FIDI Academy: DSP online training
Success achieved
Offering our members an opportunity to enter a new market, through a low cost, global and easily accessible online learning tool.- Website
- https://www.fidi.org
- Project dates
April 2016 – Still ongoing (May 2017)
Project team
- Industry Experts - The FIDI Academy counts 17 volunteers from the industry. These industry experts each have more than 20 years’ experience in international moving and relocation. They have submitted the learning objectives based on our affiliates needs and requests, and they have provided the storyboard and audio text (content of the training).
- FIDI IT experts and webmaster have provided expertise to host and manage access to this new online course.
- Suppliers have provided expertise in instructional design and converted the storyboard into an animated online format including audio recording and synchronisation.
- FIDI Academy manager coordinated and managed the whole project
Tools & Systems
The result is a customized, multimedia e-Learning module consisting of a series of animations which explain the content, complemented by a text the candidates can use to check whether they’ve grasped everything.
The scenarios, storyboards, graphics, animations, etc. are developed by our supplier, who are specialists in this field. They started from our own FIDI content, which we delivered in an MS PowerPoint file (text, visuals, audio script). The education experts at EPYC assisted with the instructional design and the writing of scenarios and storyboards.
The modules are developed in Adobe After Effects and are delivered in the form of ready-to-use MP4 clips, which are integrated in a customized responsive website, together with the quiz questions.
A demo is freely accessible on the FIDI website, but you need a login and password to be able to access the entire module.
User management, saving of results, etc. are controlled using a custom mini-Learning Management System, which has also been specially designed for our project.
The LMS is programmed in Zend Framework, a collection of PHP-based packages. The data is saved in MySQL databases.
Introduction
The FIDI Academy has been active over 28 years now and has from the start offered on-site seminars to its affiliates, with great success. These seminars, up to 5 per year in various locations around the world, attracted many students and have become a benchmark in the industry of international movers. The travel cost and the long distances for some of our global members however was prohibitive to the further expansion of the academy.
In order to reach more members’ employees, in various levels, we needed to develop online training, thus reducing the training cost and time spent on seminars. Thus, our online and virtual offering started in 2012.
By offering multiple formats (seminars, webinars and e-learning) and a full portfolio targeting all levels in our members’ companies, we were able to answer to our members’ needs and drastically increase the use of the FIDI Academy. This is important, as the FIDI Academy is considered as one of the pillars of our federation. We owe it to the founders of the Academy as well as its thousands of users to provide modern, efficient and most of all accessible ways of training. E-learning is instrumental in this, and further development is being done as we speak.
The Fundamentals of DSP
Our Association traditionally targets mainly international moving companies. In the past ten years however, many of our movers have evolved, have followed the market needs and have diversified their offering to also include relocation services and related destination services. These services go beyond the physical moving of goods, and include house finding, school search, language training, etc.
Apart from being a mover, an important segment of our members have now also become Destination Services Providers, or DSP. Therefore we felt the need to address that specific segment and offer our members a new opportunity to win and enter new markets with the required skills and competence, specifically for DSP.
By choosing high-quality, attractive e-Learning solutions, the FIDI Academy raises the standard in the industry’s training and quality. With online training through modern multimedia technologies, we help our affiliates improve the quality of their services. We use the most recent technologies to offer online products. Our online training can be viewed anywhere, anytime, on any IT device. Access is very easy. Our online training include test with immediate correction and good answers.
Discovery
We are in constant contact with our membership, during annual conferences, during seminars and during other international events where we collect information about our members’ businesses and our members’ needs. We collect and analyse the needs and we respond to those by enlarging our service offering. We also happen to organise surveys using “Survey Monkey tool”.
Our members wanted to enter new market and requested the FIDI Academy to provide relevant and quality training for their employees active or new in the relocation business. We felt that online interactive training was the best option because at this stage the potential audience for this specific training was not important enough to have local seminars. Also our members have
huge costs constraints and we had to keep this into consideration for the choice of the format of this new offering.
As with every new development, we have a specific way of working, with a clear project approach. The FIDI Training Team is involved from the start and is instrumental in delivering the content of the training. This content is then validated by alternative training teams as well as potential users, before going into production. The Academy manager is the project leader and makes sure deadlines and commitment are made.
Objectives
- To recover 100% of the initial investment after 2 years.
- To reach the same level of attendance than what we have today with our current product offering (all formats) which is about 40% of our membership using the FIDI Academy. It is a record compared to other similar associations in our market.
Activities
Developing an online training must be done according to a strict project management methodology and according to the standard processes for developing new training.
Below are the intermediate milestones. Each stakeholder has been assigned one milestone with a specific date for completion. The Project manager controlled all milestones and activities according to the quality, resources and time boundaries set for each milestone.
