What to do when instructors can't be copied Canon sales training

Training & Development, Jun 2002 by Hartley, Darin E

The Canon sales training team and other recruited staff inside of Canon did due diligence on e-business and e-learning companies and activities. They peeled back and analyzed successful-and unsuccessful-- e-ventures. The team-made up of employees from human resources, IT, service training, and sales training-spent a year researching the market space to identify potential solutions. It became evident that a fulfillment-centric strategy would be more effective for Canon than a transactional-centric strategy.

A transactional-centric strategy focuses on high-- activity, low-bandwidth initiatives and requires a certain infrastructure to support it, which many companies underestimate. A fulfillment-centric strategy has lower activity but requires higher bandwidth. That is, learners would demand more than a transactional-centric strategy could deliver. Transactional-centric operations are effective in small, automated transactions; fulfillment-centric operations focus on the experience of customers in a holistic way.

Based on its findings, Bardwell's team decided to focus on a fulfillment-centric strategy and started looking at hardware and software suppliers that could meet Canon's needs. Their strategy was documented formerly and approved by Canon executives. Bardwell and his team soon realized that effective implementation of the strategy would require support from more than one provider. That would be one of the more challenging aspects of the implementation because some vendors are reluctant to work with others.

A learning management system was needed. Bardwell's team met with numerous LMS providers over the course of several months to determine the best fit for Canon. Says Bardwell, "Our team saw more demos than anyone would care to see." The final decision was Intellinex, particularly because of its LEAP (Learning Environment to Accelerate Performance) system. Canon had a great need for an integrator of elearning solutions and also some development support, and Intellinex could provide both. Many LMSs offer similar services and functionality, so the decision-maker was the support, flexibility, and backing of the parent company, Ernst & Young.

Goals and challenges

Canon's goals regarding content were threefold:

1. It wanted to analyze its instructor-led training to determine which courses best met the criteria for blended learning. Before taking a blended approach, Canon's typical classroom sessions lasted one to two days, and a good part of that time was spent getting attendees to the same baseline level of knowledge. The intent of the blended approach was to get salespeople to the same knowledge baseline before coming to class so that the sameone- to two-day course would yield higher learning objectives and improved competence in the field. 2. Canon wanted to increase the number of training topics and maximize the delivery capacity usually restricted in classroom-only instruction. 3.Canon wanted to extend the reach of its training (an inherent strength of the Web).