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Similar a The Balancing Act: Accelerating product adoption throughout the Extended Enterprise while growing the Education Services business
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The Balancing Act: Accelerating product adoption throughout the Extended Enterprise while growing the Education Services business
- 1. @CSODConvergence @CornerstoneInc #CSODConf16 The Balancing Act Accelerating Product Adoption While Also Supporting the Bottom Line
- 2. @CSODConvergence @CornerstoneInc #CSODConf16 The Balancing Act Adoption Margins
- 3. @CSODConvergence @CornerstoneInc #CSODConf16 About Calix Business: Broadband access systems and software Customers: Communications service providers Reach: 85 countries Employees: 900+ Learner(s): Technicians, CSRs, Net Ops, Engineers Education Services team of 6!!
- 4. @CSODConvergence @CornerstoneInc #CSODConf16 Strategic Enablers Calix Customer Service Education Services • Streamline broadband network infrastructure •Support deployment and operations •Self-service resources and tools • Develop and validate knowledge, skills, and best practices • Achieve business goals • Communications and readiness • Measure, improve, expandAdoption Margins • Achieve operational efficiencies • Enable self-service • Streamline delivery
- 5. @CSODConvergence @CornerstoneInc #CSODConf16 Calix Education Services Model How is it sold? •Attached to sale •Post-sales Who is doing the selling? •Primarily Field Sales teams Pricing •Standard and custom SKUs •POs •Training Units •Credit Cards Transaction Snapshot Training Units POs Credit Cards Coupons 25% 22%16% 37%
- 6. @CSODConvergence @CornerstoneInc #CSODConf16 The “Before” State Feature-poor user-interface Time-consuming workflows Disconnected from enterprise
- 7. @CSODConvergence @CornerstoneInc #CSODConf16 Plan for Improving Adoption • Study learners1 • Prepare learners for change2 • Drive awareness3 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 16 to 19 years 20 to 24 years 25 to 34 years 35 to 44 years 45 to 54 years 55 to 64 years 65 years and over Wired telecommunication carriers' labor force Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, United States Department of Labor 45 years
- 11. @CSODConvergence @CornerstoneInc #CSODConf16 The First Six Months 5543 823 537 Total Active Users Partner Employee Customer 71% 16% 8% 4% 1% Catalog Utilization Online Course Session Test Video Material Top 5 Online Course Completions 43 43 79 86 112Getting Started with Calix Academy Networking Basics Active Ethernet Overview CMS Overview C7 Overview
- 12. @CSODConvergence @CornerstoneInc #CSODConf16 Plan for Increased Margins •Achieve operational efficiencies •Enable self-service Work cost reduction before deployment •Reduce cost of instructor-led training •Reduce course development time Streamline Education Services delivery
- 13. @CSODConvergence @CornerstoneInc #CSODConf16@CSODConvergence @CornerstoneInc #CSODConf16 Process Improvement
- 14. @CSODConvergence @CornerstoneInc #CSODConf16 Technology Integrations Partner EmployeeCustomer
- 15. @CSODConvergence @CornerstoneInc #CSODConf16 Streamline Delivery Virtual Classroom Blended Learning Paths Optimize Development Time
- 16. @CSODConvergence @CornerstoneInc #CSODConf16 The “After” State… and Beyond Pre-paid Lab Time Subscriptions Order operations integration Service Station integration
- 17. @CSODConvergence @CornerstoneInc #CSODConf16@CSODConvergence @CornerstoneInc #CSODConf16 The Balancing Act Now
Notas del editor
- Hello, my name is Aarthi. I have responsibility for Calix Education Services. Q: Can I get a show of hands? How many Education Services folks are in the room? Q: How many delivering technical training? So, we’re a P&L and part of a larger Customer Service organization. However, our strategic objectives are tied to both enablement and maintaining margins. And, a big driver of customer enablement is Education Services. We’ve recently deployed Calix Academy powered by Cornerstone’s EXE and are really excited by the growth in adoption of the solution by our learners. So, I am here to talk to you about how we planned for adoption. But, as those of us in Education Services know, there is another organizational objective we have to take into consideration and that is how do we maintain the margin for our business. I came across a recent article by the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA) that said that margins for technology organizations such as ours typically hover around 50%. Q: How many of you in this room meet or consistently exceed this number? So, I think you’ll all recognize that there is this balancing act. Wondering how can we improve my team’s productivity, lower costs. How can we optimize our internal processes and ultimately improve the quality of the services we deliver so our customers see us as a valuable resource and keep coming back.
