How INTERTOP accelerated sales team onboarding with AcademyOcean

INTERTOP is the #1 omnichannel fashion retailer in Ukraine.

The company was founded in 1994. Today, the Intertop Ukraine portfolio includes over 500 brands, 270 Ukrainian brands, and their own brand, Braska. As of July 1, 2022, 16 retail chains and 130 stores from the Ukrainian market are represented.

The company's mission is to make shopping for fashion items more thoughtful, tech-oriented, and engaging.

The client's goal was systematic and interactive training that takes under 15 minutes.

Intertop began looking for a new training platform when they created their new training system. They realized that they needed something new to help them accomplish their goals. The tools they'd been using before were time-consuming and required lots of extra work, and the company wanted to optimize their processes.

1. Training sales employees. «Without proper training for retailers, businesses might see a drop in sales. Sales assistants are the first to communicate with our customers, after all. The entire sale depends on how they do their job»

2. Automating HR. Every employee is trained individually according to a plan, with no HR involvement.

1. Control over the training process. Learner progress tracking for supervisors and HR. Special admin features, clear statistics.

«One of the key features for us was the statistics, because we wanted to be able to tell store managers that they could view and monitor their employees' training. AcademyOcean was a perfect fit in this regard»

2. Platform simplicity. HR can make any changes needed quickly and easily, no IT specialists or integrations required.

3. User-friendly design. The platform's quick navigation puts everything employees could need at their fingertips. The design is as user-friendly as possible, with visuals you can customize as needed.

Intertop uses AcademyOcean LMS to train retail employees, including sales assistants, cashiers, senior salespeople, and directors.

«It took under two days to create our first course. At that point we created one of the most important training courses at Intertop: Onboarding. This course had to be perfect, and the tests had to be interesting — and employees had to think it was great»

A lesson with an accompanying video is published on the platform every week (replaced by a presentation since the start of the war) that highlights current company info or updates, such as new collections, changes to work processes, or changes to operations.

Building on the goals of the company, the key features were statistics and variables.

«The statistics are set up so well on the platform, it's easy to figure out what all the different buttons and functions do. As for variables, I think 'pop-ups' are an interesting feature. They allow you to gather the right information about the learners, i.e., get the values of the variables. And until the learner provides those values, they can't continue learning. Based on the info collected, admins can automatically segment training for each group or team of learners on the platform.»

This can be done using dynamic content. Dynamic content lets you use variables to show different information to different learners in the same lesson. With this setup, each learner in the company sees content that's relevant to them, which helps them get results quickly and apply their knowledge in their work.

Platform administrators can view statistics for specific courses or tests without using Excel or any other external software.

«When I hear the phrase 'saving time,' I immediately think of the platform's filter feature and the perfectly organized stats»

The test statistics section is designed so admins can see how many learners passed a test, how many attempts were made, and how many learners failed, all without having to go to the full stats section.

And learners don't need to wander around the platform looking for new lessons, quizzes, or tasks.

«All updates and new lessons are announced on the main page, and all different kinds of training materials are broken out into different colored folders with descriptions. This saves our learners time when using the platform»

Onboarding new employees is a crucial stage. Using AcademyOcean LMS, Intertop simplified managerial work and ensured that new hires are using their time in a useful and convenient way.

Since there's a mobile version of the platform, employees can take it on the go as needed, and managers can simply check in with employees when they're back in the store.

In addition, regular newsletters can help remind learners of their training, thus helping to shorten onboarding to days instead of months.

Constant work on training materials, including studying feedback from AcademyOcean learners and updating courses, affects the quality of employee work on the whole.

«As members of the HR department, we're witnessing first-hand time and again the improvements to the quality of service provided to potential customers since our company launched its AO academy. With every new lesson, learners are getting a better and better training experience»

For now, Intertop only trains retail employees with AcademyOcean. However, they're planning on adding all company employees soon, including those working in their office.

«Next, we want to connect our office staff to our academy and create an onboarding track for our IT department. We also want to make an academy available for our customers, where they can watch videos about technology, learn about our brands, and grow closer to Intertop»

And that's how Intertop used AcademyOcean LMS to shorten onboarding times, automate HR processes, and implement a personalized approach to training, which salespeople have used to better serve customers and sell more!