Features

Published April 2004

Product Rollouts: The Impact of Learning

Sanjay Dalal

The business anticipates that in the first year it will sell more than 400 million communicators all over the world. At an expected retail price of $20 a head, this product will produce gross revenues of $8 billion in only the first year, with over $20 billion in gross revenues anticipated in the following three years. And the communicators will be sold over a global distribution channel of around 100,000 distributors in more than 100 countries.

The business will train the entire distribution channel in only one week as part of the product launch on how to use, personalize, market and sell communicators to its existing and its competitors' customer base. In one week, 100 trainers will train more than 1 million agents so they are ready to sell the communicators worldwide. After one week, these agents will start to showcase and sell the communicators to the buyers, and will sell 50 million communicators in the first month.

The impact of a timely, well-orchestrated training program was not only hugely effective to the business' top-line revenues, but also bottom-line savings from the efficiencies generated by the massive scale of operations. Just six years ago, in 2004, a similar product launch would have taken at least a year of planning and a minimum of six months of execution. How did this global business create a training program with only 100 trainers that allowed it to launch this new product in a week to more than 1 million agents? What was the business impact of this product launch? How well did the agents learn? How were they able to leverage this learning process in a record time that enabled them to sell over 400 million communicators within the first year?

All these questions take us back to 2004, a year that launched a new wave of training programs, when the learners and learning became critical to the success of the program, and not just the trainers, designers and creators. Business began measuring the strategic impact of global learning and creating programs that changed the way businesses rolled out new products. Training programs began the shift from traditional cost centers to strategic business centers. Not all the changes were predetermined and premeditated. Some changes were driven due to the nature of business growth and the pool of available resources. Some changes were truly visionary and sought to create efficiencies in the training program. And some were even brought about by competitive pressures.

Product Rollouts Today
How are companies rolling out products today? This depends on many factors, such as what is being rolled out (the product itself), the industry (manufacturing, financial services, high-tech, health care and more), established processes (what are accepted models), who is rolling out the product, the learners and their availability, the available time and required physical geography for the rollout, the available resources for trainers and learners including technology and infrastructure and ultimately, the business goals. A rule of thumb: Roll out the products within an established time and budget to have the maximum impact on the business. Miss the time or budget window, and see an associated loss of revenues and market share. A product that is a quarter late and over the budget has a multiplying impact on lost revenues and market share.

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