- Here’s a little bit about our company. Calix is a leading provider of broadband access systems and software. Our products are sold to Communication Service Providers in 85 countries. Our customer networks together serve over 100 million subscriber lines. We went live with a Cornerstone-powered learning portal called Calix Academy in September of 2015. We have over 6000 users in Calix Academy- predominantly customers and partners, but certain groups of employees as well. We’re in the business of providing technical training. So, our learners comprise of technicians, engineers, CSRs, etc that are employed by our customers, which is a mix of small, medium, and large CSPs. You’re probably thinking this is a tech-savvy audience- how hard can it be to drive adoption? But, we discovered that was not necessarily the case- but more on that later. What I find most remarkable is that we support the learning needs of growing external user base with a staff of 6 which includes 3 trainers, 3 course developers, and 1 formidable TRAINING ADMINISTRATOR who is the room today. Gina, can you stand up? So, with a staff of this size and the balancing act I mentioned before, productivity and process optimization are always at the forefront of our minds. Today I want to share the highlights of our journey so far in trying to balance the emerging learning and certification needs of our customers and channel partners while supporting our services bottom line.
- We recognized early on that efforts to drive product adoption and grow margins would be key enablers of our strategic goals. Calix goals: Simplicity: Streamline the broadband network infrastructure and processes to lower operating costs, gain capital efficiencies, and facilitate subscriber transactions. Connected: Allow subscribers to effortlessly access the content they want, when they want it, at the quality level they desire. Everywhere: Deliver an optimal broadband service experience through flexibility, mobility, and unconstrained access. Calix Customer Services goals: Enable deployment, operation, maintenance Deliver on-demand, self-service support, resources, and tools Education Services goals: Educating customers and increasing their confidence in our products is an important driver for adoption. Allowing customers to have access to training resources and tools go a long way in supporting their ability to deliver quality services to their customers. So, having a platform like Calix Academy to be the go-to resource to develop and validate knowledge, skills, and best practices quickly established itself as key strategic enabler of adoption. We undertook some key steps to drive adoption: Develop a deep understanding of the business goals Develop a solution that people love and that helps them achieve business goals Improve solution based on user feedback As a P&L, maintaining or improving margins is also a key strategic enabler of our business goals. We also undertook steps to lay the foundation to grow Education Services margins: … In later slides, I will share with you examples of specific actions we took around these behaviors.
