The ELearning Fieldbook [Electronic resources] : Implementation Lessons and Case Studies from Companies that are Making eLearning Work نسخه متنی

Case 1: Invensys Foxboro

Company Facts and Figures

Industry: Technology, Manufacturing, Professional Services

Scope of Services and Products: Foxboro provides process control devices, software, and consulting services

Estimated Number of Employees: 76,000 (globally)

Year e-Learning Introduced: 2002

Offices and Locations: Offices worldwide, headquarters in Foxboro, Massachusetts

Web Site: www.foxboro.com

Number of e-Learning Programs in Entire Curriculum: Nine current courses, plus an ongoing series of online seminars and access to the complete SkillSoft (formerly SmartForce) library of Web-based training titles

Introduction

Invensys Foxboro is part of the Invensys

Production Management Division and provides world-class Foxboro information technology, automation, and process solutions to a wide range of manufacturing applications for the cement, chemical, metals and mining, oil and gas, pulp and paper, power, pharmaceutical, and specialty chemicals industries.

Foxboro is one of several companies within this division and targets its products at maximizing a client’s return on investment and optimizing performance across their supply chain.

Foxboro products have both software and hardware components, both of which require thorough training for all plant operators, process engineers, and maintenance personnel involved with their use.

How Was the Program Aligned with the Business?

Knowing Their Audience

The great majority of Foxboro customers are involved in traditional manufacturing. Until recently, the training Foxboro provided to their clients was also traditional with classes offered either at Foxboro facilities or the customer’s site. Occasionally there was a side venture into something such as selling videotape-based training. There were also one or two failed experiments with e-learning.

Why e-Learning?

Invensys Foxboro selected an e-learning approach to:

Meet the changing training requirements of customers

Maintain competitiveness by giving customers the information needed to use their products and services

Increase the value of learning by providing customers with the learning they need, when it is needed

According to Michael Bleyhl, now Invensys’ Director of e-learning and then leader of Foxboro’s learning efforts, the economic slowdown that started in 2000 began to slow customer participation in training.

Initially, some customers tried to accommodate their changing economic circumstances by sending fewer plant operators (the primary audience) to classes, intending for them to train their colleagues upon their return to the workplace. However, the returning operators did not necessarily have the training skills necessary to transfer their knowledge. There was also a hesitation on the part of some to do so, as this knowledge was seen as a layer of job security in a now uncertain economy.

This situation forced a re-examination of the training function within Foxboro. Operating as a profit and loss center with US$6 million in annual revenue, all from classroom-based courses, the department’s revenue stream started to dry up as Foxboro customers began to see a slow down in their own businesses and an increasing need to keep operators on duty to maintain productivity. Foxboro was faced with a decision on whether to exit the training business entirely or rethink their approach to stay relevant to customer needs and financially viable.

It was immediately apparent that training needs were not going away. Customers were still buying new Foxboro products and using existing ones. Plant personnel still needed to know how to prepare, operate, and maintain these devices and their associated software. What had changed was that the delivery model for the training no longer matched the learners’ needs.

In addition to the loss of revenue for the training department, there was also a longer-term risk that a lack of product knowledge among customers would lead to decreased sales of Foxboro products. If customers do not understand a product, they are less likely to use it, particularly for business critical needs such as manufacturing process control.

Because learners were having difficulty coming to the training, Foxboro decided to take the training to them. A decision was made to convert some of the business product training to e-learning. This would enable plant personnel to take at least some training while remaining on site at their plants. Some clients still preferred classroom courses, so these were kept active.

Key Business Drivers

Loss of revenue caused by a drop-off in enrollment in classroom-based learning

Loss of product knowledge, which would ultimately lead to lower product use among customers and lower sales

How Was the Program Designed?

Once the decision to move to e-learning offerings was made, the learning strategy needed to be assembled. One of the first decisions made by Bleyhl was to outsource e-learning design and development to a subcontractor. Foxboro’s own instructional design resources were limited, as their primary experience was in developing classroom materials, and they were already committed to supporting the existing 20 course curriculum. Earlier efforts to design e-learning in-house had been unsuccessful and Bleyhl decided to continue to support his department’s core competencies. His group would serve as primary contact point, subject matter experts, and reviewers of the materials, but design and development would be outsourced.

