How to inspire retail partners with e-learning

The challenge

How to quickly digitize on-site training

Up until the beginning of 2020, the training of retail partners primarily took place in the form of on-site seminars in three training centers, organized and conducted by the baumann academy. The baumann group offered training courses on various topics and for different areas of expertise.

With the onset of the Corona pandemic, the baumann group, like many companies, encountered new challenges: Face-to-face training is no longer possible to the extent it was, and instead a shift towards digital learning is necessary – the baumann academy had to digitize all their training courses. “Quick digitization” proved to be a particular challenge for the company, since the baumann group has many different structures across the organization, which have very different target groups in some cases, and until now a large part has been taught via on-site training.

The solution

youknow LMS as a central distribution tool

Two major tasks arose for the baumann academy from this situation: First, the digitalization of its learning content, and second, the distribution of the content – the right content must be available to the right target group at the right time. So the company decided to introduce a learning management system (LMS). The central requirement is that learners are organized into groups and can then access relevant courses. As a result, users have access to content that exactly meets their needs – whether in the form of webinars, web-based training or – face-to-face training.

The choice fell on the youknow LMS – the value for money was outstanding compared to the competition. The LMS now represents the central organization and distribution tool of baumann academy, i.e. home to all training courses of baumann group. The first step – as soon as it was possible again – was to reproduce face-to-face training courses via the LMS. This was followed by the first webinars a little while later, and finally, web-based training is now gradually being incorporated into the system and distributed via the LMS.

Starting in 2022, baumann academy bets on another horse from youknow: the AI-powered authoring tool “knowtion” is now used for internal learning content creation.

Usage and target group of the LMS

The trainings are aimed at all retail partners and technicians and cover a wide range of topics. The aim is to train and help the sales staff, designers and architects improve, as well as increase sales via streamlined planning processes.