QIAGEN Academy upgrades learning platform with Totara and close SAP integration

QIAGEN is the leading global provider of Sample to Insight solutions to transform biological materials into valuable molecular insights. QIAGEN currently has more than 4,300 employees at more than 35 sites throughout the world. The company offers more than 500 core products, which are sold in over 80 countries in a large number of variations and combinations, and is constantly expanding its portfolio.

The Challenge

QIAGEN’s focus on highly innovative solutions demands all its players – employees as well as distribution partners – to get trained consistently on all new products, treatments etc. Given its global structure the company decided on an online scalable learning approach to handle this challenge.

They were looking for a learning management solution that would integrate with the existing IT infrastructure as well as organize and manage all training activities.

QIAGEN already had originally started with the implementation of a simple e-learning platform based on the Open Source LMS Moodle. This acted as a standalone solution for product training.

When MULTA MEDIO’s experts were engaged they looked at extending this solution with Totara Learn so that it was fully integrated. One of the key success factors of the QIAGEN Academy project was connecting the learning processes with the IT infrastructure (especially SAP) in order to reduce administration costs and improve processes.

The new solution also should have a modern interface to make navigation intuitive both on PCs and on mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets.

Finally, all of the existing resources on the former Moodle system including user assignments, permissions, the users’ learning progress etc. had to be preserved or migrated to a new system.

The Totara Learn Solution

MULTA MEDIO worked in close collaboration with the QIAGEN training team to establish the new QIAGEN Academy. The joint team analysed the requirements and identified relevant quick-wins to give the project momentum and also to gain improvements cost-effectively.

The team was able to upgrade the existing Moodle system to Totara Learn within just a few weeks after the project kick-off. This platform provided the base for further enhancements. After the migration of the base system, additional features available in Totara were configured and added step-by-step. This way, people at QIAGEN could start to profit from the system and achieve benefits in the early stages of the project.

The features implemented for QIAGEN include:

• Personalised user dashboard All relevant courses, tasks and alerts at a glance – personalised for every user
• Manager-specific team overview Transparent overview of all user- and learning-related information for a manager’s team
• Improved user management  – Synchronisation of all user data with SAP on a daily basis, reducing costs for user administration significantly
• Audience specific reporting – Provision of conclusive and flexible reports for learners, their managers, trainers and training coordinators through Totara’s built-in Report Builder.
• Process automation – Better efficiency through automated training processes, enabled by the Totara Program feature or dynamic, rule-based audiences etc.
• Integrated training management – Joint management of both online and classroom trainings in the LMS.

To motivate learners using the training resources for their daily business, attractive content is the key. The joint team therefore developed a toolset that provided best-practice examples for a variety of learning scenarios. This toolset includes low cost solutions such as presentations with voice-overs embedded in a special framework, that allows users to navigate and search the content in an intuitive way, as well as highly sophisticated and interactive web-based training formats.

Results

Totara Learn has proven to be a flexible technical LMS platform for the QIAGEN Academy. There have been a number of key factors in the platform’s success including:

• the system’s wide range of additional features, that support a broad range of training-related activities in daily business
• the ability to integrate the platform with the wider company technical infrastructure
• the system’s ability to act as a central hub for managing training activities of all business areas at various organisational level
• the integrated management of both online and face-to-face trainings which will increase efficiency and allow significant cost savings.

MULTA MEDIO used to be our partner for maintaining the Moodle platform in the past. When we faced the challenge to improve the platform and urgently needed to add some important features, MULTA MEDIO turned out to be the reliable partner installing and setting up the LMS, Totara Learn, with a perfect migration of all existing data.

Also now MULTA MEDIO is our partner to sustainably support, maintain and customize Totara to our needs. – Kai Niethammer, HR Manager E-Learning

MULTA MEDIO and QIAGEN are working on further improvements to the platform by developing custom plugins to fit QIAGEN’s specific needs. Examples are manager-driven bulk course enrolments for all their team members or enhanced workflow automation within courses through automated action triggers. The open and modular system architecture of Totara Learn has proved the perfect platform. It has allowed the company to benefit from low cost core functionality and to use the open source flexibility to develop custom solutions for its particular needs.