Aston Martin is a luxury car manufacturer with about 2900 employees and sells its products globally. Known for their powerful engines and elegant aesthetics, Aston Martin vehicles are assembled by hand. Skilled technicians meticulously build each engine, every door, every door handle. For each part, there is an expert builder whose skills have been developed to perfectly create and install for optimal performance.
Compliance training is an essential part of Aston Martin’s viability. From the production line to the bottom line, compliance drives the business’ profitability and must be handled with precision. We had the opportunity to speak with Natalie Cox, Learning and Development Manager at Aston Martin, responsible for the learning management system (LMS) and the performance management system to learn more about how Aston Martin handled compliance training before Kallidus and what it is about Kallidus that gives them the confidence to partner.
Before Kallidus
Natalie described some of the challenges that Aston Martin faced before turning to Kallidus:
- They needed an LMS and performance management system that could meet their diverse and changing needs.
- They struggled with training attendance, especially in the fourth quarter, when they had to meet their sales targets and deal with supply chain issues.
- They had a wide range of roles and responsibilities, requiring different types of training and compliance.
- They lacked the infrastructure and culture to support online and virtual learning.
How is Kallidus making things better?
With Learn LMS, the learners no longer need to undertake hours of training that are irrelevant to many roles. Training is relevant and tailored to your job, which helps employees complete compliance training because there is context. Natalie and her team are no longer chasing team members to complete required training.
“The mandating of training to specific groups and people has made training more effective. The system tailors the training to ensure that is relevant to your role, which is a huge help to our compliance.”
As a global company, Aston Martin is accountable to several different compliance regulations. Kallidus’ Learn LMS has allowed Natalie to automate this whole process. Natalie can pull reports that have the key compliance data needed for each country and schedule them so that each specific regional director receives the relevant information every month.
“As a global company, we’ve got several different compliance regulations. Learn LMS allows us to pull the right reports for each country, and schedule them so that they’re automatically sent to the appropriate directors every month.”
What’s Natalie’s favorite thing about partnering with Kallidus?
The support. Natalie said that she knows here support person by name.
“The support is incredible. I have 1:1’s with my account managers, group sessions, I am in contact with subject matter experts, and then there’s the help desk that I know will answer my problem that same day. Without the support from the Kallidus team in all of their capacity, then we probably wouldn’t be where we are now.”
The online education and support centres give her what she needs to answer questions on the spot, and if she needs elevated service, her account manager is ready to step in.
What big problem has Kallidus solved?
At one point, training had to be completed to get clearance to continue building cars. With Aston Martin making their cars by hand, this was imperative to continue their business. With Kallidus, all training was completed and reported accurately and timely to grant them a three-year clearance.
“The reporting helped us pass the cybersecurity audits and get the three-year clearance. This is an example of a huge audit that can prevent us from selling cars in all our regions, so without Learn LMS, we wouldn’t have been able to gain that clearance.”
Moving on to solve more
Aston Martin hopes to benefit from its recent purchase of Kallidus Perform, a tool that helps managers and employees set and track goals, give and receive feedback, and align their performance with the company’s strategy and values.
Kallidus has helped Aston Martin by providing:
- A user-friendly and flexible LMS that allows them to tailor and mandate training to different groups and roles, and to track compliance and audit requirements.
- A performance management system that enables them to create different templates and solutions for different departments, and to conduct regular check-ins and appraisals.
- A high level of support and communication, including one-to-one and group sessions with the account manager, a responsive help desk, and regular updates on new features and developments.
- The ability to assign compliance courses by role vs asking everyone to take every course.
- Reporting by country to automatically deliver with the exact data that the regional executive requires
- A user interface that met varying understandings and opinions about learning and that was suitable for global audiences
Thank you for your partnership, Natalie and Aston Martin!
