The Client
Whitbread PLC is the UK's leading hospitality company, managing the number one brands in hotels, restaurants and health and fitness clubs, including Premier Travel Inn, Brewers Fayre, Beefeater, Costa, T.G.I. Friday's and David Lloyd Leisure, and a strategic investment in Pizza Hut (UK).

The WOLF Programme represents Whitbread’s largest business process transformation programme of recent times.

Having selected Oracle’s Applications Release 11i E-Business suite, the focus of the Project, was the full integration, modernisation and upgrade of Whitbread's Business Systems and processes.

The scope of the Project included Human Resources, Finance, Payroll and Supply Chain systems and processes across the group to ensure that the company is in the best possible shape for the future.

Datasky was selected as the specialist Oracle Training company to work closely with CSC and Whitbread on the design, build and delivery of this ambitious WOLF training programme.

The Challenge
The key Challenge of the roll out plan was the timely education and training of around 10,600 people across nine differenet companies.

With so many users to train the decision to implement an extensive web-based training programme using Oracle’s iLearning platform to run alongside traditional Classroom Based Instructor Led Training.

2180 attendees at education events
115 ILT Classroom based courses
1018 Training days delivered
1350 Classroom delegates

The Solution

Training Needs Analysis (TNA)
Datasky commenced the assignment with a detailed Training Needs Analysis (TNA) whose prime goal was to identify the best training and support approach for Whitbread’s diverse group of Oracle end users.

Using ‘Business Readiness’ Job-Role mapping techniques Datasky set about identifying the scope and user population that the training programme would be focused on.

Datasky established a precise set of training objectives and clear success evaluation criteria.

Pinpointing the appropriate amount of training for end users in any organisation is difficult because different users have different needs and varying degrees of understanding.

In addition, the quest to make training relevant creates the requirement to customising classes to fit the needs of the business.

Instructor Led Training (ILT)
Datasky strongly recommends that any training that involves new business software should be process driven and must provide hands-on use of the system by the users.

This can be best achieved in classroom-based training with a skilled instructor leading the group through a structured training course with full supporting materials for the participants.

This type of training is the best path for individuals whose knowledge is mission critical for performing business critical tasks within Oracle.

Training Material Development
Complex business systems necessitate the development of task-specific materials with process led scenarios that address the real-life jobs of trainees. This could only be accomplished by developing courseware tailored to Whitbread’s needs.

The Datasky team of specialist trainers set about designing and building 120 different classroom courses and specifying the content for over 80 different iLearning courses.

Each training course required the development of the course and its materials specific to Whitbread and the use of their system covering all Oracle Financials modules, iProcurement, HR, Payroll, Discoverer and System Administration.

i-Learning a must for Whitbread

With so many users to train in such a diverse population, Whitbread made the decision to implement an extensive web-based training programme using Oracle’s iLearning platform.

The prime driver was that with so many people, with hectic schedules, there was a strong desire to minimise the disruption that training on the new system would bring to them.

Having evaluated a number of alternatives it was concluded that e-learning, combined with traditional classroom training methods was the obvious solution.

i-Learning Strategy

The strategy was set to ensure that people could fit in their training whenever it best suits them within a given period of time.

Datasky’s consultants set about creating 22 complete curricula, delivering courses on in-house financial processes.

In order that people had access to a instance a separate and dedicated fully functioning Practice System was set up and refreshed on a regular basis.

In addition, Online access to Tutor Procedures and Navigation Instructions was made available to all users.

i-Learning courses developed

• iProcurement

• iExpenses

• Line Manager Self-service

• Employee Self-service

• Discoverer

i-Learning Statistics

10,600 Users active on iLearning
340 Courses built
52,000 Individual course enrollments
93% Critical course completion

How Does it Work?

“The courses run on the iLearning platform. We upload all the learners (in this case over 10,000) into the system and allocate them to the correct set of courses using the output from the Business Readiness "Job-Role" mapping.

The system track who has done what and gives each learner their own homepage with access to the courses they're enrolled on.

We've built a Discoverer end-user layer over the top of iLearning so that we can easily extract course completion stats by brand, area, site, or individual and export them to Excel for distribution to the business”

Jim Parish

Project Training Manager

For more information on Datasky Training Services Email info@datasky.com

Business Readiness
The on-line education and training programme included not only a series of specific process driven courses with system simulation, but also a number of Business Readiness driven modules:

Business Insight

Why?
What’s changing?
What does it mean to me?

Process Overview - the big picture

The Benefits

Cost Effectiveness
Combination of on site e-learning and traditional Classroom ILT training to over ten thousand users from 9 companies.

Customisation
Programme offered fully customised materials that mirrored Dairy Crests processes thereby eliminating the need for any additional training.

Sustainability
Steady state handover ensuring long term sustainability of the Training Programme.

Effectiveness
Datasky were able to meet the learning requirements at Whitbread using the solution most suitable to them.

Return on Investment
The benefits of having Educated users is already been felt throughout the company.