Additionally, since Foxboro products are sold and used worldwide, and are used by shift workers around the clock, an extensive technical infrastructure would be needed to support 24 hour a day, seven day a week training delivery so that workers could learn on breaks, or before or after their shift. To avoid the high costs, complexity and ramp-up time needed to develop such a platform in house, Foxboro partnered with SkillSoft (then known as SmartForce) to provide the delivery platform and user support for the learning program. Again, it was a question of deciding what Foxboro did well and finding partners to assist with the rest.

Foxboro decided to convert several classroom courses as part of the initial launch. It was their feeling that an e-learning Web site that featured only one course would have little value. As their starting point, they chose an overview course of the Foxboro control system software.

Among Foxboro’s products are the Intelligent Automation (I/A) series of process automation devices. When interfaced with plant machinery, these devices are used by plant operators to monitor and manage the steps of industrial processes such as grinding, mixing, and refining. A group of these devices can be controlled through a central PC workstation using Foxboro-developed software, enabling one operator to centrally monitor and control their piece of a process.

It took three days to complete classroom training for this software. However, it was only available as part of a larger two-week training program for plant operators.

Because of its broad appeal and because it had already been reworked for a video-based course in the past, this three-day segment, Introduction to the I/A Series System for the Process Operator (see Figure 17-1), was selected as the first to be converted to e-learning. This course consisted almost entirely of knowledge transfer, rather than skills transfer, so it could have a simpler design, lending itself well to a first effort.

Figure 17-1: Sample Invensys Foxboro Course

The e-learning version was modeled on the set of video tapes referenced earlier, as well as on the content of the three-day classroom course. The objectives of the course included enabling learners to:

Navigate around the Foxboro software control system

Define Foxboro-specific terminology and system architecture

Acknowledge alarms

Identify trends using the software

Supporting each of these were a set of subsidiary objectives and learning content, resulting in the student gaining a solid overview of the Foxboro software, the terms and concepts associated with the company’s products, and an operational knowledge of the control system. The course has graphics and animation, as well as spoken narration that mirrors the on-screen text. This enables learners to see, hear, and read content elements, which provides reinforcement of the course’s message.

Other classroom courses entered the conversion process shortly thereafter. With Foxboro’s learning department serving as primary contact point and working with multiple developers through the subcontractor, several courses could be involved in design and development simultaneously, enabling Foxboro’s Lifetime Learning site to have multiple courses available when it went live.

All learning components used industry-standard development tools, such as Macromedia Flash. Each course is AICC and SCORM compliant so the learning environment and components can grow. This also eases capture of usage statistics and individual usage information that can be passed to a client’s learning management system when requested.

Because neither the Foxboro technology infrastructure, nor that of most of their clients, was set up to handle e-commerce, a decision was made to handle course registration through conventional means. Learners would go to the Lifetime Learning Web site, select what they wanted to take, and then telephone in to register.

As the material was developed, classroom content was generally divided into small pieces. Only the Introduction to the I/A Series System course was a duplicate of the classroom material, and even it moved from requiring three days of class time to six hours of online time.

Moving to e-learning, with its multiple learning components, provided the learner with a level of customization not available in the classroom-based learning. Customers could now sign-up for exactly what they needed—perhaps selecting a few days of e-learning rather than attending a week or two of training. It also made it easier for shift workers to fit in learning on breaks, lunch, or before or after work.

A modular design also enabled the courses to be positioned as supplements and reinforcement to training. “Many of our customers do certain things twice a year,” says Bleyhl.

Media and Tools

Self-paced, self-guided

Web-based training

Extensive graphics of the Foxboro software’s interface with animations of onscreen tasks

Text combined with spoken narration

Developed with Macromedia

Flash

Hosted by SkillSoft on an

Invensys-specific site

“We wanted to empower customers to say I can use this learning tool from Invensys Foxboro to go and get the knowledge when I need it and I can make the choice of what knowledge I want to keep in my head and what I can get just in time.” Using a modular design, the courses also served as an electronic performance support system for those who had already been through a course, but might need a refresher.

How Was the Program Deployed?

The primary marketing effort consisted of contacting existing Foxboro clients. Because 95 percent of these clients have service level agreements with the company, there was a ready base of prospects for whom to market the program. There is also an ongoing effort by Foxboro’s service sales group, who sell the agreements, to mesh the offerings with their sales message. The e-learning program came at an opportune time. With the economy in a downturn, clients were questioning the money they spent on such agreements, so factoring in learning to the contracts added value.

