Success Story
Bayer Crop Science
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Early Adopters: What happened before iGrow …
Bayer is an early adopter of the 5 Moments of Need® methodology and applied this workflow learning approach to develop ”SkillCamp”, Bayer's innovative sales and marketing excellence framework.
The objective of this framework has been to ensure a common language and mindset across a global audience of 7.800 marketing and sales professionals.
In a joint effort with Bayer’s sales and marketing practitioners and founding father of the 5 Moments of Need® – Dr. Conrad Gottfredson – the initial framework for the SkillCamp learning and performance support solution was designed and first launched in 2012.
Due to an immense organizational change, SkillCamp has been transformed and relaunched as Bayer’s Commercial Excellence portal iGrow over the past few years.
More about the 5 Moments of Need®
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About "iGrow"
One of the original challenges of SkillCamp was to gain sustainable market impact for Bayer Crop Science, a division of Bayer AG, and to provide important information to the target groups quickly, with easy and fast access.
But when Bayer acquired Monsanto, this challenge extended further: It became fundamental to merge two teams, enabling them to work together as one team in the future. A single source of truth with commercial excellence knowledge was needed to achieve the goal to grow even further – together.
As a strong business and technology partner over the past years, we – Know How! AG – supported Bayer in realizing this project. The outcome: iGrow, a Commercial Portal based on the AskDelphi Performance Support platform.
The goal
iGrow is a platform that was designed for a cross-regional and cross-functional target group of more than 8.000 colleagues at Bayer Crop Science. The solution was developed to respond to the implications of a changed business strategy that emerged after Bayer’s acquisition of Monsanto.
The new Commercial Portal iGrow
- serves as the single source of truthfor Commercial Excellence Knowledge at Bayer Crop Science
- makes relevant Commercial Excellence information easy to find and easy to access
- clearly defines and harmonizes the Commercial Excellence approach
- drives capability building and reduces IT complexity, IT maintenance and opportunity cost
iGrow supports the new organization to achieve their goal of providing the best possible experience to their customers.
One single place where people can easily find everything, that they need to be successful. What a big helper to gain substantial market impact. Having one portal means less time spent looking for resources as well as quickly shareable content that is easy to maintain and update.
Customer solution with Know How!
The new workflow learning and performance solution was launched under the Bayer internal “iGrow” brand. It is centered around the cloud-based iGrow Commercial Portal, which is powered by the 5 Moments of Need based Performance Support Platform AskDelphi.
1) Secure Workflow Learning Ecosystem
The iGrow Commercial Portal, powered by AskDelphi, is hosted on the trusted Microsoft Azure Cloud. It integrates seamlessly with Bayer’s IT infrastructure to provide users with one central access point to other applications within the Bayer learning and performance ecosystem (including LMS and Microsoft Office applications).
2) Enterprise Scalability
The ability of the iGrow Commercial Portal to be accessible across the entire Bayer organization – and even by its extended (external) distribution network! – on a global scale, was a key reason to select AskDelphi as the core learning and performance support platform.
3) Fast access
The iGrow Commercial Portal gives Bayer’s commercial professionals 2 clicks and 10 seconds access, to step-by-step instructions, whilst they are working on common tasks within the commercial excellence framework.
Additional learning, reference and people resources, incontext of their role and the task they are completing, are accessible from one single entry-point.
4) Multi-lingual, multi-device & targeted learning
Users can access the iGrow Commercial Portal from any device, including tablet and smartphone. The portal is available in 28 languages, leveraging the built-in automated translation functionality of AskDelphi.
Targeted learning initiatives, including on-line and face-to-face training, are part of the iGrow offering in support of critical tasks within the commercial excellence framework. They can be accessed from the iGrow Commercial Portal.
Users can add items to their learning journey, self-assess their knowledge and receive recommended learning items, recommend content to peers and save critical information that they are using regularly.
5) Regional Authoring
Content editors across the various Bayer regions can easily edit and curate content to make sure local requirements are met, whilst staying aligned with global initiatives.
Highlights and key benefits
What’s in it for the user?
Based on the 5 Moments of Need methodology, the iGrow Commercial Portal offers Bayer’s commercial employees the following key benefits:
- One single point of entry to curated and targeted learning experiences and performance support materials, including common tools and examples, all available within the workflow.
- Content is offered to the user based on their context (e.g. role, tasks, region) ensuring support materials are relevant and just enough.
- Suggested learning paths can be offered to the user based on role and skills level to further grow professional development within the commercial excellence framework.
- Social learning is supported through content recommendations from managers and colleagues as well as through feedback sharing options inside the iGrow Commercial Portal.
What’s in it for the company?
On a monthly basis on average about 11.500 pages are visited, with an average time spend of 8 minutes and 12 seconds per visit. To keep the user acceptance high, a technology roadmap for the portal was created to ensure that specific functionality is added over time such as advanced gamification features and the opportunity to access content offline.
Based on user feedback, users indicate that the iGrow Commercial Portal helps them in completing tasks way more efficiently. With thousands of users quickly finding the information they need seconds quickly pile up to hours, days and even weeks of time that can be spend doing work instead of looking for information.
Awards
Over the past years, Bayer has received numerous industry recognized awards for the iGrow Commercial Portal including
- Brandon Hall
- “Best Use of Performance Support” Gold award 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 & 2021
- “Best Blended Learning Solution” Gold award 2017, 2018 – 2020
- “Best Advance in Learning Measurement” 2017
- “Best Advance in Learning Technology Implementation” Gold Award 2021
- “Best Learning Program Supporting a Change Transformation Business Strategy” Silver Award 2021
- e-learning Journal Award
- 2018 for “Performance Support”
Ronja Gierling
Global Commercial Capabilities Manager at Bayer Crop Science
What our clients say
Relevant, transparent and tailored to the employees´ needs – This is what iGrow stands for. And with AskDelphi, Know How! AG enabled us to provide these core qualities to our Commercial employees – in one platform, whenever and wherever they need it.
Profile of customer
Bayer Crop Science is a global market leader in crop protection (i.e. pesticides), nonagricultural pest control and seeds and plant biotechnology. With about 8.000 commercial employees and about 10.000 external sales force and advisors the company in active in more than 140 countries.
Key data of the projects
The iGrow Commercial Portal, powered by AskDelphi, is hosted on the trusted Microsoft Azure Cloud and integrates seamlessly with Bayer’s IT infrastructure. It provides users with one central access point to other applications within the Bayer learning and performance ecosystem.
The ability for the iGrow Commercial Portal to be accessible across the entire Bayer organization and even into it’s extended (external) distribution network, on a global scale, is a key reason to select AskDelphi as the core learning and performance support platform.
