Last month we assembled a panel of learning and development experts to hear how they each implemented an extended enterprise learning network. The panel consisted of four clients from across the LTG brands to discuss their real-world experiences on adopting an extended enterprise approach from a variety of use cases. The webinar is available on-demand here, but here we’ll go further in a one-on-one interview with Julie Hammond, Manager of Consumer Education at Bridgestone Americas.
Q: Tell us about yourself and who is part of your extended learning network?
Julie is responsible for distributing Bridgestone’s product training focused on passenger and light truck tire education. She uniquely sits within the marketing department as her team manages the Bridgestone Consumer Spiff (Sales Performance Incentive Fund) program called Driving Force. The success of the program is measured by marketing KPIs such as site visits and web page duration to determine how channel partners are interacting with Bridgestone product training and correlating that activity with tire sales and shipments.
Her team’s goal is to reach and support partners and resellers who use their own learning management systems or require highly specified training needs. She provides online courses that can be accessed from external platforms, so clients can benefit from Bridgestone training content without going to an outside site to access the training. This makes it easier for her partner customers to manage course completions and build required courses or curriculums on their own system.
Q: What tools do you use and what’s the most difficult challenge your team had to overcome?
Before implementing an extended enterprise solution, Julie had little visibility into how partners were utilizing the product training provided by her team. She recalls the days of having to manually send SCORM courses to distributors and resellers to upload into their LMSs. Today the team at Bridgestone uses Content Controller by Rustici Software to manage their product training in one place. She no longer has to notify clients about simple copy edits each time a course needs an update as it’s now done automatically.
Q: What are some successes you’ve seen since implementing an extended enterprise model?
Now that Bridgestone has almost a year of data, this helps the sales team have more meaningful client conversations. By comparing course completion and sales data, Bridgestone can see how their product training impacts the sales process. Not only can Julie anticipate peak training times, but she can also see which courses are utilized the most which helps inform what training to create next. With the additional data, she plans to create dashboards for key clients on where their teams are on education and plans to provide this tool to all clients across their dealer network in upcoming years. All of this makes it easier to deliver and communicate the value the extended enterprise training investment brings to the business.
“With Extended Enterprise, we now have the data and visibility that our clients are actually using our training.” – Julie Hammond, Bridgestone Americas
Now that you’ve heard Julie’s story, listen to the other panelists from Comcast, Caterpillar and Humentum in our full webinar recording. If you have any questions or would like to discuss solutions to distribute your eLearning content across your ecosystem, feel free to reach out.
