Article written by Kelly Thomas, Global Head of Sales & Service Learning at Thomson Reuters, who has had first-hand knowledge of implementing elearning solutions. 

Learning at Thomson Reuters has been evolving consistently towards a greater mix of technology enabled and business focused activities for the last few years.  The experience of the team in constructing ‘real world’ learning that focuses on driving performance to meet business goals has changed the face of learning forever and fostered a culture of self enablement across the Financial and Risk part of the business.

We found that whilst the use of technology is critical as an enabler, the user experience is king in driving any development work.  Without a slick and easy experience that translates to their day to day work, history shows that learners disengage quickly and do not return.

This user experience and the need to ensure that learning is directly connected to the working environment have driven an ever-increasing need for us to bring learning and sales enablement closer together. This requires effective collaboration between learning, marketing, product strategy and sales teams to rapidly respond to changing business needs.

In 2011 Thomson Reuters, like many companies was facing a difficult market environment. Our customers were under increasing cost pressures, regulation was growing and there had been a consolidation of the market following the financial markets melt down, all putting pressure on achieving sales targets.

We needed to act swiftly to counteract the issues, and identified 4 key areas of impact that would help drive sales performance:

• Staff must be equipped to engage customers
• Engagements must have relevance and value to the customer
• Staff must live and breathe high sales performance behaviours
• Sales managers must take accountability for developing their team performance

Note from Editor

We are pleased to include Kelly's story in our Evidence for Change programme because the sales academy at Thomson Reuters is directly improving sales performance for 55% of participants
 
Staff  learning is now tailored to individual need through rigorous assessment and self directed learning content.  Sales managers are  also  trained using a variety of online learning techniques to support the transfer of learning back in the workplace through a series of interactive team briefings called Power hours.  As a result of this technology enabled approach:

•  4 out of 5 staff are more confident in engaging their customers as a result of the approach
• 2/3 had seen success from an idea generated in one of the Power hours
• 9 out of 10 of participants agreed they were applying what they had learned on the job and  reported an improved focus on performance

Discover how they acheived this in this casestudy download below.

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