All over the world, talent development professionals work every day to help create a world that works better. They do this by developing the knowledge, skills, and abilities of others. Each year, the ATD Excellence in Practice Awards celebrate the efforts of individuals and organizations whose commitment to excellence sets them apart. Recent award winner MetLife, based in New York, developed a new platform to offer one-point access for its learning offerings.

For more than five years, MetLife and NIIT’s Distribution Academy has served 24,000 employees and 400,000 partner sales associates across 50 countries. This practice raises the bar on distribution capability across the enterprise by delivering the right solutions to the right customers.

The Distribution Academy was designed to ensure sales capability development is aligned to enterprise strategy; is scalable, repeatable, and driving operational excellence; accelerates time to competence for all sales employees; and focuses on enabling sales associates to win high-value customers.

Its Distribution Advantage Platform (DAP) is a one-point access for learners’ training and performance support needs. DAP’s plug-and-play capabilities increases the informal learning and reference materials within its system, and it is mobile friendly so learners can access formal and informal learning solutions when they need it most.

For sales associates supported by the Distribution Academy, retention over a year period was around 10 percent higher compared to their historical peer group. The average productivity and ticket size of business sold for these sales associates is typically 20 percent higher compared to their peers who went through classroom training.

While a global system, training delivery is driven through local Academy Centers, and structured frameworks guide development of all sales staff through regional and local centers, ensuring localized learning. Local Academy Centers are also empowered to supplement face-to-face learning and a resulting accelerated time to competence.