Auto LMS: Key Metrics for Ensuring Success with Channel Training

Since an automotive company doesn’t own or run all dealerships, it’s very difficult to imbibe the brand values around productivity, quality, and customer experience, across all levels. Therefore, most brands have adopted LMS to create centralized training programs, delivered online across channels and dealerships. However, the effectiveness of these programs require review based on the new normal, versus what the metrics may have been at the time of creating the programs. Our research shows that the following metrics are a must for achieving success with your LMS driven training programs.

Skill and Knowledge Index

How do you prepare for the future? Considering the future plans of the company, you need to identify the skills and knowledge required. The necessary steps are to measure the existing skills and knowledge levels and train for the delta. Having a skill and knowledge index will help identifying the shortfall and develop reskilling programs for dealerships. Based on their role, the employee needs to know certain things, while the same employee may know a lot more by interest, which is relevant to a completely different role at the dealership. This opens the possibility of finding available resources for various roles from within the existing pool. The implications are extremely positive and can lead to the innovation of new possibilities.

Time to Productivity

The training happened, the trainee gave rave reviews, and the trainee went to work. This may not necessarily translate to a productive and efficient employee. It is critical that the operational quality measurements are fed back into the LMS reports to be able to identify how much time it took for the trainee to become productive at the business-required levels. This must be a metric that is reported by the LMS being used to serve channel training. It is critical to measure the effectiveness of training programs being developed as well as the LMS used to deliver them.

Trainer/System Utilization

Everything and everyone is a resource, and if not optimally utilized, the result is a waste. Whether it is the time of facilitators or systems being utilized in training, an LMS should be able to measure the utilization of resources and report back, so that both over and under, utilization can be identified and measures to correct the trend can be undertaken.

Bifurcations and Grading of Dealerships

Dealerships are always measured on performance metrics like sales conversions, customer satisfaction, service center productivity, etc. It is now recommended to start bifurcating dealerships not just based on the current performance, but also, the potential future performance. A dealership’s progress can be measured on cost saved on hiring new personnel or training them. Newer role definitions based on skill index and knowledge index could lead to a highly optimized and efficient workforce that functions without redundancies. If achieved, this could be a model that is replicated across dealerships for promoting healthy competition. It also allows leadership a futuristic view of cost optimization.

The usual metrics that any LMS worth its salt would provide would be around learner proficiency, course progress and completion, compliance certifications tracking, etc. Keeping in mind the needs of tomorrow’s world of business, the metrics detailed above allows companies in the automobile industry an edge to somersault out of their current position and shoot forward to lead the race.

We at GCube, have 20 years of experience and 80+ industry awards in learning technologies; and would love to hear your thoughts, queries and suggestions. Please do write to us.