Resources: 

eLearning Industry LMS Implementation Strategies That Take Your Business To Success

Transcription: 

Rob Ayre

0:00 Welcome back to the Learning Elevated podcast brought to you by Docebo, the show where we help you elevate you’re learning efforts and move up in the world of enterprise learning and development. Guiding you on your journey up the tower will be your elevator operators, myself, Rob Ayre and my co-host, Emily dukes.

Emily Dukes

0:20 Hey ya’ll, excited to be back with another one. Each week we’ll stop off at a new floor and today we’re getting off on the 17th floor, otherwise known as, the entertainment centre. We’ve got a real binge-worthy one here as we’re joined by Netflix! and they’ll be guiding us through the LMS implementation project plan, and sharing how you can be set up for success when its your turn.

Rob Ayre:

0:44 Yeah you got that right. Joining us is going to be Danielle Ferretti, she’s a program manager for learning at Netflix. Now before we get started, let’s as always, set the stage a little bit. During the interview, we do chat a lot about implementation and how you can set yourself up for success, so before diving into this conversation with Danielle, I wanted to kind of get your thoughts, Emily, on this article we we’re reading through a head of time. and of course, this article will be available on our website, docebo.com/podcast.

But this article comes to us from elearning industry and is all about LMS implementation strategies that can take your business to success and they go through, I think about six stages to a really successful implementation, starting with the the planning stage in the LMS configuration. But in the configuration side of things, I thought that was kind of an interesting point you know and it’s maybe one of those things that maybe you don’t. You overlook a little bit or you should look in a little bit more, but there’s a lot of factors to keep in mind to make sure that your configuration decisions so including you know your user profiles your audiences and domains those administrator security roles and of course there’s like course metadata and catalogs and I know that that’s one of those things that with Docebo really thinking about that metadata and the way that our AI is going to interact with your content and your learner’s is a really important feature. Is that something that’s kind of come up and some of the conversations that you’ve had with folks?

Emily Dukes
2:04 for sure, and I mean honestly when Danielle talked about like the planning stage of her journey that was what resonated with me too because you don’t always know what to anticipate part of the reason you look for an LMS is to find you know, a house big enough to grow into essentially and so you have to anticipate that scalability and I loved how Danielle kind of started us off at the beginning, and then you know hinted at what’s to come. and that Docebo could handle you know all of the above, I thought that it was just so fantastic to hear her take on beginning middle and end.

Rob Ayre
4:42 yeah absolutely I think that idea of sort of future proofing you know you’re going to be making this big investment you don’t want to have to go back to the drawing board and a year and two years. You want to make sure that whatever you’re going with is going to be something that’s going to be a long term option for you, you know, especially if you’re if you’re making this purchase or this this tech decision to train maybe just your internal department. If you do have customers, which pretty much any business does there’s a good chance you’re gonna want to train them at some point in time, so you know it is the platform that you’re looking at is it able to scale to be able to address those different audiences, I think that’s a really important consideration and she goes through that a little bit as well.

Emily Dukes
3:17 For sure, and I loved how she talked about you know, obviously with any implementation of any technology there’s going to be unaccounted for changes that inevitably will hop up right she talks a little bit about how important it is to be agile. Both on you know your end and the vendors and and I just loved you know her take on that honestly I came away from this conversation feeling so encouraged so I certainly hope that our our listeners feel the same way.

Rob Ayre
3:44 yeah I think we’ve teased it enough that’s for sure, in this conversation, she goes through really from start to finish to launch to future proofing, you know, really excited to be able to dive into this one for all of y’all, be sure to hop online and check out that article, especially if you are in the early stages so you can read through some of those tips, looks like it could be really useful. But, it looks like the elevator is about to stop on the floor, we’re almost these, doors are about to open hope you enjoy and we’ll chat afterwords.

Emily Dukes
21:31let’s go.

Rob Ayre
21:34let’s go.

Rob Ayre
04:41  We’re excited to have you today on the Learning Elevated podcast, we’ll just jump right into it. So, Danielle Ferretti, of course, program manager learning technology at Netflix, we’re excited to have you on the show.

