The White Company, a retail company specializing in stylish, white homewares, combines the highest quality with affordable prices and serves a global audience. For about five years, it has been on a journey to implement a learning management system (LMS). We had an opportunity to chat with Ben Brown, Learning & Development Manager at The White Company, to discuss how their journey led them to Kallidus.

Before Kallidus

The need for an LMS became apparent as the company sought to extend its reach beyond manual reporting and in-person training. With a small learning and development team serving almost 2,000 employees across 70 stores, head office, contact center, and distribution center, the company faced challenges in delivering content and tracking compliance effectively.

The primary challenge was the manual and time-consuming process of reporting, which lacked visibility and made it difficult to justify the budget and prove return on investment for learning and development initiatives. This was made apparent in multiple areas:

  • Tracking compliance became increasingly complex, and the company struggled to react quickly due to the lack of visibility.
  • Limited ability to make content more accessible and to reach their teams effectively.
  • Review cycle and performance conversations were described as too slow and having too many steps.

In general, The White Company struggled to provide a convenient learning and development process that learners could feel, supported by managers, and reported on by L&D team members to the business.

Something had to change.

Exploring a new LMS

The journey of selecting a new LMS partner was one that the White Company managed with intention. Their existing LMS implementation was a big undertaking. Now, with new requirements and a desire to incorporate performance management, they wanted to be certain that their next partner could consult with them and deliver on a timely implementation.

Further, the White Company had outgrown its current LMS, meaning they needed to rescope what they were looking for. Immediate needs included tracking compliance as it became increasingly more difficult to provide required data due to lack of visibility; however, reaching a growing team of frontline workers added to the challenge and was becoming a critical area of emphasis.

Lastly, throughout the exploration process, the White Company found an opportunity to switch the narrative around how an LMS could help the company grow. Instead of solely focusing on the LMS to deliver content, they wanted the LMS to be seen as a commercially oriented system that would contribute to growth rather than a cost center.

Why Kallidus

Kallidus stood out to The White Company for its ease of use, clean interface, and the simplicity and flexibility of its reporting features. These aspects addressed The White Company’s need for an intuitive platform that could remove barriers to technology and make learning content easily accessible.

“From an end-user perspective, you have to remove any barriers around the technology; otherwise, the system will just become an excuse. We loved how easy and clean Kallidus looks and feels. Everyone can see exactly what needs to be done which removes that barrier,” said Ben.

  • The platform’s ability to link learning with performance management was particularly appealing, as it promised to streamline performance conversations and make them more objective and focused on development.
  • The ease of use, clean interface, and simplicity and flexibility of reporting in Kallidus were key factors in their decision as they firmly believed Kallidus will enable them to deliver and report on compliance training.
  • Kallidus’s ability to link learning with performance management and streamline performance conversations was particularly appealing due to the number of retail employees at their 70 stores and their reliance on their managers for support.
  • The platform’s accessibility and how it caters to mobile and tablet use were important for their team, who are mostly not desk-based.
  • The support and service levels from Kallidus from the beginning made The White Company feel they had a partner in their implementation and their learning journey, making Kallidus the best choice.

“The simplicity of the reporting replaces what we were doing manually. We were chasing spreadsheets; we were combining spreadsheets, we were counting columns, and by the time we’d gathered our data, it had changed.”

Future Expectations with Kallidus

Now with Kallidus, The White Company looks forward to transforming its learning and development landscape. They anticipate a shift in culture towards more engaged learning, with the platform enabling them to address compliance more efficiently and to deliver a blend of e-learning and face-to-face training to support career development. The company is excited about the potential for Kallidus to free up time for the L&D team, allowing them to focus on creating more learning content and enhancing face-to-face training.

 

Are you looking to solve L&D challenges and show an ROI? Speak to a Kallidus expert today.

"We loved how easy and clean Kallidus looks and feels. Everyone can see exactly what needs to be done which removes that barrier."

Ben Brown, Learning & Development Manager, The White Company