Cooper Bussmann - E-learning Solution
About Cooper Bussmann
Cooper Bussmann is a wholly owned division of Cooper Industries, Inc (NYSE: CBE) and is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. With a more than 90-year history of innovation, the company has set the standard for circuit protection in the global market.
Cooper Bussmann manufactures a wide variety of North American and European-styled fuses for the electrical, electronics and transportation industries, plus inductors and transformers for power quality in electronic applications. Cooper Bussmann also offers engineering, training and testing services focused on downtime reduction, workplace safety and Code compliance.
The Requirement
With over 50,000 technical products in manufacture and customers, including Apple Computers and NASA, throughout the world, Cooper Bussmann support staff and sales channels need to know all they can about the constantly changing world of circuit protection and electronic advances.
Spira contacted Cooper Bussmann to discuss the many benefits afforded by a well constructed e-learning strategy and solution framework. Through a brief consultation programme it became clear that the prospect of delivering a solution was both viable and practical if dealt with in a series of well-managed phases. So, initially the requirements were derived and agreed as follows:
- Produce an initial e-learning solution aimed at Cooper Bussmann’s support and sales staff comprising of:
- Staff-facing learning portal – we call this the Fuse School
- Personalised training dashboard with full reporting and scheduling capabilities
- Trainer-facing course authoring environment
- Assist in the creation of an e-learning strategy that will nurture the expansion of the initial solution into a multi-lingual Learning Management System that will eventually service Cooper Bussmann’s European distribution network
- Provide full hosting, training and content planning and support
- Enhance and maintain the product to ensure that all success factors defined during the consultation programme are either met or exceeded
The Solution
The solution delivered to Cooper Bussmann is based on the Absolutely Interactive© (AI) solution suite which has been developed by Spira and is tailored to meet an almost infinite range of customers’ online needs.
For Cooper Bussmann, the solution consisted of the AI eLearning module to manage and deliver online training and the AI eManage web content management module to deliver a personalised e-learning portal experience.
AI eLearning includes a full WYSIWYG course management administration system to allow trainers to build courses in an intuitive and progressive manner. The AI eManage portal includes a content managed intranet solution and a sophisticated dashboard area where users login to access their personalised training content and related data.
Supervisors within Cooper Bussmann can use their own dashboard to schedule courses for their staff, manage these schedules and then access reports on their staff’s results. All related processes are support by automated emails and personalised status information within the dashboard.
Spira also worked closely with Cooper Bussmann’s training department to derive an initial course programme and went on to deliver interactive and animated components that trainers within Cooper Bussmann can use (and re-use) within their AI eLearning courses.
The Outcome
The outcome, according to Tony Garlinge-Warren (Head of Training in the UK), ‘has so much more potential and capability than we realised’. Cooper Bussmann’s expectations have been realised and superseded.
There is a definite sense of excitement surrounding the possibilities for the technology and this extends to the marketing and sales divisions where the potential for their distribution network to understand Cooper Bussmann’s products and keep them ‘Font of Mind’ is critical.
Thus far, courses have been created for the internal audiences and this part of the project is due to run until 4Q08. However, the rollout to the regions is being planned right now with multi-lingual versions of the solution in the near-offing.
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