Danielle
04:56Thanks Rob and Emily. I’m happy to be here.

Rob Ayre
05:00 So I want to kind of start off you know level set, get a little understanding, can you tell us a little bit about the learning program that you run at Netflix, as well as just sort of your background and learning and development.

Danielle
05:09Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been with Netflix, a little over a year. At this point, I do work closely with our customer service organization. And most recently, you know, I recently stepped into this Learning technology program manager role and with this role, I now work with other teams across Netflix, which is really exciting. So I get to, you know, see what else is going on outside of the customer service organization.

So related to customer service, probably for the past year I was leading in the Docebo implementation for that organization. So really our end users we’re all of our outsource Customer Service agents around the world and we have over 6000 And so whenever you call in or chat to Netflix, whether it’s, you know, you have a tech issue you’re trying to resolve. You want to call in and you know complain about my favorite show just left, What’s happening?

We get everything under the sun. I, those would be our customer service agents that support you. So we rolled out Docebo to all of our customer service agents, and this is where they access their onboarding as well as continuous learning And, you know, any, any training that they need to take based on product changes or rollouts. And there’s obviously a lot of change. Happening with Netflix. So we want to make sure that they’re kept up to date and provide the best possible customer service that’s ultimately our end goal. You know, I work with other teams. So another example would be our partner marketing team. So a similar use case and that we have Thousands of external partner sales reps. So think Comcast, you know, we have sales reps that might be working in a call center. A retail store or they might be selling door to door and really what their job is, is to sell bundles. So I don’t know about you guys but me personally, and I have a Comcast Netflix bundle. So that’s, you know, that’s ultimately what they do is you have customers coming in. Purchasing Comcast. Well, why not add Netflix to it. Let’s get them excited about all these new shows coming out. So that is my latest and greatest project, I will be working on implementing a new platform for that end user base.

Emily Dukes
7:46Will look Danielle you brought it up. So do you guys have a specific. Training Plan to help people deal with the taking off of the Office for Netflix. I wasn’t gonna bring it up.

Danielle
7:01I know, I know I’m snide too. AND TRUST ME, we’ve heard all about it. It is, It’s pretty funny what customers will call in about. And it’s like, you know, these poor agents, they have, they really have no say about this stuff, but we teach them how to be super empathetic and okay well here’s some other suggestions of shows, although I don’t know if anything can replace office but you know.

Emily Dukes
8:26 It certainly can, but I love it.

Rob Ayre
8:30That’s great.

So one of the things that we’re kind of diving into on the show for this season is the idea of kind of like a learning culture, you know, depending on who your learner is it are and just how you’re kind of building the, Not necessarily the desire, but like the want to always be in there and learning new things and sometimes it’s a necessity of their job. Other times it’s you know their own sort of desire to to learn a little bit more. Can you tell me a little bit about what learning culture as a sort of a theory means to Netflix and a little bit about how you work through the implementation to build in some of those cultural elements.

Danielle
9:07Yeah, so, you know, learning at Netflix is really connected to our culture. So, you know, we have all of our core values. But really, they revolve around people over process and we really value independent decision making. So I’m just thinking back to, you know, when I first joined Netflix and when we were talking about making this transition toward a more innovative learning experience, more impactful. You know, a lot of the time you think that there’s just this whole process that you need to follow in order to make a decision like that. And luckily, that’s not the case at Netflix. And I remember again just a couple months in being a part of this huge decision. Yeah, let’s go for it. Let’s go for it. Let’s try something new. Try something innovative and with this approach. We are really able to be more innovative, flexible, fun, stimulating, you know, and overall just successful. So that was a really exciting thing to be a part of, um,

And then you know it’s really carried over through our implementation and rollout.

I always tell the team, this is just the beginning. Yeah, we rolled out globally to all of our customer service agents, but you know, there’s so much more we can be doing, like, you know, on our roadmap for next year, which I’m kind of driving right now we have gamification, you know, we have you know, more automation. We’re going to build into it, leveraging more AI, those types of things. So it’s, it’s going to be another really, really exciting year for our team.

