SAP Efficiently Trains 250-Person Team on Instructional Design Principles

Organization Details

SAP is a 105,000+ employee global enterprise software organization that improves companies’ operations by redefining enterprise resource planning (ERP). This helps companies better manage complex business processes by giving employees of different departments easy access to real-time insights across the enterprise.

The Challenge

SAP needed to quickly bring more than 250 people up to speed on instructional design concepts. SAP’s subject matter experts (SMEs) were unfamiliar with instructional design principles and were being asked to create e-learning materials for the first time.

The Solution

Dave LeFevre, head of product learning design, explained that leadership knew creating an internal training program for such a large initiative would have slowed down existing projects. So, due to ATD’s reputation and experience, SAP decided to engage in ATD team training to achieve its goal as efficiently as possible. As a result, SAP sent the SME team through ATD’s Instructional Design Certificate and E-Learning Instructional Design Certificate team training courses. LeFevre added, “ATD’s flexibility allowed SAP to customize these courses to meet our specific needs.”

The Results

LeFevre says the largest takeaway from the team training is “the SMEs now have exposure to instructional design principles and practices, which has created a common language between the instructional designers and the SMEs. Ultimately, this has improved e-learning practices and outcomes.”

After the team training program was conducted, SAP launched an internal e-learning site called Foundations that details each of the ADDIE phases and how to use it in SAP’s specific learning development environments and situations.