Business: Retail consulting and training
Location: Atlanta, Georgia and Taunton, England
The Company
Martec provides consulting and training services to retailers and to companies that supply retailers. For retailers, Martec provides consulting and training in the business processes of buying, merchandise management, marketing, supply chain, warehousing, distribution and store operations. For suppliers to retail, Martec consults on business development, sales force strategy and account development. Martec provides instructor-led and web-based training in industry knowledge and account development skills.
Martec employed ReadyGo Web Course Builder (WCB) to create in house training courses for two major vendors and is using Server-Side Testing to track student progress at one of the vendors.
The Challenge
Martec is the world leader in retail skills training in all the key business processes for the buying office, supply chain and store management. "All our training material is developed by consultants who are former retailers. This gives our training it's highly practical approach, based on our leading edge work in the retail arena," said Brian Hume, President of Martec. "This ongoing experience in the real world of retailing and retail technology, coupled with our instructor's ability to go 'off script' gives our training its unique value."
Martec was looking for a tool that their training consultants could use to develop courses for the web. "The tool needed to support fast development as many of our clients operate on very short timelines. It had to provide a high degree of flexibility as the dynamic world of retail vendors often results in training content changes, even as programs are about to go live. Martec had previous experience with Toolbook and needed something that placed less demands on the course developers, who are primarily retail subject matter experts."
The ReadyGo WCB Solution
"ReadyGo WCB is an easy tool for my consultants to use to build courses. This let us bring the course creation into the hands of the subject experts, increasing our productivity while decreasing the time it takes us to develop training" Brian Hume President Martec. "Some of the advantages that we have found using ReadyGo Web Course Builder include:
- Rapid prototyping: We can play with new ideas and see how they work, literally in minutes.
- Encourages instructional soundness: The ReadyGo template approach encourages consultants that are subject matter experts and, not necessarily instructional design experts, to develop more instructionally sound training.
- Open integration: We can easily incorporate third party tools, such as a web-based crossword puzzle builder, to add even more interest to the user's training experience.
- Printable Versions: The ability to generate Word versions of the content has enabled us to quickly produce PDF versions of each lesson for those students who prefer to study on the road, rather than online.
- Result Storage: Tracking student scores in an environment where the client does not have a learning management system has proved very easy using the Server-Side testing product.
- Technical support from ReadyGo has been excellent and helped us impress our clients that ReadyGo was the right choice for them too."
