Toyota Motor Europe

Toyota Motor Europe
A Golden Thread of Knowledge
Case Study 2008
© 2008 CERTPOINT Systems Inc. 4 Expressway Plaza Suite 200 Roslyn Heights , NY 11577
www.certpointsystems.com
A division of one of the world’s largest car manufacturers, Toyota Motor Europe (TME)
sold more than 1.1 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles in 2006, marking its 10th
consecutive year of record sales in Europe. TME and its distribution network together
employs approximately 80,000 persons in Europe. This case study presents the complex
challenges Toyota has successfully addressed through process improvement and
implementation of a Learning Management System (LMS) for the company’s
expansive dealer network.
The Challenge
Toyota Motor Europe has 28 independent national sales and marketing companies
within 48 countries and has to provide information and training to ensure that its brands
are consistently well-represented across Europe. Originally, training was classroom
based but the dual aims of increasing sales and becoming the number one company
in providing customer satisfaction made centralisation of its training operations a
primary goal to strengthen and unify the brand image. These requirements brought the
new challenge of developing an IT-based infrastructure to support e-learning across
TME. A system was already in operation in the United States division but, the dealership
structure is not similar to the US division, and TME has the added complication of
catering for the numerous languages and the cultural and legal differences that exist
between different regions.
Driving the message home
In 2004, TME decided to invest in a centralised dealership training system hosted in
headquarters in Belgium. With the company facing an increasing number of new
vehicle models per year and pioneering environmentally-friendly technologies and
manufacturing, the amount of information for sales, marketing and engineering is
substantial. On top of that, most documents have to be localised in over 30
languages.
Toyota’s sales and marketing dealerships are independent organisations and some of
them already had their own e-learning systems, some had nothing. The initial stage was
to evaluate what the expectations would be for a pan-European e-learning system.
Focus groups were formed from the sales and after-sales units at each distributor. A key
member of these teams was an executive from each company to champion the
project and ensure that the buy-in was complete.
Toyota Case Study © 2008 CERTPOINT Systems Inc. www.certpointsystems.com
-1-
The independence of the dealers and the differing needs of each region meant that the
system had to be flexible. Although the core information would be supplied by Toyota’s
training centre, localisation of the content had to be easily executed. The ideal was to
find a system that required no IT knowledge other than how to use a PC and a skill level
for developing content similar to those required to use Microsoft PowerPoint. There was
also a need to ensure that certain documents, such as technical after-sales material,
could not be altered.
It was obvious that a powerful Learning Management System would be required to
ensure that the extensive documentation could be handled efficiently. A workgroup was
established to evaluate potential LMS packages and five were selected as candidates.
An early decision was that the system should be fully integrated from creation through
distribution and into localisation. The alternative of integrating software products
from a number of suppliers held the danger that several hosting servers would be
required, problems would take too long to resolve and this would increase running costs
substantially. A good return on investment and the desire to cut training costs while, at
the same time, improving the facility were paramount requirements.
CERTPOINT’s VLS suite was one of the candidates, partly because it was the system
already in use by the US division. Toyota’s adoption did not colour the final decision,
according to Sann Rene Glaza, TME’s senior manager for the Learning Technologies
Group. “It was an interesting factor that both the United States and Canada had
already selected CERTPOINT as a supplier,” she said, “but they were developing content
in a different way and only in one or two languages so it didn't necessarily mean that
we could share content between continents. Our decision was made on the ability
for CERTPOINT to meet the requirements laid out by the focus groups research and
embodied in the RFQ (request for quote). CERTPOINT really had the best fit for the end
quality we were looking for.”
Another attribute in CERTPOINT’s favour was the commitment to work with Toyota
to ensure a successful implementation. Ara Ohanian, CEO, founder and president
of CERTPOINT, explained, “It is essential that any Learning Management system fully
supports a company’s business objectives. Working closely with each customer brings
benefits for all as we develop new features and functions. Toyota is keen to develop its
LMS resources and CERTPOINT can open the door of opportunity as new challenges
are identified.”
Toyota Case Study © 2008 CERTPOINT Systems Inc. www.certpointsystems.com
-2-
Once the decision was taken to adopt the CERTPOINT suite, Toyota moved ahead
to pilot the system in France and Spain under its own branding of Toyota Connect.
Immediately an organisational problem arose because of the independent nature
of the sales and marketing companies. “When we started rolling this out, we realised
that we did not have a database of all of the people in our network, “Glaza said.“ So
the first challenge was to identify all of these people and this meant we had to have
a user management methodology. Rather than just being an extra chore, this has
proved to offer a big advantage because our training managers now have a much
greater visibility of who is in their workforce on our network, what knowledge they are
exposed to and what training they have undergone already. The history is all in one
place. You can't really quantify this in terms of cost-savings but you can certainly see
the benefits.”
As the system has grown, the multiple language and localisation capabilities have
proved a strong selling point to get the users to buy-in to the system. Even within one
language. For example, French content developed in France can be understood in
other areas, such as Belgium and Switzerland, but may need tweaking to fully support
the needs of these areas. This takes a lot less time than developing the content
separately within each region.
To ensure that there is local support for these changes Toyota has trained key users in
each National Marketing and Sales Company. The initial training is spread over three
days with half the time spent on system administration and the rest on using the Content
Creator software. From time to time the key users are all brought together for refresher
courses to update their skills and share feedback on their experiences. Glaza says
that these events can be extended to benefit the company more broadly. “When we
did the Auris product launch, the new Toyota car that came out last year, we trained
the trainers first of all and then opened the training facility to the national market and
sales companies. All were given access to the e-learning materials in advance and we
encouraged them to look at it before they came to the training days in Malaga. In this
way they all receive the same training to ensure the message we are giving our retailers
is consistent in quality. It really does help to maintain our brand image. Even if they make
some minor tweaks and changes to localise the material, we can still maintain control
of the message.”
Toyota Case Study © 2008 CERTPOINT Systems Inc. www.certpointsystems.com
-3-
Conclusion
The roll-out phase of Toyota Connect is almost complete and next year will see the
second phase kick in. This will involve the development of a dashboard so that the
user base can be monitored and nurtured to ensure that Toyota is getting the full
benefit of the system and that nobody is left behind. Glaza says that it is critical to
ensure full adoption of the system so that Toyota Connect can be further developed.
This will mean that more material can be made available online and may involve the
enrolment of some of the third-parties supplying the sales and marketing companies.
There is also a plan to develop a Global Knowledge Centre web site where US, Canadian
and European e-learning materials can be shared and accessed.
Glaza said, “We really wanted to make this something that the training department and
marketing and sales companies could manage on their own. Here, at headquarters,
we have a grand total of four people in training and support. In adopting CERTPOINT’s
VLS (now branded Toyota Connect), it was important for us not to add any cost and
to be able to easily integrate the system with Toyota and concentrate on refining the
curriculum. We are now working towards developing a lot of certification programmes
and it is very important for us to be able to integrate e- learning and assessments with
the classroom base. Using a suite like this certainly makes this easier.”
Toyota Case Study © 2008 CERTPOINT Systems Inc. www.certpointsystems.com
-4-