AkzoNobel

Challenges

Industrial coatings and paint are used by an array of manufacturers, engineering firms and automotive repair shops. For all these businesses, the ability to identify, match and order the right color tones for specific products is critical. With the goal of enhancing relationships with thousands of existing customers and winning new market share, global chemical, paint and industrial coating leader AkzoNobel, developed and launched a new version of its professional paint mixing application, Mixit Pro.

Used by both salespeople and customers, this application ensures that manufacturers order and mix the right paints from AkzoNobel every time, reducing the risk of costly production delays and enhancing the quality of finished products. To accelerate the uptake of Mixit Pro, AkzoNobel needed to train more than 100,000 employees and customers on the new application globally, in 13 different languages. The company considered using traditional ‘training clients’: live versions of the application used exclusively for training purposes. However, at least 13 costly, standalone training clients would have been needed – one for each local language.

Solutions

After evaluating training solutions from ten companies, AkzoNobel chose to deploy the Assima Solution. This eliminates the need for multiple training clients by capturing clones of an application’s interface and creating centrally stored, fully interactive, online multilingual training exercises that are fast and simple to update and maintain. AkzoNobel quickly cloned all Mixit Pro functionality using Assima Training Suite. They then used simple point-and-click Assima tools to create a large number of Mixit Pro training exercises with on-screen instructions for trainees and links to supplementary learning materials, including video clips and presentations.

The object recognition and editing capabilities of Assima Suite enabled AkzoNobel to update online employee training exercises quickly and easily to reflect changes in the live application, with no need to re-capture user interface data or generate live training instances. This was critically important during the first months of the Mixit Pro deployment when the application interface was still evolving and yet to be finalized. Michael Kuntz, Global e-learning Manager, Automotive and Aerospace Coatings, says: “Many things are very simple to do in the Assima software, but it’s also very powerful and you can do very complex things with a slightly longer learning curve. Assima Solution is the most powerful, full-featured software on the market for capturing business processes and placing them in the hands of your people.”

To deliver training globally in 13 languages AkzoNobel used Assima Suite’s innovative translation capabilities. These made it possible to extract user interface text and instructional text from the Assima Training Suite training exercises, translate it into the required languages, and simply upload it back into the system. Different language versions of the exercises were then published to a new Mixit Pro training site on the AkzoNobel intranet. The AkzoNobel training team used Assima's online employee training and development exercises to deliver classroom training to champions across the organization. However, the vast majority of AkzoNobel employees and customers accessed the Assima Suite training exercises online via the company’s intranet, where exercises are available for download 24x7.

Results and Benefits

Using the Assima solution, AkzoNobel has trained more than 100,000 employees and customers on Mixit Pro in 80 countries, in 13 different languages.

Cost-effective training for over 100,000 end-users

Instead of procuring, deploying and maintaining 13 separate training clients to deliver online training in different local languages, AkzoNobel is meeting global training needs with a single, cost-effective Assima Suite environment. This has enabled the company to train 100,000 employees and customers on Mixit Pro at a very low cost to the organization.

Reduced maintenance costs

Traditional training clients must be updated manually, and individually, to reflect changes to the live application. With Assima Suite, however, object-level editing capabilities mean changes can be made in the Assima clones with no need to recapture user interface data in the live application and rolled out globally with the click of a mouse. This flexibility, which is not available with other online training solutions, delivered major efficiency gains for AkzoNobel – especially in the earliest days of the Mixit Pro deployment when features were constantly being updated and refined in the live application.

Rapid, cost-effective localization of training content

The ability to translate user interface text and instructional text in Assima training exercises was a major reason why AkzoNobel chose the Assima solution. This unique capability enabled the company to train end-users in 80 countries in 13 local languages quickly and cost-effectively, with no need for multiple, costly training environments.

Accelerated production for Mixit Pro globally

The fully interactive, Assima employee and client online training exercises increased the speed and quality of end-user training – accelerating global adoption of Mixit Pro. Employees and customers were able to ‘learn by doing’, and on-screen instructions in their own languages helped them complete exercises quickly and effectively.