Milestones
- Needs analysis amongst our 600+ FIDI Affiliated companies worldwide (FIDI Academy Manager) See Figure3 DSP Online training Project –Need Analysis
- Business Case & Project Plan (FIDI Academy Manager) See Figure4 DSP Online training Project –Business Case and Figure 5 DSP Online training Project – Project outline
- Content development (storyboard containing text, quiz, audio, visuals) (Trainers team/industry experts) See Figure6 DSP Online training Project – Content Design and Figure7 Storyboard – example of Content Design
- Validation of the content (Industry experts)
- Instructional design, animation, audio recording (Epyc)
- Validation of instructional design and animation (FIDI Academy Manager)
- Testing phase (volunteers from the industry) See Figure 8 DSP Online training Project – Testing Phase
- Correction phase (Epyc)
- Launch, marketing, promotion, (FIDI Academy Manager)
Areas of responsibility and processes
Animations & instructional design
The more animation and the more audio, the higher the cost for development. If you have budget constraints you will design the content and animations as we did:
- Level 1: Visuals (animations) and audio. The student going through level 1, will only have an overview of the topics
- Level 2: Readings. After each section, the student has the possibility to click on a “read more” button. The student going through level 2 on top of level 1 will have more in depth information.
- Level 3: the student can download, save and print PDF documents containing as much detailed information as they desire on the topic.
- When selecting the type of animation (characters), you need to select characters that match your audience. The type of animations used for a packers training or for training for top executives will obviously not be the same.
Storyboard – example of content design
Materials produced
- Storyboard. See Figure 9 Storyboard-one page
- Final animated format.
- DSP Online Course
- Short demo for promotion
Resources
- 5 trainers/industry experts: 3 days each
- Academy manager: 4 weeks
- Epyc (the supplier selected for this specific project): 4 weeks
- 5 Industry volunteers for testing: 2 hours each
Innovation
Our multimedia e-learning products are a mix of the most up to date technologies available today for conceptual design, development and distribution of high-impact digital content to meet our affiliates learning requirements.
Marketing
Our marketing strategy was to offer our members an opportunity to enter new market (DSP & relocation market) on top of international moving market. The margins in DSP & relocation markets in general are higher. We based our marketing campaign on the reputation of our existing online offering while offering a low cost & flexible learning tool for their employees.
- We promoted the offering through several media: FIDI Newsletters, mailing to head of local/regional associations & departments, our FIDI Focus Magazine, our social media and during face to face meetings at the FIDI conference and face to face meetings at our affiliates’ premises.
- We offered free trial
- We have developed a demo that our affiliates can consult at any time on our website.
Challenges
Our biggest challenge was the IT part of the project. The challenge was to develop an online training that could be used by our 600+ FIDI affiliated companies worldwide, each of whom use different IT devices, different web browsers, different software and operating systems.
Our online training is accessible and readable on all IT devices (computer, laptop, tablet, smart phone, etc.), can be accessed through any web browser (Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Google Chrome, etc.), and works with all operating systems (Microsoft, Linux, iOS, etc.). It requires only Adobe Flash 10 Plug-in or above.
Another big challenge was to be able to grant easy access (registration process and access release) while securing access to registered participants only. We had to make sure that the link to access could not be shared with someone who did not register for the course. It is important that any company who starts providing online training has a good IT platform that will allow easy access while controlling access and tracking attendance. The most efficient way is through an LMS system combined with a CRM.
Achievements
User Experience
Our elearning portfolio is unique as it can be viewed on all IT devices, with all web browsers. It just requires an internet connection and Adobe Flash 10 Plug-in or above. It is innovative and engaging because of multiple factors:
- Thanks to the navigation menu, users can connect anywhere they have an internet connection, they can stop whenever they want, they can go back to any chapter as many times as they want, they learn at their own pace.
- Thanks to the quiz after each section, they can assess the knowledge gained.
Screenshot - animation style & course navigation
Financials
The total investment was € 38,000.
FIDI is a not-for profit organisation, therefore the financial return on investment is foreseen after a 2 years period which is the average in our industry for new training development.
For our affiliates, the standard price is €300 per employee which is very low compared to the cost of a seminar. We also grant significant discount on volume in order to have a maximum of employees trained.
This particular training is not expected to generate a lot of margin, as this is still rather new in our industry. But it is a must to have this included in our portfolio, to complete the circle.
What would we do differently?
So far, all feedback received is very positive. The FIDI Academy has a large experience in developing online learning solutions. Our experience and our partnership with external experts in instructional design make us confident that we made the right choices all over the project. We would not change anything.
Wider impact
Apart from the increasing number of students going through FIDI training, and the very solid involvement of a growing number of member companies (now 40% of our membership), we are now even getting external recognition from competing organizations in our industry. None of these have training developed the way we have, and they are now actively asking FIDI if they can use our training.
But more important is the overall increase of industry knowledge our members can gain by going through one of the FIDI courses. The unique concept of the FIDI Academy is that all the training, development as well as the delivery, is done by volunteers from our industry. These are passionate people, dedicated and FIDI-trained for their task to produce relevant and state-of-the-art training for their peers in the industry. In this way, our products are unique in terms of content and quality, as these are made by industry professionals, for industry professionals. By using trainers/developers, and giving them ample and positive exposure in the industry, we have 15 real Academy Ambassadors in the FIDI community, attracting an increasing number of volunteers and students. Win-win.
In terms of content we help our members entering new markets and diversifying their services.
