Siemens Corporation is a United States subsidiary of Siemens AG, the global powerhouse focusing on electrification, automation, and digitalization. As one of the world’s largest producers of energy-efficient, resource-saving technologies, Siemens is a leading supplier of systems for power generation and transmission as well as medical diagnosis. Siemens employs approximately 80,000 people throughout all 50 states and Puerto Rico.
OpenSesame is the elearning solution Siemens Corporation relies on to provide its workforce with the best learning courses available. “Training is our future,” says Richard Voorberg, Vice President of Global Services Operations, Power Services for Siemens Corporation. “Technology is getting more and more complex, so we need to have employees that are more knowledgeable and able to add the most value to our company and our customers.”
Challenges for the Learning Organization
“Elearning is a critical part of developing employees in large organizations like Siemens,” says Casper Moerck, learning technology manager for Siemens Corporation. “We are trying to solve infrastructure issues surrounding energy and healthcare globally. Keeping up with those challenges requires a strong learning organization that knows how to deliver for its employees and its customers.”
Some of the challenges Siemens Corporation was facing with its previous e-learning initiatives were managing the multiple vendors required to offer the range of courses the company wanted to provide, the varying quality of the courses themselves, and a lack of service from the e-learning course providers. “In addition, we had to really be very involved with the integration of each vendor into our learning management system (LMS), which took a great deal of internal resources,” adds Moerck.
Expert Curation
With a highly dispersed learner base and self-funded learning organization, the more support the Siemens learning campus team can obtain from its vendors, the easier their jobs are. OpenSesame collaborates with the Siemens team to find, select, and evaluate the e-learning courses they need as well as assist with improving e-learning use. “I like the fact that they aggregate content from best in-class publishers,” says Lisa Lang, head of learning campus for Siemens Corporation. “They look at each discipline, area or topic that we need to cover within our catalog and find the best courses and publishers, so we don’t have to do the work ourselves.”
Streamlined Integration
The company moved to OpenSesame three years ago, taking advantage of the seamless integration with its LMS. “The integration with our LMS was a strong selling point,” says Moerck. “And managing OpenSesame courses within our LMS is easy thanks to the API integration. When you’re able to integrate a new e-learning vendor into your learning platform within a couple of months, that says a lot.”
LMS integration makes it easier to quickly add elearning courses to the LMS catalog. Siemens can preview courses, read reviews, and research publisher information before purchasing any course from OpenSesame. Once purchased, new courses sync instantly from OpenSesame into its LMS.
30 Percent Increase in E-Learning Use
Finding and deploying courses is only part of the training program journey. E-learning use continues to be a key metric for any learning and development initiative, validating that learners are using the courses you have made available. “We’ve seen a 30 percent increase in usage of our e-learning program since implementing OpenSesame,” notes Moerck. “I see people benefiting from our e-learning programs on a daily basis. We are providing value to both to the individual learners and to the company.” Furthermore, connecting business results to training is paramount for any organization to recognize a return on investment on training.