Deploying learning and development environment for a true global team

Help Abbott deploy and measure its comprehensive L&D campaigns with a scalable technological solution that can scale to the demands of thousands of employees worldwide.

SENLA helped Abbott create a custom L&D solution to assess, track and improve the skills of their sales departments that integrated with the existing HR system.

Our solution allowed trainers to create custom programs and seminars that support thousands of learners, can work completely offline, and can be deployed on any device with the help of MDM (Mobile Device Management).

Abbott was able to deliver unified L&D experience to its global workforce, measure the efficiency of the sales enablement program and assess the skills of their existing employees. 

Data from the L&D department was easily accessible and integrated into the existing HR system. This empowered Abbott to make better hiring decisions based on data and focus on the learning initiatives that bring tangible business results.

Abbott is a global leader in Health Care. They recognize that every person shares a similar purpose: living the best life one can. Creating life-changing technology, be it blood sugar monitors, testing half the world’s blood donations or easing chronic pain, is their mission. It’s a company that’s driven by technology at its core.

Abbott wanted to invest more into its employees through efficient L&D initiatives. There were a lot of disadvantages to the current system: it did not integrate into the existing HR system, trainers used different programs that resulted in disjointed experience for learners, it was not fully available offline if a training was happening somewhere remote, and there was no way to analyze any data.

Abbott seeked to partner with a technology partner to deploy a unified L&D solution to hundreds of trainers and their learners worldwide.

Abbott appreciated the mature and solid architectural vision that was suggested during the discovery phase, SENLA’s flexibility to the development process and our prior experience in delivering complex business solutions.

When you build a new technological product that needs to work with existing business processes and systems, you need to take into account how your solution will affect people who are running them, and organization in general. 

Will it make their lives easier? Will it allow them to invest more time into learning or reflection? Will it decrease human error factor? Will it help align manifold departments and their objectives with the general business goal?

This was our initial stage: figuring out how we can improve existing processes and make people’s lives easier, and align them with a unified goal.

We worked closely with all the departments involved: L&D, HR, in-house dev and tech admin teams, and learners.

L&D

HR

Admin

We came up with a solution that had four modules and covered all the requirements.

It was available online and was accessible 100% offline as well, so that trainers don’t have to rely on spotty internet connection in remote locations. The statistical module collected all the necessary data for the HR team and integrated with their system. Auto-generated mobile apps allowed to customize the entire flow and process of a seminar to take into account local requirements and learner’s preferences. And MDM allowed administrators to deploy the apps fast and securely.

When we learned that the client expected an MVP in just four months, we realized that it’s not going to be your usual corporate project. We had to move fast and iterate even faster.

We decided to adopt Lean Startup methodology for this project, as it’s a proven way to test ideas and deliver working solutions on tight deadlines.

In addition to our regular 2-weeks sprints we would show demos to Abbott team every Friday to get their input.

In the true fashion of a startup, we had to come up with new roles to support trainers on-site delivering L&D campaigns with our new solution. We had set up a dedicated support team that was available 24/7 whenever there was a big learning event in the company. They would ensure that things were running smoothly and would quickly fix any problems.

The support team has been working for 2 years now.

The success of the project required Abbott and SENLA adopt new ways of working internally, offer and broaden its services and ultimately learn how to align teams with a single purpose through technology.