Jaguar Land Rover goes for speed

Citation

Saunders, D. (2011), "Jaguar Land Rover goes for speed", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 10 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2011.37210aag.001

Jaguar Land Rover goes for speed

Article Type: e-HR From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 10, Issue 1

How technology is changing the way HR works

Jaguar Land Rover is a business built around two great British car brands that design, engineer and manufacture in the UK. It is part of Tata Motors, India’s largest automobile company, and has a global base of dealerships supplying its products to the user. The company’s training and development operation, therefore, caters to a sales force of over 60,000 dealers working out of 2,500 dealerships in more than 150 countries worldwide.

Disconnected by geography, language and culture, one thing unites the operation’s global sales team – everyone at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) understands the power of speed. Responding fast and remaining firmly on course are the guiding principles that drive learning and development at JLR today. If one of JLR’s competitors launches a new model then JLR’s sales and support operations need to be confident that all staff across the dealer network can be equipped with the specific knowledge they need to sell effectively against new competition now, not five months from now. If an unexpected service issue occurs on any one of JLR’s vehicles, then every technician across the network must have access to the critical information required to fix it fast, whether they’re working out of the busiest urban dealership or any number of smaller rural locations.

Making the most of e-learning

Addressing these challenges, in 2009 JLR established the Jaguar Land Rover Academy to provide training to technical staff and the dealers selling its products. Based in Warwick, the Academy uses its new e-learning infrastructure to help support training initiatives pioneered on-site within a 4,000 m² complex that includes a workshop, a training zone and 16 classrooms. As the role of e-learning develops in the mix further, new opportunities to access training initiatives from anywhere across the operation’s global dealer network will dramatically extend the Academy’s reach.

JLR first took to e-learning ten years ago when it was still in its infancy. Like many early adopters, programs were often born out of the raw promise and potential that comes with pioneering spirit rather than the fine-tuned experience that JLR is able to implement today. Built to accommodate users who speak more than 20 different main languages and operate in highly contrasting technical and cultural environments, Jaguar Landrover’s e-learning site now receives more than one million page hits each month globally and supports central and localised training initiatives in areas like sales, new product launches and technical skills development.

Twelve months ago JLR decided to streamline its content development processes and adopt one single authoring tool for all of its learning content across all its markets. Mohive replaced the training operation’s entire portfolio of more than half a dozen authoring tools, which previously produced content for use online or via CD-ROM. In a business sector that thrives most when it is most responsive, Jaguar Landrover’s decision to streamline was born from the training operation’s initiatives to ensure staff have access to modern, real-time learning tools capable of delivering genuine first mover advantage across the company’s dealer network.

Post a rigorous selection process, the operation is now fast tracking roll-out for the rapid e-learning solution from Mohive, a supplier of on-demand solutions for facilitating knowledge transfer, product training, and e-learning courses. Mohive’s people have been supporting the global roll-out by hosting a number of workshops for JLR’s content creation companies in the UK and around the world, and JLR’s content creation agents are already starting to see the rewards.

Consolidating content creation

Early data coming out of JLR’s training operation indicates that when content creators use the Mohive solution it reduces authoring time by between 80 and 90 per cent – a process that routinely took anything from five to ten weeks is now taking just five days thanks to the Mohive system’s strengths in terms of workflow, which allows the sometimes disparate teams involved in the authoring process to work more seamlessly, and usability, which ensures that more content is right first time.

JLR has the ambition to develop courses in five days and, to this end, expects that its entire UK and international course portfolio will be created on Mohive by the end of the year. Creating and delivering content that’s really relevant and tactical now, keeps the business on course for tomorrow and such content can be available in weeks. That’s the key strategic push for learning in JLR today.

David Saunders and Lars UnnebergJaguar Land Rover Academy and Lars Unneberg is at Mohive.

About the authors

David Saunders is Head of Dealer Training at Jaguar Land Rover Academy, the largest and most comprehensively equipped automotive retail training facility in the UK. David Saunders can be contacted at: techacad@jaguar.com

Lars Unneberg is CEO at Mohive, the software company behind the award-winning Mohive eLearning Publishing System used by Jaguar Landrover, Tesco, BBC and other global enterprises. Lars Unneberg can be contacted at: info@mohive.com