From France to the Rest of the World: How L-Acoustics Scaled Global Training Operations with 360Learning

Challenges

L-Acoustics’ Education & Scientific Outreach team is responsible for training customers who have purchased the company’s audio systems. Five coordinators and 100 training facilitators organize and deliver a curriculum of 20 modules specific to the Group's products and methodologies.

In early 2020, the Education team needed to keep up with company growth by looking for a modern and comprehensive training solution to support the opening of new markets: 

• The logistics of the training organization had become very complex. Printed documents, posted certificates and hand-generated emails were no longer up to the task of handling such a large volume of learners. 

• The team also wanted to move towards a blended learning model to keep in touch with learners before, during and after training, as well as improve service quality.

For Lucile Diemert, Digital Learning Designer at L-Acoustics, it was high time the team automated its training operations.

Solution

Three years post-launch, the Education & Scientific Outreach team has met its challenge. Let’s zoom in on the three pillars that enabled this change.

Streamlining training quality on a global scale

First up for the Education team: monitoring the quality of training courses delivered all around the world. With the previous method, it was impossible to check that learners were benefiting from the latest updates on all their course material.

Now, the 360Learning platform makes it possible to share standardized content with all learners in just a few clicks, regardless of whether the training is taking place at the company's French headquarters, in Westlake Village (California, US), or even Singapore.

This standardization is made possible by a robust workflow:

• The Education team keeps control over the creation and updates of teaching material, with the easy-to-use authoring tool.

• This content is then distributed via duplicated sessions relevant to customer information ,and geographical location.

The outcome: guaranteed quality from start to finish for customers, and a real sense of comfort for trainers.

The opening of new markets in the United States and Asia brought another challenge: localizing training content. With the Globalization solution, a 360Learning product specifically designed for the deployment of multilingual training courses, the Education team can now cover all of their translation needs: 

• In-house translations: In just a few clicks, instructional designers assign learning modules over to local experts who can take care of localizing and updating content in real time. 

• Outsourced translations: When the workload is too heavy, the Education team calls in translation agencies. With .xliff-compatible files (the standard used by translation agencies), Lucile and her team can send the training courses to be translated and re-import them into the platform in just a few minutes.

"The Globalization solution is a real asset for the team!" Lucile says. "It’s extremely efficient and meets our translation needs perfectly, whether we’re translating content in-house or outsourcing to agencies. I especially love how easy it is to export and re-import translated content into the platform.”

Automating away Blended learning operations

The administration of face-to-face training had become very cumbersome for the team. Lucile describes how the implementation of the 360Learning platform helped her and her team.

Easing training logistics

Via 360Learning’s Live solution, the platform fully integrates with the Education team's blended learning model. From duplicating sessions to inviting learner groups in several languages to sending learning certificates, everything is designed to automate training administration to optimize efficiency. "This is a game-changer for us!” says Lucile.

Via 360Learning’s Live solution, the platform fully integrates with the Education team's blended learning model. From duplicating sessions to inviting learner groups in several languages to sending learning certificates, everything is designed to automate training administration to optimize efficiency. "This is a game-changer for us!” says Lucile.

An evolution for training facilitators and coordinators 

The automation of practices has brought a substantial change for training coordinators. Lucile confides:

Creating a learning community

Finally, the introduction of an online training solution has accelerated skills sharing across the entire L&D value chain.

Expert-powered training reviews

L-Acoustics’ inherently innovative technologies means that product training needs to get internal experts’ seal of approval before launching all over the world. Business experts review and validate training courses before distribution via 360Learning’s built-in co-authoring workflows.

When a training course is created, L-Acoustics' group of internal experts is invited to review it and share comments. With integrated feedback loops (contextual forum, internal comments only visible to the team of authors), they can ensure that the training will be as relevant as possible for end-users.

The L-Acoustics Education’s private groups, a space to share best practices

In the world of product training, professionals don't usually go back twice to a manufacturer's training course. However, audio technologies, and the tools and methodologies associated with them, are constantly evolving. Continuous training is necessary to stay up to date. To address this issue, L-Acoustics set out to extend the learning experience beyond the completion of a face-to-face session by leveraging online activities and creating communities.

The Education team created a learning community hosted onto the 360Learning platform. Immediately after the session, learners can access a complementary group containing the latest version of the training content, as well as additional resources (application scenarios, features, white papers, scientific articles) or additional content for autonomous practice (software tutorials, multi-track audio files, editing videos). In an approach based on continuous upskilling, this ongoing training keeps them up to date and operational on technologies that are evolving very rapidly in this field.

Platform users can also access exclusive on-demand material via two custom groups created in minutes:

• The "knowledge essentials" group, containing information relevant to audio professionals on topics such as hearing health, room acoustics or network technologies.

• The "expert insight" group provides advanced scientific knowledge on sound systems, based on L-Acoustics’ research or technologies, supplemented by external information. A notable differentiator that sets L-Acoustics apart in the sector!

Lucile attests to the project’s success:

Results

Three years post-launch, L-Acoustics’ results are promising:

• The training platform boasts 9,500 users (+50% compared with 2022)

• Face-to-face training automations enables the company’s growth with 1,700 blended learning sessions organized on the platform, and countless hours of tedious training admin work saved along the way.

• The team manages training programs in 5 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese with the help of the Globalization solution

• 90% online training completion rate over the last 12 months

• A Net Promoter Score (NPS) at 80 over the last 12 months

• The format and training methods are standardized for the 230 online modules and to 18 training curriculums. Lucile explains that she implemented a standard structure for each training course: "Each course has a standard presentation, featuring the same blocks (presentation, quiz, review, test, certificate) arranged in the same order, with the same pictograms and nomenclature." 

• The platform is a genuine collaborative learning space between the different cohorts of learners. With an average of 16 publications per learner, training and professional practices are enriched every month.

Finally, achieving these KPIs enables the Education team to ensure the quality of use of L-Acoustics sound systems and to align itself with the Group's ambitious objectives: Maintaining leadership in its market, innovating in training L-Acoustics users, and improving the accessibility of training content throughout the world.