We’ve so far given you our success stories from Ark, CAKE PD and Just Mortgages as we recounted their journeys into the world of blended learning with the help of Thinqi.
As our customers continue to thrive and reap results, we’re excited to tell you all about our latest customer success journey: introducing the marvellous people at Allianz Partners UK.
About Allianz Partners UK
Allianz Partners is a world leader in B2B2C insurance and assistance, offering global solutions that span international health and life, travel insurance, automotive and assistance. Customer driven, their innovative experts are redefining insurance services by delivering future-ready, high-tech high-touch products and solutions that go beyond traditional insurance. Their products are embedded seamlessly into their partners’ businesses or sold directly to customers, and are available through four commercial brands: Allianz Assistance, Allianz Automotive, Allianz Travel and Allianz Care.
Present in 76 countries, their 21,500 employees speak 70 languages, handle over 65 million cases each year, and are motivated to go the extra mile to help and protect customers around the world.
In this success story, we speak to Phil Murfet, Learning & Development Advisor at Allianz Partners UK.
The challenges
Prior to the implementation of Thinqi, online training at Allianz Partners UK was purely for compliance. Phil tells us that this was delivered via a very basic, Moodle-based platform.
“When I took over in 2017, I immediately didn’t get on with it,” says Phil. “It’s not that I couldn’t understand it. It was just that the platform was not at all intuitive and very complicated to administer.”
All other training, including induction training, was classroom-based during this time. This included activities such as signing forms and distributing compliance documents.
“While the face-to-face interaction was nice, it was very content-heavy and often more of a tickbox exercise,” says Phil. It proved problematic from both an admin and learner perspective, resulting in regular query emails to resolve problems.
With the reporting limited to a simple Excel spreadsheet, there was little opportunity to focus more closely on what individual learners were achieving for each question. This limited the analysis opportunities that would enable detailed evaluation of learning interventions.
Another problem for Phil was that the learning platform was purely SCORM-based. The initial learning design process proved lengthy, with all modules designed using an authoring tool, Once published, making any changes meant taking the course apart, making the edits and then exporting again completely.
When Allianz Partners UK came to the end of their contract with this provider, Phil attended the 2018 Learning Technologies exhibition to look for an alternative technology – something that would make life easier both for the L&D department at Allianz Partners UK and its learners.
Fortunately, Thinqi was present at that very same show.
The solution
One of the main reasons Phil was drawn to Thinqi was our previous experience with automotive clients of Allianz Partners UK, including Mitsubishi and BMW.
However, it was the demo that truly won him over.
“It was a nice, modern-looking platform and those I spoke to were very chatty and informative,” says Phil. “After narrowing our choices down to three platforms, I just got the best feeling from Thinqi.”
Good choice.
The intuitive interface and features were a big hit – particularly the ‘Playlists’ feature. With Playlists, Phil found he could design the same compliance training that had taken him three months previously, all in the space of just 25 minutes.
What’s more, Thinqi also allowed the creation of branded sub-portals for clients of Allianz Partners UK, which was another key deciding factor.
So, how easy was it to get started with Thinqi once all contracts were signed?
It was easy, according to Phil. With regular phonecalls from Thinqi experts, he was able to try out the platform and explore it in more depth to really familiarise himself with the wide range of features Thinqi has to offer.
The initial upload of staff data was then completed by our customer success team before resources were uploaded and an organisational structure was set up.
The platform was tested with small pilot groups initially before being publicly rolled out to Allianz Partners UK in February of this year.
The results
“Already the administration side of things is much better,” says Phil. “End users love the look and feel of it – they find it easy to see what courses and assignments they need to do in the ‘Things I Need to Do’ panel.”
Playlists: creating and curating content with ease
Content creation and curation is far easier with Thinqi too. As we mentioned earlier, the flexibility afforded by the ‘Playlists’ feature has proven a hit, allowing Phil to build playlists of content that bring together his own learning content along with content from other sources, such as YouTube videos. He can then choose to publish a playlist to the platform’s ‘Resources’ library, put it into an assignment or include it as part of a course. In fact, 125 playlists have been created at Allianz Partners UK already.
Tagging and rating: resources with relevance
“The Resources library is also great,” he adds. “I like that people can tag and rate resources, and it’s something I want to encourage people to do more.” Just as hashtags on social media can guide people to related content on a topic, so tagging an article in Thinqi allows users to click on the relevant tag from a useful resource, providing them with a Smartie-trail of related resources aligned with the overall strategy. Rating an article allows users to pinpoint the best and most relevant pieces of content as recommended by their peers.
It’s social learning in action.
Proven engagement
This ease of content creation has led to a vast saving in time and reduced admin overhead. Already, 9-12 assignments have been created using Thinqi – something which would not have previously been achievable within the same timeframe. With 3,912 assignments started and 3,643 assignments completed, the current completion rate stands at a very healthy 93.12% for 625 staff members. This is solid evidence that learners were engaged and returning to learn to the very end.
Phil reports that the recent preparatory assignment that people had to complete before their return to the office received a great response from both HR and line managers at Allianz Partners UK. Even those in management who admit to being less confident with technology have taken an active interest in the platform.
Customer success: support at every step
What about the customer success support Thinqi provides?
Any queries about the Thinqi platform have been resolved both promptly and efficiently. Phil says, “The success team at Thinqi have been amazing – they’re quick to respond and resolve any problems. They’re always happy to help, whether that’s to teach me something, help solve problems or answer questions. It’s really refreshing and the user feedback for response times has been brilliant.”
Flexibility for branding
The ability to have a separate dashboard has saved Allianz Partners UK the need to purchase a separate licence for external clients and internal staff. For example, with Thinqi, Allianz Partners UK were able to provide a separate branded sub-portal for their clients to keep their internal content separate.
Next steps
Allianz Partners UK are currently focused on using Thinqi for compliance training but the plan is for line managers to have greater accountability and involvement in staff learning. In Thinqi, system administrators can devolve responsibility and appoint different roles such as line managers. This gives them access to the learning progress and performance data for cohorts they manage.
This is perfect for performance and one-to-one reviews, encouraging a coaching dynamic that perfectly accommodates the needs of the modern learner.
With brilliant results already for Allianz Partners UK, this is still very much the beginning of their journey with Thinqi and we can’t wait to find out what they achieve next.
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