Emily Dukes
10:58That’s incredible to hear. I know that oftentimes in implementation, there might be certain topics or workflows even if you want to get granular that come up that you guys maybe didn’t think about. I’m curious about kind of what role did Docebo implementation plate and kind of driving that learning culture that you described as being certainly one, you know, that is notable

Danielle
11:26So I think, you know, implementation was a really helpful process for us I you know I consider myself a very organized person and I was project managing this really from the start, start to finish. But you know, I just remember through the implementation process. It was really helpful to kind of discover new things and you know. As we were really diving into our use case and understanding. Like, how can we be better. It’s not just a matter of taking what we’re, what we’re currently doing it or what we’re currently doing and converting it you know to E learning and rolling it out via Docebo. It’s really about how we can level up even more. So I remember just having some some really just honest conversations about, you know, yeah, we could just take this and do a simple swap but let’s, let’s really take advantage of this time let’s do something really amazing. And, you know, it was about finding a balance. So did we roll out with every possible feature. No, because we really did need to take a step back and understand our use case. But we also wanted to, you know, make sure that, again, we were really taking advantage of this new technology, which was such a level up from what we were using before.. we were using an internally built platform. And, you know, our engineers are absolutely amazing, but I think you know, they’re all about efficiency and not necessarily like innovation and what’s going to be engaging for learners. So it’s nice to be able to have a platform where we can have a bit of both.

Rob Ayre
13:11So during your implementation, you know, and for folks out there that might be listening and thinking, okay, I’m about to go through this. What do you think are like the key components that, I mean obviously organization probably being top and and foremost, but what are the key components that you think you sort of put into practice that really helped lead to success.

Danielle

13:31So I think, you know, building out a very clear project timeline is, you know, the most important thing, so you know it’s interesting because I have a background in K 12 education, so for all those teachers out there you know you all, you’ve probably heard about backwards planning and always, you know, keeping that angle in mind and building from there. So that’s, that’s one thing that I you know definitely took into consideration when building out this project plan is, what is our angle.

And how can I build a project plan around that. So, you know, there’s a lot that went into it, but it was super important to stay organized. There were a lot of people involved so

You know, keeping SME’s and key stakeholders closely aligned with, you know, the project timeline, so we use asana at Netflix to track all of these, you know, types of projects and that was so important to our success, just because it kept everyone in the loop. Anyone could jump in at any time to see where we were at and even now when you know jumping into another implementation with another team I’m able to leverage that project plan so that’s been super helpful.

Emily Dukes

14:55Yeah. Begin with the end in mind. I also have a background in teaching K through 12 so music to my ears. I love that. And I think it just, you’re right, it makes so much sense when especially when you’re starting kind of like you said, from like ground zero. and you know, you can do all of the things that seem to make sense. But unless you have your end goal and you keep that the main thing, the main thing. Then you, you know, you kind of get a little bit lost. So I’m curious, specifically when you started thinking about the future and you started identifying okay this is where in a year from now we want to be able to say x, y, z, how did implementation kind of come alongside you to support that maybe give some specifics. If you can?

Danielle

15:45Okay. And can I ask a clarifying question here.

Emily Dukes

15:48Of course,

Danielle

15:48Um, Do you want me to talk specifically about like you know how our implementation specialist supported our project needs it, or is that what you’re asking?

Emily Dukes

16:01Sure, yeah. Either that you can be as general or as specific as you want. I think we’re just trying to communicate that like implementation support helps you kind of plan for the future, rather than just helping you get stood up to begin with.

Danielle

16:14Okay, got it. Yeah, so I think again during implementation, it was helpful to have someone on the Docebo end to talk through all these possibilities.You know I know for the customer service organization we had a very complex use case in that we were dealing with 10 training languages thousands of agents, all over the world and you know, we we had to kind of find some workarounds, you know, and I think, you know, during implementation, our implementation specialist really helped with this. And I also think it was nice to talk scalability as well. You know what’s going to be best for our organization in the long run. Yeah, we could roll this out now, but ultimately you know we we were trying to find the right balance between efficiency and innovation, which was definitely challenging, but when you have someone who’s an expert on the platform, um, you know, they bring a unique perspective. And so I really feel like we made a really great team during the implementation phase.

