Training in 2021 has never been so exciting! Our market, that of marketing automation, is seeing its users, players, and innovations explode! All of this in a world undergoing a full digital revolution even before the start of an international health crisis (Covid-19, for anyone who still had doubts) that would impact us all. It is in this context that our “young” company, built on a human and profitable growth model, decided to reinvent its training model in the jungle of possibilities! From an observation coming straight from the field, to a strategic desire for scalability, including trainers’ well-being and how easy it is for learners to use our Webmecanik Automation software; experience this exciting adventure and all the work done to create our new training method.
On the road to transforming our training experience
It was at the beginning of 2020 that the stars aligned and we made a simple observation based on four points:
- The more clients we have, the more trainers we will need. And that will be unavoidable.
- Online training saw an incredible jump of +900% between 2015 and 2020. Also, if we dig a little deeper into how users of SaaS solutions behave, 70% ask for more autonomy to follow their training and manage their own pace.
- Our ambition is to achieve Qualiopi certification so we can go even further in our quality approach. We currently provide training courses that seem high-quality to us and benefit from the Datadock standard; we are a training organization, which allows our users to apply for funding and obtain it in all cases where their OPCO budget allows it. With Qualiopi, we will gain a considerable lead in our industry.
- Our current trainers, all senior-level, were starting to get bored! “Sophie, launching a client project, thinking about their campaigns, helping them become autonomous, analyzing their results and advising them, that’s why I get up in the morning. But when it comes to doing the same training three times a week on how to create a form in the tool, if you really want to know… it p****s me off.” The message was clear.
That is how we decided to transform our clients’ training experience so they could better take ownership of our marketing automation tool. That was the initial brief… But an idea never comes alone.
The weeks went by and then the first lockdown arrived! It was March 2020 (do I really need to specify the date?), Delphine was appointed training manager and she would lead the project. A long-term project, because although our initial goal was to rework our software training, our ambition was to create a complete training platform covering all the topics revolving around marketing automation. That leaves a wide field of possibilities, and it is exciting. The lockdown and the halt in our trainers’ travel accelerated our approach. With all our clients working remotely, it was time to offer an online training solution even more quickly. Added to that was our desire to preserve the human support so dear to Webmecanik’s values. That is when we discovered the term: blended learning! A mix between e-learning, virtual classrooms (in other words, live face-to-face sessions with a trainer) and concrete challenges, all fueled by quizzes. This wonderful blend met all our objectives: learning with pleasure, certifying our users, and keeping our added value as advisors at the right moments. One of the best days of 2020! After my wedding of course (yes, there was a slot, remember last summer).
Then Cindy Spath from Kasoo joined the dance, our preferred choice to support us as an instructional designer and teach us how to learn well, to put it simply.
A new learning method means a new way of creating training!
Once our training path had been designed, a bit like a marketing automation scenario in the end, it was time to benchmark a Learning Management System (LMS) solution. And there, there was plenty of choice.
Being good students, we wrote specifications as the demonstrations progressed. And yes, we were discovering the world of FOAD (Open Distance Learning), fortunately Cindy was never far away. With the help of our CTO, David Coutelle, we also explored the technical and security aspects in order to offer a polished customer experience and meet the requirements of our dear clients, most of whom chose a French solution by coming to us.
Strategic choices
At Webmecanik, a client connects to their portal and can open an Automation account, our marketing automation software, and an Academy account. Tada, that is the name of our training platform. We did not invent anything, but let’s admit that it is explicit, which explains why so many others have this name for their online school! A name that also works internationally because, let’s remember, that represents 25% of our revenue.
On the solution side, our hearts were torn between 360learning, the French leader in the field, and RiseUp, another French solution. We chose the second option, which offers us greater flexibility in our collaboration (connections, business model, proximity).
Time for action, let’s film the training courses!
On to a new stage → creating the videos. If there was one thing we did not want, it was to make a linear 20-minute video explaining how to do something to some poor marketer exhausted by remote work and the lack of evenings with friends. All that just so they would skip it or force themselves to follow the course. No way! Besides, some studies speak of an adult’s ability to concentrate for 20 consecutive minutes. So then it was Yann Frommelt’s turn to step in—videographer/editor, magician rising sign. Together with Delphine, they formed a dream team to execute the training path through scripts, shooting, proofreading, standardization, testing, and validation. And then we start again. We are lucky to have trainers who are also actors at Webmecanik. I invite you to endorse that skill on their Linkedin, by the way. You will recognize most of our team during your training. Our videos never exceed 10 minutes in a row, we thought of you 😉
Then comes launch time, Webmecanik Academy opens its doors in January 2021!
Now it was up to the marketing and sales team. Creating the commercial offer, setting SMART goals for ourselves, updating our presentations, training the teams to sell with this new messaging, to train with this method, creating content and a place for it on our website… In short, all the captivating work associated with creating a new service.
Here we are, and we are proud to offer you this revolution at Webmecanik, but also in our world of marketing automation.
I hope that we will achieve our goals and make our 2300 users happy users who enjoy learning and using our solutions because, as Adibou said, learn while having fun!
