T-Mobile

Profile
T-Mobile provides wireless voice, messaging, and data services capable of reaching over 268 million Americans where they live, work, and play. T-Mobile USA is the US operating entity of T-Mobile International AG, the mobile communications subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT). Deutsche Telekom is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world, with nearly 120 million customers worldwide.

Challenge
During these tight economic times, paying vendors to develop elearning isn’t very realistic. On the flip side, however, using tools like Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe Breeze can result in page-turner courses with little interactivity.

The Instructional Design Team at T-Mobile began creating elearning courses a few years ago by using Adobe Breeze and Microsoft PowerPoint. They realized that their courses weren’t very engaging or robust due to the limitations of the tools.

In instances where they needed more interactive courses, they hired the services of costly external custom development vendors. At times, they paid custom development shops up to $50,000 per course, but then were left with an end product that they couldn’t maintain and update on their own.

During these tight economic times, paying vendors to develop elearning isn’t very realistic. On the flip side, however, using tools like Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe Breeze can result in page-turner courses with little interactivity. To create affordable robust elearning quickly, T-Mobile needed a new elearning strategy.

Solution
T-Mobile hired Jeff Tillett, a Senior Instructional Designer, onto their elearning team. Tillett had extensive experience working with Flash, HTML, and other coding programs and T-Mobile knew he could help bring their elearning up to speed.

Prior to working at T-Mobile, Tillett produced elearning courses with Lectora authoring software at a major food services company. Tillett immediately noticed that the T-Mobile team was missing a rapid elearning authoring tool – which is one of the keys to a successful elearning program. He knew how easy-to-use, flexible, and affordable Lectora is so he immediately asked T-Mobile to bring it on board.

The Instructional Design team at T-Mobile was very supportive of the decision to purchase Lectora, but had some hesitation due to Tillett’s technical background. They were worried that the tool would be too advanced for them.

Tillett developed templates in Lectora and provided them to his team. Almost instantly the original concern they had about Lectora’s ease of use vanished. With a little coaching from Tillett, other instructional designers quickly began creating their own online courses.

“The best thing about Lectora is that it is so flexible. The flexibility within the templates has been a huge help in cutting development time down and allows for easy access to maintenance and updating,” said Tillett.

A great example of Lectora’s quick learning curve was when a new Lectora user had a very short deadline to create an entire course on his own. “He was able to plug in his content and add in media and within a week he developed a complete course with Lectora,” noted Tillett. With the flexibility of Lectora’s templates, everyone on the T-Mobile Instruction Design team was able to create amazing online courses quickly and easily.

Results

“We were paying external vendors as much as $50,000 per course and now that expense has been completely eliminated.”

By using Lectora as their authoring tool, T-Mobile has completed over 30 courses on topics from soft skills training to systems training that contain engaging features such as video and flash.

In addition to finding a tool that everyone at T-Mobile could use despite their technical background, they also noticed cost savings. By using Lectora for all of their training needs, T-Mobile was able to bring their design in house and eliminate the need for costly external vendors.

“I know we’ve saved a lot of money with Lectora, said Tillett. We were paying external vendors as much as $50,000 per course and now that expense has been completely eliminated. We now have a solid economic strategy which is more important than ever in today’s environment.”

By simply using Lectora, Micro Center created the type of courses its team had dreamed of since it first began its journey into elearning a number of years ago.  “The flexibility and power of Lectora has helped us to evolve from page-turner courses to engaging learning simulations that our users enjoy taking and that improve learning and performance in the long run,” added John.

“We now have a solid economic strategy which is more important than ever in today’s environment.”