Rob Ayre

17:40I’m always curious and I mean this is probably just my background in marketing and I’m always interested to hear about, you know, the implementations happen. Now it’s time to actually like put this out into the real world and see how it does. You know what, what did you guys do to raise the awareness of it to start sort of driving that adoption and can you, like, Can you walk me through. Obviously, a little bit of the marketing elements, but just sort of that internal comms and the, the overall approach to “Hey this is now available to you. This is how it works.” You know that whole process.

Danielle

18:12Mm hmm. So we started socializing this idea very early on. So I think that was key is that we kept everyone in the loop. You know, we were asking our key stakeholders in, you know, in all of our different regions for their opinions and thoughts. We also, of course, with it being Netflix, like we really put a lot of emphasis on branding, we wanted this to feel like Netflix and you know I already mentioned that we were using an internally built platform prior and I think most people would be pretty shocked how bare bones. It was, you know, to the point where we weren’t even leveraging our Netflix colors red and black. You know, it was blue and gray. I’m like, What’s going on here. You know, you might you might see, you know, a couple Netflix images here and there, but it was pretty bare so we knew, like, Oh, we have such a huge opportunity here. And so with Docebo with, you know, the ability to white label and really customize the platform and experience for our learners. That was huge. So, you know, I remember being a part of multiple presentations you know in our EMEA region APAC LATAM and kind of doing teaser videos of what’s coming down the line. You know we did, actually the entire customer service org was involved in deciding on a name for the platform.

We did surveys around that, you know, so we did decide on Stream University. We went through the whole logo development. And that started to be used, you know, in all of our communications, which was just a fun little element. And so I think that all really led to this moment of, Oh my gosh, this is launching and I just remember how exciting that week was

And how quiet it was. So what I mean by that is I thought okay, this is kind of crazy, like all of these users are going to be logging in, over the next week or so, you know, I’m expecting like okay, we might have some technical issues we might have something going on but we really didn’t. So, you know, and then watching all the feedback come in. We did a really detailed survey for users to take after taking some time to explore the platform, take an intro elearning and it was amazing, the feedback we got and I was able to kind of analyze that and share that out to to the rest of the organization and It just was such a great combination to this global launch, seeing how excited our learners were and also that they were like, ready for more too, you know, like I just can’t, you know if this is

If this is the initial launch. Like, I can’t wait to see where we’re going to be a year from now, so it was a really exciting time.

Emily Dukes

21:20You know what’s so cool about about this particular answer is, so I get I’m actually on our sales team. So I speak with prospective Docebo clients, day in and day out. And it’s so funny because sometimes when we say, you know, yeah, Netflix is a client. They think that what Netflix is doing is totally impossible for them. But what you just described is so accessible and so easy and it all it takes is just that little passion, to actually make it happen. You know, and you guys clearly had a very successful, you know, go live or whatever you want to call it, and I just love that. I love how simple it was and how effective it was.

Danielle

22:03Yeah, absolutely. I think anyone could do what we did. It is about having a good team and I will be honest that we were lacking resources in certain areas of our implementation. So, you know, we had to outsource a couple things we actually had to say, Okay, we’re going to hold off on rolling out this feature because we just don’t have the tech resource right now. And that’s okay. Again, it’s you kind of have to find what works for you, what resources you have available. But again, it’s just at least you’re taking that step in the right direction and you know it, things will fall into place. But I know I know that’s been a topic of conversation, even with other teams like how did you find that resource you know and and it’s, again you you figure it out with your team. So, yeah.

Emily Dukes

22:58Yeah, so what, in terms of like when you guys if you could go back in your mind to when you guys were actually looking for an LMS. What were some of the key features that you knew were kind of must haves we’d like to have. And this would be a cool cherry on top.

Danielle

23:15Mm hmm. So I think

You know, we were really looking for a platform that was customizable, so what I already mentioned, we wanted it to look and feel like Netflix, super important to us. I think it was really awesome that Docebo. I mean, your design is kind of based off Netflix. Anyways, you know, when you have your streaming rows of content like. Oh perfect, that’s already catered to us, you know, and so that was a big item we knew we wanted something that had Gamification as an option. Again, that’s not something we rolled out at launch, but it’s on our roadmap this year. So we’re excited about that. I think a nice to have, you know, again, as I mentioned earlier, we deal with 10 different training languages.

