PitchPerfect eAcademy

Project: FMCG

Channel: Internal training platform

Timeline: 2018 - 2021

Role: Project owner & UX designer

Tool: Corporate training platform

Team: Global purchasing team

Problem: Traditional training methods, whether on-site or via online calls, were ineffective in educating marketing & sales teams about sourcing compliance rules. Recent attendance was declining, and business partners were struggling to retain and apply the provided materials in their daily operations.

Solution: Implementing a new global eAcademy program focused on essential sourcing training through e-learning courses within the corporate training platform.

KPIs

Meet the 100% attendance rate of each course measured monthly & upon the one-time signed-up knowledge challenges.
Succession certification requires achieving over 85% correct answers on the final quiz.
Completion rate above 80% in other regions outside Germany, reported monthly for all published courses.

Business requirements

To establish a unified global online learning program
serving the aim of training in compliant sourcing and pitching rules and guidelines
available on the category level for marketing & sales
for internal usage of business teams and related functional units on marketing & sales as the end-users.

Situation

Continious drop in the attandance of traditionally organized sourcing training sessions together with complains from business partners that they missed the critical knowledge to keep track with the sourcing rules for their purchasing activities led to the need of establishing a new training program guranteed by the global purchasing team.

Business objective

Strengthen the knowledge level of sourcing rules & guidelines for marketing & sales teams.
Create a compact set of learning materials for the onboarding process.
Establish a globally valid upskilling path for business partners & their support teams coordinated by local purchasing offices.

Context

Challenges

Constraints

Given the expectations and prioritized content from the sponsor for high-risk and red-flag areas, along with the white spots identified in audits.

All sensitive content part to be verified & approved by legal affairs representatives & revisions applied upon their suggestions.

Capacity limitations of all involved subject matter consultants & compliance & legal partners.

Planning & execution depended on the pipeline & prioritization not only on our purchasing team but also on the resources of the involved graphic center, where I was in close cooperation with our instructional designers.

UX approarch

Project Vision: Think Globally & Act Locally

As part of the wider initiative, I felt this part required a specific approach, so I focused on the domain details. I decided to dig deeper into the given content repository & data reporting. Based on the weak points, I wanted to prepare my content strategy for the program.

Discovery

UX research

As this part of our project has even greater impact on the liability & obligations of all respective parties in the sourcing processes, I felt resposible to deliver very accurate and meaningful solution to support expected results.

Hence, I sat on all available historical training records & materials provided to me by my team. So, I could revisit those critical moments and identify weak spots in those actions. Also, I have attendance lists of managers with their resident department who were required to attend these training sessions. I started observing patterns in why certain efforts failed or didn't yield the expected results.

Finally, I reviewed many past presentations and supporting materials used during those training calls, along with additional internal documents from which the presentations were created. By connecting all the relevant information, I formed my conclusions. I then presented my findings to my sponsor, and together we decided to proceed with the scheme.

We learned that ...

Data mining revealed the primary areas where we should focus our attention and improve the content structure and trainee accountability in our sourcing processes. The key components for our planned e-learning courses must consider the following insights.

We needed to set a level of impact

I realized that users lacked of notion about what real impact and legal consequences one misleaded action could cause. It was observed very often that they were unable to see a whole picture due to misunderstanding of the required sourcing rules. Mostly, they found out too late and at that point the purchasing team had to interfere to solve out tough situations.

We needed to use real examples

This led me to this point, and I was right that we needed to show our colleagues the reality of some critical cases in particular areas like the pre-negotiations, usage rights, influencers representations, or withholding taxes. These situations allowed us to point out the key learnings, which, together with explained rules, help users internalize and gain knowledge more effectively.

We needed to show process dependencies

I made my mind also that none of those tought rules & processes should be presented izolated. All of them had a tremendous internal dependencies to each other, especially if something was skipped or missed in the business operations. Therefore, we embedded careful notes & reminders on closed related actions by linking specific materials or recommended following courses.

We needed to build a sphere of influence

By inviting users to these courses, I aimed to cultivate a sense of ownership and accountability for their actions within their direct sphere of influence. With each completed course & successfully passed quiz, we wanted them to feel more confident in their daily routines, reducing the risk of audit flags or legal issues. Ultimately, our goal was to encourage them to become informal ambassadors for new colleagues during the onboarding process for sourcing.

Design

Trade-offs

While preparing the execution of this scheme, I dealt with some justified and understandable constraints what predetermined certain trade-offs.

Limited list of topics & courses delivery

Audit & legal revisions on content mangement

Content adaptions for regional application

Limited topics & courses

Despite having plenty of materials as well as extensive list of topics for e-learning, I have to align on top ten of them. Still, due to the limited pipeline of the graphic center with whom I coordinated it all, we managed to finalize eight courses in two waves in the end.

