The New Zealand Outdoor and Adventure retail juggernaut, Kathmandu, have 165 stores in New Zealand, Australia and the UK, and a team in North America. That means an employee network spread over 4 continents.
In June 2018, Kathmandu went looking for a new reliable LMS to host over 2,000 users and over 100 courses — they found RedSeed!
Historically, Kathmandu delivered staff training with paper-based material and in-store training sessions until the business outgrew this model. A few years ago, the decision was made to go digital with modules housed on a basic LMS. Since then, the focus on training and development within the business has only grown, and it is now a key priority.
They continued this delivery method for several years, particularly for product knowledge but found it hard to achieve consistent results in customer service and leadership skills when delivered in this manner.
Kathmandu had implemented its previous LMS at a very different time within the business. Their needs were much simpler, and over a few years, their focus on training and development increased, and so did their requirements.
“We began noticing our previous system was no longer able to keep up with our business requirements. We had big goals for future training and development within the company too. In addition to that, we found the user experience could be frustrating and were constantly encountering system bugs; the overall system was unstable.”
Keeping training consistent and reporting on their progress was difficult with a team spread across the globe.
RedSeed Senior Developer, Marius Wium, led the team through the transition of over 2,000 trainee accounts and more than 100 courses from the previous LMS. In under 6 weeks, the RedSeed developers had completed the user data migration and successfully integrated with their custom payroll system.
Connecting the LMS directly to their payroll system, Kelly (Former People Manager) and his team know user details are always in sync. Any new employees are automatically enrolled in the learning pathways.
Hopkins says the entire process was extremely smooth.
“The RedSeed developers were quick to respond to any questions throughout the process and always kept us up to date. It was as smooth as it could have been."
"We even had our IT team come to us at the end of the transition to comment on how seamless the RedSeed LMS transition was.”
“We have seen significant monetary savings! We now spend far less time following up on system errors or bugs. The onboarding of new employees and enrolling them in their training is also streamlined. As soon as an employee is hired, our payroll integration with RedSeed, means that new hires are automatically enrolled in a learning pathway. Such a streamlined process.”
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