- Here’s a little bit about our Education Services sales model. Training courses and certification exams are typically attached to the original sale of the product. In some cases, certification requirements are also tied to customer support entitlements. This has worked really well because customers know the total cost of ownership and implementation and can allocate the budget. It also allows for faster and better deployment and ultimately improved product adoption (we hope). Now, we also sell our services post-sales. Customers return to Calix Academy to purchase training and certification based on the learning and development needs of their staff. So, it becomes important from a user adoption perspective that we make it possible for our learners to establish a positive relationship with Education Services via Calix Academy. Who is doing the selling? Primarily our Field Sales teams. We don’t have a dedicated Education Services Sales rep (yet). So, enabling our Field sales teams is a critical part of our GTM plan for Education Services. During our deployment of Calix Academy, we made sure they were addressed by our change management efforts. And, lastly about our Pricing. We have a price list with standard and custom SKUs. Some customers purchase training credits at the time they order equipment. These have an expiration date. If they’re not used by a given date, their amount is released to revenue. Other customers create POs or use credit cards for ordering specific items. We invoice customers only when the services are rendered. From the Chart, you’ll get an idea of the breakdown of transactions by the method of payment. So, we have a pretty complex transaction processing workflow behind the scenes which we invested significant amounts of time with various organizations to understand and
- And, now back to what keeps me up at night- that balancing act. How can we drive adoption but maintain margins at the same time? To understand what we were up against in the adoption realm, I want to paint the “before” picture. What was life like before Cornerstone EXE? Back in 2014, Calix Specialist certification was a key driver for Calix training. Over 1000 Calix certifications had been earned in 2014 alone. 587 Individuals earned 1+ Certification. 359 Accounts earned 1+ Certification. Certifications were perceived to validate knowledge and expertise and also drive adoption of Calix throughout the customer’s access network. In 2014, we saw X ILT course completions. Keep in mind that at the time ILT was the only way to prepare for the Specialist certifications. Certifications were linked to Customer Support entitlements. All said and done, the certification program was driving heavy traffic to our then learning portal. So, we conducted a customer satisfaction survey regarding the certification program wanting to learn whether customers perceived value in a Calix certification. We learned a lot from the results of that survey including the level of difficulty, quality of the preparatory training, and so on. But, we also received a lot of not-so-favorable feedback about the certification experience including enrollment, payment, testing, and so on. I want to read for you an actual customer comment from that survey: “Registering for the Test was kind of a pain. Getting in, and having to save the authorization form to my desktop, re-open it, sign it, then go back to the calix registration, upload it and send it... Seemed like a pretty lengthy process. It was also kinda tricky knowing what to click on - the View/Download link, or the download now link - which only opened up another instruction guide to follow. Other then the registration, everything else went smoothly, and I thought the tests were a good challenge, and not to easy.” Now, hold that customer experience in your mind. We also evaluated for the purpose of the BRD that the number of exam registration processed in a year was 450. And, the time to process a single exam registration from customer (from the initial request to posting results in the LMS): 1.5 hours. Similarly, the number of dedicated classes delivered per year: 66, And, the time to process a single dedicated class registration from customer (from the initial request, roster creation, Webex setup to posting results and invoicing): 3.5 hours. Due to the lack of automation, just these training coordination workflows consumed an estimated ½ FTE. At one point, it got so crazy, we had to hire intern to assist the Training Coordinator at the time. These time-consuming workflows were driving up costs in part due to virtually no interoperability with other applications used in training delivery. For example, the test administration tool was independent of the LMS. The registrations were accepted in the learning portal, then tests were setup for users in the tool, and users were sent links to the test. Upon completion, the results had to be manually entered into the LMS. As I mentioned earlier, that workflow took 1.5 hours for a single exam sitting. It became apparent early on that the obstacles to usability and process improvement needed to be addressed.
- It also became imperative that we needed to work adoption well before deployment and continue to drive awareness and excitement after go-live. I would categorize our efforts to plan for adoption pre-deployment into two general areas: Studying our Learners and Preparing Learners for Change. To study our learners we took on what is sometimes called “Usability engineering”. It is defined as a measure of how intuitive, efficient, and task-enabling an application is. So, the first step we took in planning for adoption is identifying different types of learners that would be impacted by Calix Academy and modeling the tasks they perform. We documented everything from search, catalog, registration, payment, certification, transcripts, reporting and so on. You may be wondering. Well, all this is pretty straightforward LMS functionality. But, we learned something interesting about our customers along the way. They are not as savvy with GUIs. In fact, some have never shopped online with a credit card, let alone training. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated in 2015 that the Median age for an individual employed in the Wired telecommunications carriers industry is 45 years of age. Forget the millennials and their mobile devices, we quickly realized that our learners were going to need a lot of hand-holding to meet their learning and development goals. So, we started thinking about ways to prepare our end-users, our learners for change well before go-live. Enabling self-service was a goal from the get go not only to provide more control to the learner but also allow us to reduce our operational costs as much as possible. Why is self-service so important? I want to share with you Daniel Suwyn’s quote which sums it up quite nicely. “People... don't simply fill roles in the company... see them as individuals who could learn, who are adults and who with the right information at the right time from the right people could make good decisions for both themselves and for the company, could take responsibility for their own behavior.” Next, we wanted to plan a release strategy to maximize adoption. We wanted to drive awareness and excitement by showing people what’s in it for them. This where Marketing comes in. Right from the branding, we involved them every step of the way. So, they were able to help us identify planned launches or events and allowed us to piggy-back on those. We were also fortunate to be able to leverage existing Communication channels.