Audit & legal revisions

Since we needed to cover sensitive & high-impact topics to minimize legal issues with external parties, I engaged from the very beginning of preparation & course review loops compliance & legal partners to cut/adjust the content where necessary to keep it acceptable from their perspective.

Content adaptions

As agreed with my sponsor, I primarily elaborated on the selected topics, valuable to all regions. Thus, I had to evaluate & combine with the content that either highlighted specific regional aspects, such as usage rights or legally required template modifications, or included distinct sections tailored to particular regions.

Key impact

Interactive & simplified online learning materials digitally accessible for all relevant business groups in all divisions 24/7 completely replaced traditional training sessions.

The full scheme became a mandatory part of the onboarding package for new marketing & sales colleagues.

This initiative was promoted & distributed on the intranet on a global scale and regularly resonated at purchasing & business workshops.

These courses were included as mandatory in the education & development plans for marketing & sales teams, with an automated completion reporting back to our purchasing team with a satisfactory 90% completion rate.

Drop in support calls by 60% & decrease in the reported high-risk compliance issues by 25% within the first year of the pilot scope and further after the first release of the global enrollment .

Cooperation on the design & delivery process

On this project, I represented multiple roles of project owner, UX designer & project coordination with all stakeholders & subject matter experts on the purchasing, audit, or compliance side as well as with business partners from marketing & sales. This happened throughout the planning and preparation rounds, mainly for data collection & UX research, concept ideation and finaliyed with the requirements specification.

Once the concept with business requirements was approved, I carried on with the execution phase, where I was in charge of arranging the learning section and preparing the main materials for the graphic center.

Learning section on the corporate platform
- section & playlist setup ownership - format & layout in terms to corporate standards
- description distribution & metadata managment
- course global bio & description setup
- after-launch update ownership

Participation in the e-learning design & delivery with the graphic center
- producing the idea concept & documentation
- submitting initiation request
- review on content & structure of e-learning
- pre-launch testing & final approval on the final version
- initiating any post-launch adjustments

UX decisions

Based on received details and reviewed data and materials in my UX research, I was able to set on further steps to comply with the business & end-user needs. My intention was to implement critically identified gaps in experoence and create a combined package of explanatory education with interactional experience.

For every topic, I came out of the provided documentation and created the course storyboards for the instructional designers that included:

content structure,
slides content & visualizations,
branding stock,
non-negotiable compliance & audit annotations,
complete copy & messaging instructions,
supportive examples,
process interaction features,
suggested progress areas & transitions,
full voiceover narratives,
terminology glossary,
course quiz setup & evaluation.

All above listed features were adjusted to each of planning e-learning sessions and reviewed in multiple feedback rounds. All efforts & coordination successfully resulted into these eight globally enrolled e-learning courses:

Basic compliance training - Pitching guidelines & process, templates, minimum audit requirements

Global usage rights - Stock materials, music management & withholding tax rules

Sponsorships - brand & product sponsorship, difference to adverisement, donations & membership process

Customer vendor & sales brockerage - basket logic & process guidelines, 3rd parties delegations & brokerage

Digital content vs. IT competence split - scope of digital content production versus IT servicing & technical scope

Events - covering brand, trade & sales event organization excl. internal corporate events, 3rd party & agency sourcing

Market research - sourcing scope & involvement of MaFo team, research studies & PoC approval process

Influencers - role difference of influencers & ambassadors, negotation rules & compliance recommendations

PitchPerfect eAcademy

Usability & recognition

From the user experience of the needs of our end-users, I searched for a healthy balance to keep it all in a compliant line but still appealing enough for their completion.

On purpose, I closely cooperated in the design process with the involved instructional designers.

Compliance & legal

To solicitate proper actions from business partners, we needed to make sure this educational material is prepared in line with law & regulations.

For all's sake, I had to iterate & adapt the content structure upon demands of these colleagues to get it published correctly.

Sourcing process

The main aspect of these scheme was to build transparency & trust in the existing complex processes to make them become a business routine.

Once marketers & sales partners could see the key impact & values of them, they could understand why they had to execute properly.

PitchPerfect Global Landing page V_edited.jpg

Final reflextions

I am very pleased & honored to be involved in this project. It has provided me with a unique experience related to the learning content. This experience helped me understand the importance of in-depth domain knowledge for designers. Such knowledge enables designers to better address users' needs and business requirements, ultimately translating these insights into balanced design solutions that resonate with users and have a significant positive impact.

From the UX & project management perspective, I was in charge of:

project concept creation & pipeline plan,
story crafting & data research,
topics & subject matter clarification,
UX information architecture,
course storyboarding & content instructions,
execution coordination with instructional designers & legal affairs,
elearning reviews & testing,
content management, including after-launch updates,
global distrubution & internal communication release,
improvements in coordination with the global category team & related stakeholders.