Case Study: Totara's Innovative solution in Multi-Device Learning for Alembic

Alembic Pharmaceuticals‘ legacy is over 100 years old. What began in 1907 with an aim to revolutionize the Pharmaceutical and Drug industry has today become one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in India. APL also has filing across Canada, Europe, Australia, South Africa and Brazil. 

The Challenge

Alembic was already using another LMS which didn’t fit their requirement of having a customizable LMS that could be developed and designed to address the employee training needs by designing personalized learning programs and training solutions. 

Just a simple learning management system (LMS) could never address the issues and difficulties that were faced by Alembic. For an organization that operates in multiple cities across India, which required continuous round-the-clock learning options for thousands of users – only a scalable, innovative, and flexible system like Totara Learn was the right choice. 

The Solution

Alembic’s main concerns, which were neglected by their previous LMS, were the missing options of offline learning and absence of team and adaptive learning management. For an organisation like Alembic which has employees pan-India, Edvanta needed to provide a solution that would break down the geographical barriers, provide easy access and learning on the go. This was all possible by implementing Totara Learn and a supported learning mobile app. 

With an adept learning app on the smartphone, Alembic’s user engagement reports soared up. Now, with Totara Learn, the obstacles of complex hierarchies within the organisation were simplified by Audience and Team management features. Training and organizational compliance also improved with effective reporting and certification plans embedded in the LMS.

Now, the user has his/her personalized dashboard, which gives them insight to their recent learning, a look on the leaderboard motivating him/her to perform and participate with more zest and the easy-to-use mobile app allows them to keep up-to-date with industry news and announcements as well. The push notifications and reminders ensure that no assignment or quiz is ever missed. 

Totara Learn report scheduling options allowed the L&D team to have an around-the-clock update on all assessments and evaluate the engagement of the learners. Even when a Team Leader is out for business, he/she receives the updated reports directly on their mail with the scheduled reporting feature. The course creator also now gets to experiment with various course formats, completion criteria and organize face-to-face seminars with ease. Thousands of users are able to take online quizzes from the comfort of their own device. The mutual effort of tests and reporting has decreased dramatically. 

All in all, Totara Learn along with the mobile app became a practical solution for Alembic to meet its requirements of continuous knowledge transfer on products and updates. 

Edvanta took over the following operations for Alembic:

  • Part I: Design, development, and implementation of LMS and Learner Mobile App; 
  • Part II: Further development and design
  • Part III: Hosting, administration, maintenance, and support of the LMS and mobile app

“The service and support provided by Edvanta team is excellent. We have been using Totara Learn LMS in all our training programs for new employees as well as for existing employees. This has contributed significantly in developing their knowledge and skill.” 
– Sanket Joshi, Senior Executive, Alembic

The Result

With feature-rich Totara Learn, Alembic’s employees were easily mapped to correct departments and positions, utilising hierarchy and dynamic audience functionalities. Courses and other learning resources were also categorised adequately such that employees with a particular position or department get access to a particular course. 

Users were allowed to access the course for an unlimited period of time, which was not possible in their previous LMS. On the other hand, some of the courses were configured with a certain start/end date or completion criteria so that employees don’t have access to the learning material until they meet the completion criteria. 

Certificate activity was also customised with Alembic branding and was offered on the basis of scores. This was also not possible in the previous LMS. Employees were also able to download the certificates. Other features that helped Alembic increase employee retention rates and get higher ROI were Leaderboard, Forum, Report Builder for Scheduled Reports, Feedback, and Quiz. 

“As Alembic was on to manual learning process, implementing Totara Learn has improved learning experience for the organisation. Improved process time drastically. Saved a lot of time of our medical reps. Also the interactive UI made things very simple for all users. All the data uploaded is well managed and understandable to all viewers and providing authorisation is so convenient.”  
– Paurav Andheria, Manager (IT)

Customised Mobile App, available in both Android and iOS, was helpful in allowing users, located in low-bandwidth areas, to access course content from anywhere and from any device. Since both learning content and assessment activities could be synced offline in the app, users could access the same while traveling. This helped in conducting online quizzes for more than 3000 users simultaneously. This not only increased the ROI for Alembic but also minimized a lot of manual work with regard to reporting and user management.