So that was one efficiency that our internal platform had is that we could kind of bundle everything together and you have all those language variations tied together and with Docebo it is a little, you know. Every, everything is a standalone course. So I think that was one thing we kind of had to wrap our mind around the processes is a bit different setting up these courses, looking at data. And even moving to an Elearning tool. And, you know, the processes, a bit more complicated when it comes to localization. But again, it’s you know, you have to really take a step back and keep that angle in mind. Yes, efficiency is important but innovation is really you know what we were prioritizing, so I think again in some situations, our process has gotten a little bit longer. When it comes to localizing setting up courses. But ultimately, what we’re the training. We’re rolling out is more impactful.

Rob Ayre

So on that note, I’m always curious to understand what is the, what does the process look like for the course development side of things. I mean, obviously, most of the courses that you’re rolling out are very specific to Netflix. And the information that your learner’s need and so can just sort of walk us through what that typical you know content development process looks like for your team.

Danielle

25:41Yeah, so we you know we leverage the articulate 360 suite of tools. I have a very large

Global L&D team and we have teams based in the region. So we have an EMEA team an APAC team a LATAM team. And then we have a team that sits and you know in California and we kind of oversee any Global Initiatives. But then on the regional level, those teams will kind of take it from there. So, you know, when we develop a course there’s obviously, obviously, it starts with some sort of need, whether it’s a product team or rollout and we need to train agents on a new feature or, you know, something like that. So we do develop largely in Rise 360 a part of that suite of tools. You know, we have a pretty rigorous review process that’s put in place and then we do have an internal localization team. So we work with them to, you know, export our courses as excellent and they’ll translate and we get them back. And then from there we’ll export from Rise 360 and set it up in Docebo. We have an amazing Digital Learning developer on the team who has a background in coding. Oh my gosh, I’ve learned so much from him. He’s amazing. He has set up some automation for us. And I just get so excited when he sets these things up even built a little app to house all these automation and I’m like he just blows my mind. But, um, So something simple like okay I really don’t want to have to go and create a course for every language manually like there’s gotta be a way to do this quicker. So, you know, we started talking API kind of looking into, you know, what’s possible with Docebo And I swear to god within a week or two, he had this app built out where you can literally plug in all the course needs descriptions language, all of that. And with a click of a button. All 10 are created at once. So those are the types of things where I’m like, Oh my gosh, this is awesome like

This speeds up our process quite a bit. So it’s great to have them on the team.

Emily Dukes

28:21So this next question is, is a Whopper. It’s a big one. I’m going to ask it and feel free to take a minute because it’s just

Danielle

28:32Build up, Emily.

Come on.

Emily Dukes

31:36Okay, I’m just gonna say it. How do you guys measure success?

Danielle

31:41Yeah, so, you know, I, and I’m going to be honest here. This is an area of opportunity for our team. Yeah, um, you know, I think. When you talk about training measurement and you know ROI. Like it’s obviously big buzz words when it comes to leadership on teams. They always want to see like. Okay, what truly is the impact here and so prior rolling out to achieve. Oh, we We didn’t do a whole lot of that. And you know, we didn’t have a lot of tracking and reporting capabilities. So that was actually another thing. That we were really looking for and even the simple fact of being able to say like someone completed their training or or didn’t. That’s a big deal. So now you know with that type of information on again on our roadmap is a tablo integration where we can really line that up.

Next to our agent KPIs and different things that their performance is measured on and really being able to compare the two. And see, like where this training made an impact.

And that’s something that we haven’t done before so I’m really excited to be able to do that. But I would say, right now we’re really focused just on completion.

And, you know, building in knowledge checks building in time for managers to check in with agents and coach them, you know, on, on areas that they need it.

