Vössing

As a leading engineering firm in consultancy, planning, project management, and construction supervision, Vössing has been implementing infrastructure projects of every scale for 40 years.

With over 600 employees at 20 locations in Germany and abroad, Vössing plans and designs national and international projects, from concept all the way through to implementation. Through the exhaustive network of branches, the Vössing engineers are always close to the customers, and working with them, develop tailor-made solutions to the highest specifications.

The training challenge

Vössing came into existence 40 years ago, so training hasn’t always been 21st-century style. Before we decided that an LMS was the right fit for us, we delivered user-requested training only. But it all took place on site, so, trainers had to move around to train our employees.

As a result, learning was way more expensive and time-consuming. Not to mention, managers couldn’t be aware of the learning material that had been covered.

So, the search for an LMS began.

For Vössing, the challenge was the speed of change the construction industry is experiencing these days on the journey to Building Information Modeling (BIM). To help employees cope with this tempo and catch up, we thought about professionalizing our learning within the company

An LMS sounded like the perfect solution.

We immediately started generating content to train our employees on compliance as well as in the skills we wanted them to master.

But it all came down to three main challenges we had to address:

• Deliver customer-focused training: For us, each customer has their own needs, certifications, and regulations. So, to work with some accounts, Vössing employees need to complete specific training and we thought that with eFront, it’d be much easier.
• Comply with GDPR regulations: Vössing is located in Europe. A place where privacy and data protection are taken very seriously. Complying with GDPR regulations and data management should be an integral part of every employee’s skill set. Especially when working with databases full of personal, professional, and sometimes sensitive data.
• Make learning enjoyable: We wanted our employees to take their training at their own pace, whenever, and wherever they wanted. It’s definitely much better than asking them to squeeze their training in or locking them up in a room and demand attention or even retention.

Why Vössing chose eFront

As a company, we have a strict policy when looking for third-party products. They all have to follow the same selection pattern consisting of four simple rules:

• Cloud-operated service: Here at Vössing we aren’t looking to buy products. We’re always looking to book services that come with a support team we can rely on. Fortunately, we noticed that eFront came with a support team that would listen to our concerns, and adapt. Working on the cloud is also a big deal for us. We are able to have all our information online in an easily accessible but also secure environment.
• Fully-integrated: When we’re looking for solutions, they all have to obey the company’s integration rules. The very first concern is to provide users with a single sign-on option through the company’s intranet by using the company’s credentials from Azure Active Directory.
• API solution: The third element Vössing always looks for is a solution that comes with a fully published API. This way, we can add extra capabilities to the main employee experience portal without having to recode existing features or do everything by hand, step by step. With eFront’s APIs, we’ve even created building-specific compliance training assessments of our employees. All by just creating a few lines of code.
• Seamless experience: We have an internal intranet system, and we wanted our employees to feel like they were taking their training right within it. To make the experience as seamless and smooth as possible, we chose eFront’s included banner plugin to incorporate training in our standard intranet experience.

All these rules might sound quite simple to someone familiar with the terminology. But to find them all in just one service isn’t that easy. With eFront, all our wishes were fulfilled.

The Results

Before eFront, we couldn’t provide the employee training we had in mind — and when we did, it was costly and time-consuming.
Today, our team is able to take their training whenever they have the time. This way they invest the right amount of energy and attention without worrying about other tasks they need to fulfill. Our training has become abundant and we’re in a position to equip employees with all the skills we want them to earn and also retain for future use.

This is how eLearning and eFront have helped the company: We can now think about the skills the organization is going to need in the future and train employees in these skills.

And everything runs smoothly as an integral part of the intranet employee experience.

The next step is to add more engineering content via SCORM from sources like LinkedIn Learning and others. Getting access to knowledge and learning in an easy and convenient way is a key aspect of Vössing’s digital workplace. The future builds on us.

Bernd Gewehr

Head of IT, Vössing