Coles Group Case Study

One of Australia’s largest retailers and recognisable brands. Coles Group encompasses Supermarkets, Coles Express, Coles Liquor and Coles Supply Chain and Logistics.
With over 120,000 team members across the entire country.
The Coles Learning Hub fully utilises all the functionality of ClearXP and is the primary source of digital learning, reporting and analytics throughout Coles.

“It has been a remarkable partnership working with ClearXP to revolutionise the digital learning experience at Coles”

Siva Kulasingam, Digital Learning Manager, Coles Supermarkets

Challenges faced by Coles

• Difficulty getting the right training for the right people, skills transfer and talent identification.
• Learners had limited access to online training and variety of online learning.
• Administrative and governance issues.
• Reporting for the wide and varied stakeholders at all levels was difficult and complicated.

Challenge causes

• A huge workforce with varied demographic of roles, ages and capabilities.
• Access to learning materials was inconsistent. Infrastructure (internet, computer equipment, iPads, mobile devices etc).
• Traditional-style LMS wasn’t flexible enough to cater to the needs of the wide and varied audience. Limits on delivery styles and options available to the L&D team.
• Enterprise software systems were not synched or integrated to work seamlessly and in real time.

Expected Outcomes

• Increased efficiencies in reporting, time it takes to produce reports significantly decreased. Administration of facilitated training improved.
• Ability to implement greatly improved and a wider range of learning experiences.
• Able to create programs that increase capabilities and skills within their business. Not restricted to single courses.
• Better insight into what is working from a training perspective. What areas for improvement are needed for continuous development – content, learner records.

Why ClearXP?

• Coles chose to work with us due to our proven expertise in enhanced learning experience design and intimate understanding and advanced utilisation of xAPI data.
• Coles has very strict security and compliance standards and our platform was seen as the perfect balance between adherence to standards and governance with the flexibility and power to cater for their wide and dispersed learning audience.
• Our API has the ability to integrate fully with Coles systems.

Our approach to the challenge

• Our senior team were all involved in preparing the solution.
• Similar projects had been conducted but the scale required some new solutions and approaches. We knew our infrastructure and technology was capable but some optimisations were necessary to handle the scale and complexity.
• Enhancements to our face-to-face functionality and certification rules ensured all scenarios needed for Coles learners.

Client Involvement

• Working closely with the internal team, L&D department and project teams all collaborated in the strategy, design and implementation plan.
• Senior stakeholders were actively involved in the solution strategy phase to ensure all element were covered.
• Based on previous experiences we knew our xAPI framework would support their data. The data transfer was a staggered rollout with pilot audience, supermarkets and then extended brands.
• Functionality was released incrementally – Client use cases were provided to help in the design of new functionality.

The solution

To manage the needs of a workforce such as Coles the solution consisted of the following components

• The Learning Hub. An adaptive, visual, easy to use platform available on all types of Coles device (desktop, mobile, tablets, Native App).
• Learner’s assigned learning, recommended learning and self-registered learning all available on a modern interface. Users can quickly and easily see what is required, then search for and undertake further learning as required. Users learning transcript, learning tasks, events, notifications, due dates, expiry dates and anything else related to their learning all available.
• Social functionality such as the ability for learners to share and rate learning. Improved manager capabilities for managing and assigning learning to their direct team.
• The content management system (CMS) component of the Learning Hub allows more advanced learning experiences to be created and curated to learner needs. The CMS is used to build unique learning activities (small courses, quizzes, surveys etc) and learning programs and campaigns (micro-learning, learning pathways, program pages etc).
• Admin features including, reporting, manager dashboards, workshop scheduling, assigned learning, certifications, renewals and much more.

Timeline

Upon commencement the first iteration was completed within a 6 week time period. Monthly updates were made until the full solution was working after 3 months. Ongoing support, maintenance and feature requests have ensured the Learning Hub stays fully optimised to suit Coles continuously developing needs.

Results

Gained efficiencies
As soon as the Learning Hub was implemented the admin team saw a significant drop-in time spent preparing reports and managing and scheduling workshops.
Work that would previously take the team 3 or 4 days to complete was now done within an hour.

Capability and capacity improvements
The learning and capability team saw in increased ability to release learning of higher quality to a larger audience.

• Leadership and Capability programs
• Learning Pathways
  • Roles specific development pathways such as Retail Leaders and Liquor Leaders.
  • Qualification and certification based programs like the Apprenticeship Program.
• Learning Engagement Programs
  • Social learning and gamification used to enhance learning experiences.

Deprecation and cost reduction
All programs that require ancillary platform and functionality were migrated on to ClearXP.
ClearXP became the source of truth for all learning and compliance reporting due to the immediate availability of reporting data.

Enhanced Reporting yielding results

xAPI has provided rich learning data and insightful analytics.

• Analytics were able to identify areas of improvement.
• Participation in social learning activities and learning campaigns improved by using analytics to identify areas for improvement.

KPIs and measurements

Coles significantly reduced expenditure on learning infrastructure by embracing ClearXP as its single platform for all learning. Coles has increased its ability to provide industry leading and widely recognised digital learning experiences.

Activity has increased by 5 times. 4.4 million learning completions have been registered compared to 860,000 using the old LMS.
Mobile learning increased to 30%.
The increased capability and focus on engaging self-directed learning programs led to over 400,000 learning activities being completed that were not mandatory.

Outcomes

Coles is delighted with the results and achievement of all goals. The nature of their industry requires continuous review and enhancement which is always completed satisfactorily. The AITD Excellence Award for best use of Learning Technology was awarded as recognition from peers and respected industry bodies.

Expected Future Benefits
As the partnership between Coles and ClearXP grows, the future will consist of more seamless integrations and powerful insights into performance and capability.

• Team member capability and skill retention is expected to increase.
• Using the data being collected insight into behaviour and trends.
• Maximisation to training effectiveness resulting in reduction in the number of workplace incidents as well as improved on-the-job performance.