But I’m really looking forward to building out kind of a custom dashboard, where we’re able to bundle everything in one because that’s going to be just so amazing for all of our stakeholders to be able to see

Rob Ayre

33:35I think, I think, you know, in speaking with people across the podcast and in different areas on that topic. That’s just it’s a varying scale of how efficient, they’re able to do it or how effective they feel they’re able to do it, but there’s always that kind of like, you know, we have a few metrics that we do want to measure. But then how do we kind of like snapshot it so we can regularly be checking and see, like, Is it is it pacing. Is it is it going up so, I mean, it sounds like you’re on the right track and towards it.

Have you noticed over the last year, has there been any interesting, Um shifts, I guess, or upticks and you know people taking classes completing it or even seeing what learning can do to somebody effectiveness in the job, even as it relates to cove it like have you noticed that people are. Are they taking more online learning opportunities because of that? I’m just very curious if you are kind of to the degree or able to right now seeing any any sort of impact factors with that.

Danielle

34:33Yeah, definitely. You know, with

With our agent user base their learning time is a little bit more structured. So it’s not so much, you know, oh they log in. When they want and take the training when they want it’s usually you know they they are scheduled to take a training. One initiative that we have put in place this year is, you know, the ability for agents to take continuous learning courses based on where they feel they can improve. So again, this is scheduled time they get 15 minutes a week where they can go in and we are building out a library. I think we have around 20 courses in there right now, which is actually a pretty good amount when you think about. We never had anything like this before.

And agents can go in, they’ll click in, they can read a little blurb about it. The objectives, they can see how long this course will take. So most of them are 15 minutes. So it’s just like a one time thing that week, or it could be something longer that they would carry into next week.

And they can go in and just self enroll. So we’ve gotten great feedback on this. We’re seeing a lot of enrollments. we have also given you know managers, the ability to suggest or enroll someone on their team in one of those courses. So it’s kind of two different options. They can self enroll or managers can say, hey, I think this would really, you know, help in this certain area that I’m coaching you on this week.

So we we’ve definitely seen a lot of enrollments in these courses and we’ve received feedback, you know, we’d love to see more courses or like, you know, we’re right now we’re thinking through a way of how we can allow learners to suggest courses that they want to take that maybe don’t exist now, but it’s something that we can add in the future, but It’s something we will be prioritizing this year, we really want to build that out right now at all kind of exists as you know as one row in Docebo, but we want to be able to kind of create more specific rows based on content so it’s easier for them to like jumping into an area that they want to improve in

Emily Dukes

36:56So yeah, a lot of a lot of the measurements are maybe qualitative right now, rather than quantitative, but that still, you know, speaks to certainly some effectiveness and and some success for sure. I’m curious, too, because you have mentioned multiple kind of like future projections of things that you guys are looking to do

Is there anything else. If I were to just straight up ask you, like, whats up for 2021? Is there anything you haven’t mentioned yet by chance that you’d be willing to share, like a bit of a Netflix secret.

Danielle

37:34Let me think about this one so gamification I’ve mentioned the tableau integration.  I’ve mentioned, you know, additional automation using API. I think maybe one other thing I could share would be our coaching. So right now this is something that is still being done in our internal platform. And what I mean by that is, you know, every agent has a manager and they are responsible for coaching them. So they’ll listen in on calls, they’ll have conversations and, you know, make sure that they’re really providing top notch customer service support. and each week they will select a coaching focus and, you know, that’ll be kind of displayed to the agent. As a reminder, here’s your area of focus this week. There might be certain follow up tasks that they do conversations they have with their manager. And this is something that we’re looking to house in Docebo and we’re thinking potentially the observation checklists functionality so we have created a task force around this and we’re going to start having conversations but I’m really excited to see if we’ll be able to leverage this feature. And I think, then we will have more of a cohesive feel and the platform where it’s, you know, the agent is not only completing their, their training, but they’re also completing their, their coaching in the platform versus having kind of two different things going on. So that’s, that’s another big one on the roadmap.

Rob Ayre

39:23 Thats amazing. It’ll be great to kind of pull that together. And it’s that it’s a full sort of 360 and I feel like we’ve gone through a nice for 40 minutes here bingeing and all things that are Netflix learning and development. So with that thing I wanted to say thanks for joining us today. Was it was really, really great chatting with you.

Danielle

39:43Thank you so much for having me. This was a lot of fun.