Selling the learning through service contracts also had a beneficial budget impact for clients. When dealing with classroom training, clients would usually arrange events once or twice a year, resulting in one or two big hits to the training budget all at once. However, as part of the service contract, the training dollars are built into the overall billing cycle for the contract, allowing for a steadier, predictable commitment of funds. And all funds apply to learning, as opposed to some being required for travel and expenses. This enables companies to expand the amount of training they receive. Clients also get an increased choice, because those who purchase e-learning from Invensys have access to SkillSoft’s complete library of training as well.

Pricing for the online subscription is competitive with that for classroom offerings. The Introduction to the I/A Series System course takes only six hours to complete as an e-learning course. Classroom offerings of the course are three days in length, plus travel and living expenses would be incurred.

As mentioned, these selections can be made from either the Foxboro or SkillSoft learning catalogs. Tiered subscription pricing is available for those clients who have multiple users, and almost all do, so the price goes down even more.

Attendance in e-learning courses is tracked through SkillSoft’s integrated learning management system. However, only general usage statistics are usually communicated to clients, as there are often labor issues around tracking and reporting individual performance on tests and assessments. Skill checks and assessments are provided within the materials too, but for self-check purposes only. In the classroom, aggregated assessment statistics are provided to show knowledge transfer, but again, there are usually no individually identifiable test results communicated to customers.

Finally, with the division of most courses into discrete pieces, clients can buy exactly the training they need, when they need it, rather than purchasing entire courses that they may not need.

Marketing Approach

Contacted existing clients with service level agreements

Gained commitment by positioning training as "just what you need, just-in-time"

Blended training payment factored into the service level agreement.

Added value through access to the

Skillsoft library.

What Was the Business Impact of the Program?

Given the resistance you might expect from a market as traditional as industrial controls, user acceptance has been high. About 200 people have completed the Introduction to I/A Series System for Process Operators Course in the first year. Operators can now take basic training from their work site and have access to the course as a refresher or support system whenever they need it.

An unexpected benefit has been high acceptance of the training courses by systems integrators and other third-party consultants who assist companies in implementing Foxboro controls. These firms subscribe to the training to keep their practitioners skilled with the latest Foxboro knowledge, while reducing training and opportunity costs from having practitioners away on training.

Having skilled practitioners at hand means these firms are more likely to work with and sell Foxboro solutions, giving Foxboro a competitive edge.

Customer acceptance has grown to the point that Foxboro is adding two full time sales people, just to sell e-learning. It has become a standard part of the service sales pitch. In the first three months of the program, Bleyhl, acting as the single part-time sales person generated $200,000 worth of revenue. As start-up costs for the program were about $650,000, it can be seen that it is well on its way to generating a return on investment. A business plan completed by Bleyhl before his move to the directorship estimated that if the program were expanded to just the Invensys division of which Foxboro was a part, there was a multi-million dollar revenue opportunity.

Based on the success of the work within Foxboro, Invensys is now in the process of building its own Corporate University for internal training. With an expected user base within Invensys of about 55,000, the company expects to have significant economies of scale when dealing with e-learning vendors. They plan to negotiate content, delivery, and pricing models that enable them to sell more advanced learning solutions to their customers, who may not have the financial, human, or technology resources to build or buy their own. Invensys is also creating customer facing e-learning for its other various divisions.

Summary

Purpose: Provide just-in-time training for plant operators, engineers, and maintenance personnel who use Foxboro products and reduce need for classroom-based training

Program Structure: The overall learning program is:

Foxboro-specific self-paced e-learning

Live Web-based seminars offered through SkillSoft’s infrastructure

A complete library of Skillsoft training materials comprising hundreds of business- and technology-related titles

Number of Learning Hours per Learner: 25 hours of Foxboro-specific content

Total Number of Hours of Learning in the Program: 25

Number of Learners: Approximately 200 in the first year

Completion Requirements:

Aggregate completion statistics are tracked and passed to customers who desire them.

Media and Tools Used:

Macromedia Flash

Text, combined with spoken narration

Animations of on-screen tasks

Deployment Mechanism:

Initially marketed to existing Foxboro clients who hold Service Level Agreements

Now a standard part of the service sales message

Deployed through a Web site hosted and managed by SkillSoft

Lessons Learned

Stay with the organization’s core competencies. If you do not have the expertise to develop or deliver e-learning, partner with those who do.

Start small, but keep the program growing and evolving.

Leverage your existing customer base for sales efforts.