Primesoft and Nissan Take e-Learning for a Test Drive

The business challenge:

As a global car manufacturer with dealers from all over the world, Nissan needed to find a way to provide its people with complete product training that was both effective and engaging. Up until Primesoft’s engagement with their company, Nissan had been using Microsoft Powerpoint to train its dealers on product features and benefits; and while this seemed to work, it did not ensure that training participants were learning enough to translate their knowledge into good salesmanship. Moreover, it required Nissan’s training team to travel all over the world—including to countries in the Middle East and Africa—just to ensure that dealers everywhere were getting the same quality of product training no matter where they were in the world.

Nissan knew that there must be a better and more efficient way of doing things.

The American Management Association (AMA), Nissan Global’s training consultant, committed to help the car manufacturer develop a new and more powerful training tool with the use of high technology. It approached Primesoft with a challenging assignment and a long list of requirements that included the following:

• The e-Learning tool had to be interactive and engaging, but it should not be Web-based, as not all dealerships had equal access to the Internet.
• It had to be a self-running tool with minimum system requirements and that did not require its users to install additional software or peripherals onto their existing computer hardware.
• It should be a complete training package that includes quizzes, answer keys, and review points for each chapter.
• The tool should be accessible only to authorized individuals.
• There had to be a way to ensure that all dealers would review the training chapters and take the required tests in its proper sequence.
• The tool should be able to administer a final test to all training participants, the results of which should be made available to these dealers’ training managers.
• For its initial run, this training tool should be available in English, French, and Spanish.

Primesoft was given four months to take this new project on the road.

The Primesoft solution:

We decided to create Nissan’s e-Learning package in an interactive CD-ROM that was to be made using Macromedia Flash®. All that dealers needed to gain access to the materials was a computer with the basic hardware requirements. AMA jumpstarted the project by developing all the training materials, quizzes, and answer keys.

Once the materials had been completed, we hired a third-party creative agency to shoot video footage and to hire voice talents that would record the necessary voice-overs in different languages. We also hired a third-party firm to translate the training materials into French and Spanish and to prepare subtitles for the content.

We then built the material using Macromedia Flash®, and we created a special PIN and password code system that would assign a series of unique PIN and password codes for each of Nissan’s e-Learning users. This system worked such that each user would be issued a unique chapter password after completing each chapter, unlocking the next chapter and allowing the user to proceed.

Each chapter would end with a quiz that all users had to take. Those who scored lower on certain areas would be asked to review certain parts of each chapter, depending on their development areas.

At the end of all the chapters was a comprehensive test that all users had to take. We used the same PIN and password system to determine the users’ scores and to ensure that only the training managers would first gain access to these results. After taking the exam, each user would be assigned a unique test code that they would turn over to their training manager. Training managers, in turn, would be assigned a special tool that would allow them to view the users’ encrypted scores. Once they entered the unique test code that each of their e-Learning users turned over to them, they would be able to see each user’s score. There was no way for users to switch scores, or to claim scores that they did not earn.

This visually appealing, highly interactive, and technically complex tool was launched within the required four-month timeframe, to Nissan dealerships all over the world. From the initial English, French, and Spanish versions that we had created, Nissan now plans to create versions in Mandarin, in Japanese, and in Arabic.

For more information on our E-learning Solutions, click here.