- So, here are some examples of how we leveraged existing Marketing and communication channels. During implementation, we requested their branding expertise to come up with a logo for Calix Academy. We proceeded to update our training materials including course books, learning paths, course descriptions, templates, and so on with the new logo. We also learned that Marketing was targeting the release of a new Calix Web experience. So, we timed the launch of Calix Academy with the launch of the new Calix.com. What this allowed us to do was to position Calix Academy as part of redesign of the Education Services Web presence. In addition to the logo and the Web pages, we also got the word out through our monthly Calix Community Newsletter that goes out to about 10000 customers. And, last but not the least, we also made sure Calix Academy got a mention at the annual Calix User Group conference in Las Vegas. This event is attended by a 1000+ customers. On Day 1, we have a Calix Community Mixer which serves as a showcase for various Customer Service organizations. At the Education Services station, we had a running slideshow introducing customers to Calix Academy and how easy it was to register for training or get certified. It allowed us to interact with customers first hand and answer their questions and concerns. The interesting thing about these examples is that it leveraged existing resources. So, there was no impact to the cost and scope of the deployment. Q: Has anyone else leveraged Marketing in any interesting ways to drive adoption?
- Post-deployment, we continue to find ways to leverage existing communication channels to increase awareness of learning offerings on Calix Academy. Having been on the internal training side of the house, I am well aware of the motivations for employee training. Whether it is for compliance, field readiness, the organization’s strategic need or part of an individual’s L&D plan, for most part, you build a learning platform and they will come. In Education Services, however, what motivates a customer to purchase training is for most part to develop a specific skill that enables them to serve their own customers better. For example, Calix customers want to acquire the knowledge and best practices to build sound broadband access networks. They want to ensure they are able to deliver quality residential and business services to their subscribers. In other words, the Education Services we deliver to our customers have to be enable them to drive adoption at higher margins. So, in some ways, our goals mirror those of our customers. So, making sure information about training and access to Calix Academy is available wherever the customer goes. So, post-deployment, we continue to make an aggressive effort to get the word out about Calix Academy offerings in as many locations as possible so customers recognize learning as a valuable resource in their efforts to acquire the knowledge and skills that help them be successful. One such location is the Calix Community where we publish our weekly learning calendar. The other location is our monthly solution update on My Calix. Even when customers are logged into Calix Academy, Gina setup a login message as well as a widget on the Welcome page reminding them about upcoming events.
- And, of course adoption is ultimately about the success of our end users. So, here are some examples of our efforts to educate our end users about the new learner experience. One of our course developers created a Getting Started with Calix Academy video curriculum which was hugely popular.
- Here are two examples of the results of our efforts to prepare learners for the Calix Academy experience. It’s worth noting that during this time, our Education Services Web pages were also among the top 20 pages visited since launch of the Calix.com Web experience.
