Looking for a Modern, Digital Learning Platform? Listen to These Inkling Customers.

You might wonder what a global high-tech electronics company, a non-profit organization that develops STEM curriculum for K-12 education, and a multinational supermarket chain that touts products free from preservatives or artificial flavors have in common. 

These organizations Hikvision, Project Lead the Way (PLTW), and Whole Foods all had challenges with their learning and training content, delivery, and engagement. And they all were looking to face these challenges with a modern, digital learning platform. 

Emerging from the PDF Dark Ages

We all know the PDF dark ages: create a word document with learning and training content, send it to graphic design to make it “interesting,” load it into SharePoint or an LMS, and there’s a typo or it’s out of date the moment it’s published. Nevermind engagement. Just trying to keep up with how fast things change is virtually impossible. 

All three organizations Hikvision, PLTW, and Whole Foods were grappling with this conundrum, and doing their best to empower and train team members and external customers. 

The global high-tech electronics company, Hikvision, was flying employees to a central location for both hands-on product training and onboarding new employees. While this in-person instructor-led model was effective for product training, it wasn’t cost-effective for onboarding—and when the pandemic hit, all in-person training had to stop yet employees still needed the knowledge and information. 

The non-profit organization PLTW realized traditional LMS wasn’t feasible since every teacher across the country needed a separate instance, and they were all using different systems. PowerPoints, large source files, and PDFs just weren’t going to deliver the kind of immersive, interactive experience the organization PLTW wanted to provide to teachers and students. 

The multinational supermarket chain Whole Foods found that PDF-based training content was out of date more often than not, and it was difficult for team members to find when they needed it. Another big problem was content was spread across the company and only accessible on desktops when team members needed it when working with customers in stores. 

All of these organizations came to the same conclusion: the PDF dark ages had to be left behind because the information was critical and changing at a rapid pace. 

Collaborating on Engaging Learning Content

These organizations also faced content creation roadblocks. The systems they were using often meant specialized people were needed to create, upload, and edit content yet these specialists only knew the systems and not the content. And, it took too long to get subject matter experts (SMEs) up to speed on the system so they could author the content. 

A modern, digital learning platform like Inkling not only took these organizations out of the PDF dark ages but also enabled faster, more collaborative learning content creation. 

The non-profit organization, PLTW, discovered the ability to solve issues in creating content for kindergarteners all the way up to high schoolers. Templates allow the team to build instructional designs for various ages that make sense. Content is much more engaging too. Using videos, links, flashcards, and all sorts of media have created the immersive, interactive experience the organization wants for its students and teachers. 

The multinational supermarket chain Whole Foods can develop, create, deliver, and edit operational training content in the blink of an eye. This was absolutely necessary during the pandemic when processes and protocols were changing constantly. The training team created the COVID playbook and was confident that team members were getting critical communications too because of notification tracking in Inkling. 

The high-tech electronics company, Hikvision, puts the power of content creation directly into subject matter experts’ hands. Within five minutes, SMEs can pick up Inkling’s content authoring tools and begin creating and/or editing critical content. The L&D team can control how much editing can be done on specific documents too so content doesn’t get tampered with if it doesn’t need to change. 

Heading into the Future—No Matter What It Brings

Accessibility was a universal challenge for these organizations as well. The content was either trapped in PDFs, dispersed across multiple locations and systems, or just hard to find. The beauty of a modern, digital learning platform is that now there’s a single source of knowledge and training. No matter what format or system the content is in, it’s gathered in one location that’s easily searchable. 

That’s huge when you think of how much time employees spend just looking for what they need. One recent survey found that employees spend 25% of their time searching for information to do their jobs. 

With the mobility and the insights these organizations get with Inkling, they feel ready for whatever the future may hold. 

The multinational supermarket chain, Whole Foods, is excited about taking a microlearning approach to training content where team members can learn and absorb chunks of information rather than a drink-from-the-fire-hose model where information can be easily forgotten. 

The high-tech electronics company, Hikvision, plans to expand even more product training that was once only done in-person to a virtual space. And after seeing the flexibility and adaptability of Inkling during the pandemic, the L&D team knows it can handle any crisis situation with ease. 

The non-profit organization PLTW has complete confidence that Inkling will grow and scale as the organization does in the future rather than being stuck with a platform that the organization has to conform to. 

If you recognized and commiserate with the learning and training challenges these organizations faced, you just may want to look at Inkling a little closer. We guarantee you’ll be out of the PDF dark ages in no time!