principles, business practices, consulting and selling skills.
“To get there, we employed a ‘blended learning
model,’ a mix of online, self-paced and
classroom instruction, designed to increase
the sales and consulting team’s skill level, while
keeping them in the field as much as possible.”
— Lori Willbanks
Ariba, Inc.
8/3/2019 Ariba Case Study: Learn how Ariba got more for its money with SumTotal and blended learning.