- As noted on the previous slides, the adoption of Calix Academy and the growth in utilization was a positive outcome. To a large extent, it validated our efforts to deploy a solution that met our learner’s needs around ease-of-use. Now, I want to shift gears to talk about the proverbial bottom line. Our leaders don’t just care about our ability to deliver a high quality customer experience but they want you to make that happen without a significant impact to cost. So, the question becomes how can we improve our productivity, optimize our internal processes and ultimately improve the quality of the services we deliver so our customers see us as a valuable resource and keep coming back- and all this while maintaining or increasing our margins. One of the key decisions that we made early on that probably had a significant impact on cost was that we decided to keep the implementation costs to a minimum. So, even though we went with Appirio’s implementation services package, the team on the Calix side was pretty much me and Gina. We handled everything from the requirements gathering, design decisions, integrations, data migration, and so on. Our Appirio consultants were just phenomenal but for a lot of the configuration decisions, Gina and I had to roll up our sleeves, do our homework, understand the processes, and really learn various aspects of a technology. Not only did this keep the implementation costs under control but it also allowed us to achieve efficiencies in the long term. It presented both Gina and myself a fantastic growth and development opportunity. So, for the next few minutes, I want to share with you a few examples of our efforts to work cost reduction before deployment. As we spoke to various users, we recognized organizational touchpoints. So, we made an effort to engage the leadership in those organizations early and often. We asked for help to promote Calix Academy. We also asked their expectations (“How can we help you help us to move from the current state to the desired state?”) to ensure their constituents were ready for the process improvements. Whether its IT, Sales, Marketing and Finance, when you speak with representatives from these organizations, it definitely pays to do your homework. Familiarize yourself with their strategic goals and on-going initiatives. For example, IT may be concerned with security while Marketing may be concerned with branding. Be prepared to respond to their questions and concerns. And, most importantly expect skepticism! Also, when you engage with multiple stakeholders, there are bound to be conflicting requirements. Expect these to constrain your schedule and budget. And, you will find yourself making tradeoffs. So, you owe it to your stakeholders to clearly communicate goals and timeline for change.
- Achieving operational efficiencies meant we had to undertake some fairly involved process improvement activities including mapping some of our key process workflows such as Payments. I was going to show you our Payment process map but our CSM rightfully advised against it. When you look at process maps, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the complexity. And, the first time we went through it, we got overwhelmed too. Segue to Dilbert… But there is a method to the madness. Having a process mapped out is really helpful to facilitate process improvement discussions. It can also be a guide post while making design and configuration decisions. It also serves as a measure of success of how well your deployment meets the process needs of the organizations involved. We conducted fairly in-depth research, a number of interviews to understand the inputs, outputs and dependencies for the payment as well as the cancellation workflow. The biggest concern for Finance and Order Operations was the ability for us to minimally impact their existing internal processes. Again, to my earlier point, it pays to do your homework when speaking to these groups. The better informed you are about their concerns the higher likelihood they will support any process improvements. In fact, before the process improvements went into effect, Gina was experiencing the daily overhead from having to create and/or release Sales Orders on a per order basis and that too via email. In addition, there was a daily report that she ran for all the transactions and it took about 2-3 hours to build a single report. Being able to leverage the Transactions report in Calix Academy reduced this time and the possibility of errors as well.
- We also sought to achieve operational efficiencies by implementing technology integrations. If you recall our “Before” state, I mentioned time-consuming workflows were driving up costs in part due to virtually no interoperability with other Enterprise applications. So, as part of the deployment, we had to work closely with IT to setup various integration touchpoints for Calix Academy. One of our goals was to time the Calix Academy deployment with the rollout of the new Calix Web experience. A part of that effort was to ensure that all Cloud-based applications in the IT ecosystem were using Salesforce as the user identity provider. Other integration touchpoints included the Salesforce CRM for outbound certification data feed, Cybersource for processing credit card payments and Webex for virtual ILT. Just like we did with Finance, we had to map out the integration’s architecture and document the data flows in terms of input, output, type of data, and the frequency. Salesforce Integration SSO, Web Services(IDF and ODF) Cybersource Integration Tokenization Some of you are probably thinking, “My responsibility is for learning experience. Isn’t this really IT’s realm?” I am here to tell you that I am no IT expert either. But, in an effort to drive down cost, we took on a number of roles for the purposes of the implementation. Not only did this teach us a lot about the underlying technologies but it also allowed us to have an end-to-end view of the solution. Why is this important? Again, remember the process example on the previous slide, having the process mapped out allows you to effectively address process improvements which ultimately drives down cost. Similarly, having a detailed solution architecture mapped out allows you to identify and recommend future integration touchpoints which can in turn lead to increases in productivity. Q: Anyone with a Salesforce IDP or CRM integration? Cybersource?
