Relaunching and reinventing learning with BAS

In 2016, BAS Group, a trading platform for large vehicles, tractor units, construction equipment, and commercial vehicles had just launched a new dealer management system and needed to train employees and partners on how to use the new software. Outside of the immediate need to train for the platform, the organization also wanted to provide a central learning platform to encourage employee career development and growth.

The Courseware Company, a Totara Partner, helped the organization choose Totara Learn as their new learning management system. Together Courseware and BAS implemented Learn and successfully met all of the organization’s training and employee development goals.

The Challenge

As the years went on, BAS Group underwent a transformation as an organization. BAS shifted its focus from traditional commercial trading to IT. And with the shift came a more diverse and international workforce that had entirely new training and skills development needs.

BAS needed a platform that could adapt to the changing needs of a growing global workforce. Training had to be relevant, easily accessible, user-friendly, and offer a multi-language environment. However, their new needs presented a problem: they were running an outdated version of Totara Learn (v12) that did not have the updated features to accommodate these new requirements.

Totara Learn offers both cloud and on-site implementation. BAS’s on-site version of Learn meant new versions of the software had to be updated manually, which the organization had not done since its initial implementation.

Facing a major update, the question arose, “Is Totara Learn still the right platform for our organization?”

The Solution

The Courseware Company and BAS began an analysis of version 16 of Totara Learn. Both partner and client wanted to be sure the relaunch of Learn would meet their new learning and development goals. To their list, they added one more top priority: future-proofing.

Totara offers the most powerful and flexible learning management system in the world – but staying up-to-date on new features and fixes is crucial to adaptability. The answer was clear, having a future-proof platform meant allowing regular updates.

The Courseware Company offered BAS their recently launched “always up-to-date” service model for Totara TXP clients. The SAAS solution provided monthly updates with all the latest fixes and functionalities for the platform.

After evaluating Totara v.16 and adding the benefit of the “always up-to-date” program with Courseware, BAS Group decided that Totara Learn was still the right learning solution and could meet all of their needs now and into the future.

Implementation

The SAAS model provided a standardized corporate brand theme development by Courseware. However, the BAS Group brand and design were important to the organization and they considered it critical that the Trading Platform and Learn match in appearance.  BAS took the template provided by Courseware and tailored it to their own brand. An out-of-the-box template was not a limitation, but rather a jumping-off point. BAS made their brand feel alive within the Totara environment and the new UX created the user-friendly look and feel for which they had hoped.

The v.16 of Totara offered a restructured training setup that made training courses easily accessible. The BAS Academy homepage now consists of learning topics divided into nine categories that are clearly laid out on the employee’s dashboard. Categories include BAS Basics, commercial, product knowledge, language courses, and cybersecurity. Employees found the learning experience to be streamlined and easy, with the number of clicks to find relevant courses greatly reduced.

The Results

Evaluation of the BAS Academy began in July 2022 and within a month, team members from BAS and Courseware came to an agreement on how to restructure learning with the help of the “always-up-to-date” model.

Work began on launching the new learning program in October and by February 2023, the BAS Academy went live with version 17 of Totara Learn. During that time, the team managed to seamlessly transition so that employees were never without access to training. With the launch, new learning content was curated with the input of multiple departments at the BAS.

The first learning content created was an onboarding course called, “Meet BAS” It was available in Dutch and titled, “Vol gas met BAS,” which translates to “full speed with BAS.” The program consists of live company presentations, videos, e-learning, and more. Employees learn everything about the new BAS Academy, including, company guidelines, communications channels, and BAS Fit (a store with branded sportswear).

 Since February 2023, 85% of new employees finished the onboarding program within the first month.

The reactions of the employees on the renewed platform were very positive:

‘I’m looking at the new BAS-academy and it is really great! Congratulations!’ – Security officer

‘Congrats! The new academy looks great!’ – Marketing specialist

‘Good to arrange this centrally, is very important for the onboarding process.’ – Business Controller

Fun fact: since the launch of the new platform, 91% of the visitors, logged in on their own initiative.