The Challenge

Keeping a fast-changing retail workforce current on the sales floor

New-hire readiness was a retail-floor problem for Shoe Carnival, not just a training problem. When new products arrived and customer expectations shifted daily, associates without current product knowledge had less confidence in customer conversations and needed a consistent foundation to describe products, answer questions, and deliver the brand experience from store to store.

With 6,500 users supported through the learning platform across a distributed retail network, gaps in onboarding speed or consistency could show up on the sales floor, not just in a training report. The training team also had to maintain consistent onboarding and store-level certifications across the organization. Before Docebo, reporting accuracy was hard to maintain, operational checklists and store-level certifications were managed manually, and it was difficult to know whether employees were ready for their next role or whether every location was building from the same foundation of knowledge.

Shoe Carnival needed a retail learning journey that could put current product knowledge into associates’ hands quickly, create the same starting point across locations, support stronger customer conversations, and help associates progress from the sales floor into store leadership.

“Retail is changing every single day, so being able to keep our employees up to date with those changes was critical.”

Ashley High
Training Manager, Shoe Carnival

The Solution

A customizable learning platform for training at scale

Consistency associate training from first shift to store leadership

Shoe Carnival chose Docebo to turn a manual training operation into a mobile-first learning platform integrated into the store operating model. It supports associates from their first day on the sales floor through role-based onboarding, product training, store-level certifications, and development toward assistant manager, general manager, and district manager roles.

The approach combines five retail capabilities:

• Mobile-first access for frontline associates. More than 95% of associates complete training on their phones, putting product knowledge and required learning into the flow of retail work. At new-store openings, associates use the mobile app to access the learning platform and complete annual training.
• Automated delivery across locations. Auto-enrollment, notification rules, and group-based assignments deliver the right learning to the right associate without a manager having to push training store by store.
• Standardized onboarding and product knowledge. Associates across locations follow the same onboarding process, so teams start from a consistent foundation of product knowledge and confidence.
• Retail talent pathways. Structured learning paths connect the associate journey to assistant manager, general manager, and district manager roles, helping leaders identify and prepare future store leaders.
• Visible progress in the flow of work. Badges, points, and automated reporting make learning progress easier to track while keeping training engaging for associates and managers.

The platform also frees the training team to focus on higher-value work. Instead of holding the system together manually, the team creates content tailored to each audience, maintains learning paths, and supports Shoe Carnival’s broader talent strategy.

“Docebo is my partner. It supports me with everything I need, the automation, the enrollment rules. It helps me focus on creating content tailored to the person instead of worrying about the backend struggles and the technical issues.”

Ashley High
Training Manager, Shoe Carnival

The Results

Faster associate readiness and more consistent store execution

Docebo helped Shoe Carnival reach 100% store-level training consistency across locations, with more than 95% of associates completing training on mobile across a 6,500-user retail population.

In one onboarding example, 50 employees with limited product knowledge achieved 0-to-100 product confidence within 7 days of structured training.

That confidence carried onto the sales floor, helping associates speak to products, answer customer questions, and engage more effectively with customers.

The Training Manager also identifies high retention and stronger internal progression as major wins, with structured learning paths helping leaders identify and prepare associates for assistant manager and general manager roles.

Retail outcomes:

• 100% store-level training consistency across locations
• 95%+ mobile adoption among store associates
• 0-to-100 product confidence within 7 days for a measured cohort of 50 employees
• A stronger internal progression pipeline from associate to assistant manager, general manager, and district manager roles
• A more consistent customer experience from store to store

Retail impact

Learning that shows up on the sales floor

At Shoe Carnival, training consistency supports frontline execution. Associates need current product knowledge, confidence in customer conversations, and a clear understanding of the brand experience they’re expected to deliver. Docebo delivers that foundation at scale.

That foundation shows up in customer-facing and operational outcomes:

• More confident product conversations and customer service that support sales and customer loyalty
• A more consistent customer experience across locations
• High retention and clearer paths to internal promotion
• Better support for store execution and budget management

These outcomes show how a learning platform can strengthen store operations while supporting employee growth and customer experience.

Infrastructure spotlight

Powered by AWS

As an AWS Partner, Docebo brings certified expertise in delivering secure, cloud-native learning solutions for retail organizations. Docebo’s platform is deployed on AWS with global infrastructure supporting distributed retail operations, with Amazon CloudFront enabling fast, reliable content delivery to associates across every region and time zone.

Docebo is an AWS ISV Accelerate member, ACE-integrated, co-sell enabled, and prioritized in AWS Marketplace, and has completed an AWS Foundational Technical Review (FTR). Docebo’s platform is architected to meet the scale, performance, and security demands of distributed retail workforces.

At the platform level, Docebo uses AWS services including:

AWS service	Function
Amazon EC2 / Amazon ECS	Compute and container orchestration, with capacity managed through ECS services and EC2 Auto Scaling Groups
Amazon S3	Secure storage and delivery of learning content
Amazon RDS / Aurora	Database management with Multi-AZ deployment, reader instances for read scaling, and cross-region snapshots for recovery
AWS IAM	Identity and access control
AWS KMS	Encryption key management
Amazon CloudFront	Content delivery for distributed learners across every region

Docebo’s broader platform is also built for database resilience and content discovery at scale: Amazon RDS with Multi-AZ availability and read replicas, Amazon Aurora for database scaling, and Amazon OpenSearch for search and discovery. These are platform-level capabilities of Docebo’s broader AWS architecture.

The platform runs active-active across multiple Availability Zones, with cross-region disaster recovery through a paired failover region. Docebo supports customer-selectable hosting across regions including Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Northern Virginia, Sydney, Mumbai, and Canada, each with a regional DR pairing. Standard disaster-recovery targets are a 36-hour Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and an 8-hour Recovery Point Objective (RPO). All data is encrypted at rest using AWS KMS and in transit using TLS 1.2+, with automated backups and disaster recovery built in.

Infrastructure changes ship through an automated, repeatable delivery model. Terraform and OpenTofu manage the environment, and GitLab CI/CD pipelines handle deployment, ensuring consistent, auditable, and repeatable updates.

This AWS-aligned foundation supports the retail outcomes that matter most here: consistent store-level training, mobile accessibility for frontline employees, faster readiness for new hires, and visibility into learning progress across the workforce.

This use case aligns with Docebo’s Store Operations & Associate Enablement competency category within the AWS Retail Competency framework, with Shoe Carnival’s 100% store-level training consistency as a supporting strength.

Ready to modernize learning for your distributed retail workforce?