- In addition to planning for cost reduction during planning and deployment, Calix Academy afforded us other ways to improve Education Services margins. Example 1: Virtual Classroom The out-of-the-box integration with Webex Training Center really allowed us to reduce the time and effort needed to setup and manage virtual classrooms and labs. Q: How many of you deliver virtual ILT today? So, you’re probably benefitting from: Reduced travel costs, classroom setup and equipment ship costs Flexible schedules to broaden customer audience: Geos, time zones etc Different modalities: Public, dedicated, labs Leverage existing instructor skill set Example 2: Blended Learning Path Where Calix Academy helps: Support of multiple delivery formats Example 3: Reduce course development time Q: How many of you work in a product development environment that follows the Agile methodology? Getting involved early in the product life cycle ensures our instructional designers can establish learning objectives early and align with user stories (Agile) Where Calix Academy helps: Ease of publishing and maintaining catalogs; “What’s New” curriculum- publish learning nuggets quickly and frequently while major courses are being revised When learning objectives are aligned with user stories, courses will tend to be highly utilized due to relevance; Highly utilized courses tend to drive up margins Where Calix Academy helps: Allows to monitor utilization and make decisions on which courses are worth maintaining and which ones need to be archived Having a higher number of individuals who are certified allows you to modularize and build content over and above a baseline set of pre-requisites Where Calix Academy helps: Easy access to certification testing and visibility in Salesforce CRM for the business to validate customer’s knowledge and skills. Certification is tied to support entitlements. So, with Test Engine
- The picture I showed for the “Before” state was of a Civil War era home in Mississippi. If someone lived in it, they probably had no visibility to the outside world. It was probably not a welcoming sight. One can only imagine in what state the amenities were in. But, it appears to have been restored to the home on the right. Nice, eh? Definitely habitable. Other than the new porch, paint, foundation, or chimney, probably, the most telling change was the windows that allowed outsiders to look in but those on the inside to communicate with the outside world. In some ways, that’s what Calix Academy did for Education Services. It allowed us to provide a seamless user experience for both learners and the learning administrator while achieving interoperability with other business applications. We were able to streamline the services delivery as well. It’s been a busy 8 months since the launch of Calix Academy. I am really pleased by how well our customer and partner community has received the Cornerstone-powered solution. But, we are by no means at the finish line, if there is such a thing. In some ways, its also about continuous improvement! Having done all that process mapping homework allowed us to really to develop a long term plan for Calix Academy- not just as an LMS but as a vital resource in the enterprise ecosystem. And, to achieve that the integrations have to be seamless. While we have made significant progress on the Salesforce IDP and CRM side, we hope to streamline the order operations steps through possibly a backend integration with our order management system. Remember that complex workflow I showed a few slides ago. My goal is to shave off at least 3-4 boxes to achieve further efficiencies. Another area we’re looking at is to be able to facilitate new revenues. Two areas which show some promise are… Achieve further operational efficiencies Order operations integration Facilitate new revenues Pre-paid Lab time Subscriptions
- So, now, I think of this Balancing Act in a different way. With Calix Academy, I feel like we have achieved a certain core strength with the Cornerstone platform. Through continuous monitoring particularly in the area of Analytics, we hope to leverage the platform further to reduce costs, support additional revenue streams and improve margins. Thank you!