IBM Consultant AWS Learning Experience

Role
Design Researcher & Service Designer
Tools
Mural, Keynote
Timeline
February 2022 - March 2022
Team
Krystal Webber (Design Partner), Meghan Grable (Service Designer)

How do you motivate a busy workforce to complete an optional training program?

AWS began a certification drive to ensure that IBM consultants were equipped to sell AWS solutions. To incentivize IBM, AWS offered to pay IBM Consulting Partners and Associate Partners at their full consulting rates up to 5 million dollars. This resulted in a 3 million profit for IBM a great turn out but over 2 million was left on the table.
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I was on a team with a design strategist and service designer to evaluate and orchestrate an improved learning experience that would maximize learner engagement and profit for IBM.
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Project Overview

Background

In 2021 Q4, AWS paid IBM Consulting Partners and Associate Partners at their full consulting rates in the EMEA and NA geo to become certified in AWS Cloud Essentials. AWS now has more trained professionals at IBM to generate future pipeline. AWS wants to continue the program through 2022 and there is a potential to make $20M in revenue for the entire year.

The design team was tasked to work with several Learning and Development teams within the North America and EMEA geo to standardize the process and increase participating in the certificate drive to maximize profit generation.

Project Approach

  • Phase 1: Evaluate the learner's journey, and uncover learner and program management pain points to inform restructuring of the learning program.
  • Phase 2: Workshop with program management and learning and development stakeholders across EMEA and NA geo to ideate and align on an approach based on the research outcomes to implement to improve the learning experience.

Project Summaries

Double-click on the images below to see the summary slides of project outcomes. I also presented learnings from this project at the IBM Spark Design Festival as a lighting talk.

Conference Presentation Video Link
Workshop Pre-read & Research Summary PDF

Project Goals

Increase Learner Engagement
How does the program expand in the Americas geo? How do we ensure learning participants are properly logging their hours for training?  How do we drive more engagement with consultants to take the program?
Expanding and Operationalizing
How does the program expand in APAC and Japan? What approach (self-paced or hybrid) should be used for a global program? How could the current experience be improved prior to expanding?
Standardize Certificate Reporting
How should the program streamline reporting to AWS operations and tracking of learners? How might program influence on sales pipeline be tracked?

Phase 1 Evaluate the Service

Study Design

We interviewed partners and associate partners across Geos who completed the learning program. We also conducted an audit of the learner slack channels to make notes of common questions and conversations that were occurring across groups. Additionally we conducted a walk through of all communications and digital platforms that were used to complete the digital certificate program.

In addition to exploring the learner experience, we interviewed Program Management to understand the completitiex and areas of oppertunity

Highlights

  • 8 Learners interviewed
  • 5 Program Managers & Learning and Development specialists interviewed
  • 1 service design blueprint created to understand opportunities
  • 1 discussion & group activity to align on next steps

Employee Groups Impacted

To begin the discovery process, we interviewed four user groups to understand their experience with using the learning service. Our aim was to uncover opportunities, motivations, and pain points related to completing and managing the learning experience.

  • Learners (Partners & Associate Partners)
    The overall experience is very disjointed. Multiple platforms are used, and learners need to navigate through the experience by clicking links that direct them to other platforms or web pages. The communications sent out, along with the learning instructions, are convoluted and do not contain straightforward instructions. The training took twice as long as advertised to complete. Despite the challenges, the training was perceived as valuable and worth the time for personal development.
  • Learning & Operations Team
    ​The team in charge of enrolling learners felt that they were getting mixed messages from leadership about the program rollout. They believed that they were doing their best to provide the right information as quickly as possible. If it seems like the rollout happened quickly, it's because it did.
  • AWS Operations​
    Overall program management considered the program launch successful and plans to continue and expand it in Q1-Q4 2022 at various IBM levels.
  • IBM Strategic Partner Leadership​
    Leadership is interested in gaining a better understanding of the results and total enrollment in the learning program. Tracking the metrics for one quarter of this program has proven to be nearly impossible. Each geographic region used different billing codes, making it impossible to determine the exact profit generated from the AWS training program in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Persona insights

Mapping the Service

In addition to the interviews, we conducted a service walkthrough by investigating the platforms, communication, and messaging that learners navigated and that program management developed. This revealed opportunities for improving the experience and the pain points that were experienced across Geos.

Service mapping
learner communication mapping

Summary Insights

Learning Enrollment - What's Working
  • Slack channel is great way to answer quick questions and get reference material for learners
  • Pinned instructional links to the slack channel for quick reference to reduce questions asked
Learning Enrollment - What Could be Improved
  • Enrollment guide is convoluted
  • Difficult to log learning hours for credit on internal IBM platform
  • Targeted  learner nomination process by manager and leadership. Targeted nudging from leadership rather than generic email blasts.
  • Expanded catalog of certificate courses with suggestions for technical and nontechnical role types and role levels.
Certification Training - What's Working
  • Low cost to complete and manage the program
  • Participants have the opportunity to log billable time to expand their knowledge
  • In EMEA Geo: Proctor lead training resulted in reportedly clearer instruction by the learning participants and kept the learner closer to allotted 6.5-hour training time
Certification Training- What Could be Improved
  • Clarity on the hourly requirements for completing the training, most learning participants reported taking double the allotted time to complete the training
  • Receiving program codes and vouchers to complete the certification exam was challenging for management and slow for learners
Reporting Hours - What's Working
  • AWS learning partner submits cert info to learning and development team on behalf of learning participant
  • Cert hours logged to complete exam matched the billable time which makes auditing process easier
Reporting Hours - What Could be Improved
  • Management of the training incentive program needs to be managed similarly to a consulting client engagement to ensure proper time tracking and reimbursement for time
  • Manual process of tracking and aggregating learning participant data by program management

Phase 2: Workshop

We gathered program management leadership from 3 geos (Americas, EMEA, and Asia) to participate in a remote workshop on Mural to ideate on how to coordinate and manage the experience moving forward. We also read a readout of the research insights that were gathered.

I co-facilitated some of the discussion ideas. While work shop facilitation isn't my strong suit, I do like to step in and help with leading conversations when needed.

Workshop Objectives
  • Align on priority areas for the upcoming quarters
  • Ideate on approaches to implement priority items
  • Outline critical to-dos to move the work forward
  • Identify owners and blockers for priority items
Workshop Outcomes
  • An actionable set of plans to capitalize on $20M AWS incentive for learning certificate drive through increased engagement
Workshop Agenda
  • Introduction & Warm Up
  • Level Setting
  • Pain Points / Opportunities Review
  • Priorities Discussion and Alignment
  • Wrap Up & Next Steps

Moving Forward

The AWS learning certificate program was expanded as a global learning certificate drive that spanned multiple Geos and more learners were enrolled. It was highlighted in Q3 2022 as a significant joint achievement between the IBM & AWS strategic partnership.

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