All over the world, there is a global monopolization of transport companies, and to stay afloat in such conditions, representatives of this business niche have to look for new ways to both optimize their costs and improve the quality of service in general. If we talk about an aspect that is capable of covering these two areas for optimization, it is, first of all, the improvement of the drivers’ skills.
At the same time, unfortunately, the existing market learning management solutions are very difficult to adapt to the specific workflows of a particular company where they should be used. Thus, the vast majority of these companies decide to create custom ones. That's why the client resorted to our custom development services.
Request from The Client
Unlike the vast majority of transport companies that do not provide any educational base for their drivers at all, delegating training responsibilities to third parties, the client's company already had a lot of ready-made video lessons.
At the same time, they were all stored on Google Drive, were not organized well enough, and did not imply any feedback from the students. Thus, training took place in the most passive form, which significantly worsened its effectiveness.
Thus, the client had a clearly defined request: to create an employee training system for an enterprise-level company, part of which would be a mobile application with gamification.
What Goals Did We Set for Ourselves in This Project?
Since the client already had over 1,000 drivers on its staff and planned to scale further, it was very expensive and time-consuming to conduct offline training to meet the industry standards.
Instead of the existing alternative – providing access to Google Drive, where the video lessons were stored – the client decided to launch a learning management system not only to increase the effectiveness of the course but also to have access to the progress indicators of students.
At the same time, such existing off-the-shelf products as CarriersEdge were not suitable for the client, as they turned out to be either too expensive to set up and support or did not fully cover the issues the client’s company had to resolve. Thus, the client decided to create a custom employee training system fully adapted to both the current goals of the company and its possible development prospects.
In particular, one of the main tasks aimed at improving the quality of education was to transform the passive learning format into an active one using existing mobile technologies. Thus, at the heart of our partnership was the task of developing a comprehensive training solution that combines in its exercises text, images, animations, videos, and audio methods for providing the maximum immersion of drivers in the learning process.
What Modules Have We Created in Our Learning System, and How Are They Useful for Drivers?
As the main technology stack, we have chosen such programming languages and tools as Laravel, Swift, Kotlin, and React.js. This helped us to achieve an excellent user experience when interacting with a system and, in particular, to provide an instant response to end user requests.
So, let's find out which autonomous modules and features we decided to include in our global learning management system.
Content
In this module, we combined and structured driver education content that was previously stored as regular video tutorials on Google Drive. These lessons are essential to ensure truck drivers are safe and meet all regulations on and off the road.
Management & Reporting
Our system combines all the necessary tools for managing and reporting on the progress of driver training in a simple, user-friendly interface. We also adapted it to further scale the company's staff so that the system does not have to be additionally updated.
Mobile app
Our team transformed the usual video tutorials that the client already had into an interactive learning mobile application with elements of gamification. Thanks to this mobile app with gamification, students can feel more involved in the learning process and demonstrate the best results at the end of it.
Connections
To guarantee the safety of all the data that our system operates, we have ensured that it complies with generally accepted security standards. In particular, this was necessary due to the synchronization of our system with third-party solutions that the client’s company already use, such as video recorders, HR system, performance metrics system, etc.
Personalized learning experience
To ensure a personalized learning experience for each student, we have provided our learning management system with interactive elements (including polls and quizzes), gamification, adaptive and role-playing features, Slack integration (to send push notifications), and a personalized homepage with AI-powered search.
We also developed tests for enrolling in a training course and introduced a system of personal feedback to expand the capabilities of the system to assess the skills of applicants. As for monitoring the progress of students in the learning process, we have integrated a chat for direct communication with mentors and made it possible to upload assignments in different formats (text, video, and file).
Actionable analytics
For the second side of learning – mentors – we have developed a real-time control panel with flexible reporting options (including user groups or cadence), student behavior monitoring, automatic calculation of completion rates, reports on learning progress, and many other features for getting an overall picture of students’ performance.
Security and integrations
As for additional integrations, we have connected to the system an API for managing users and groups, as well as an API for managing content and reports. Thus, we were able to reduce the development time of a custom product without compromising its quality and security compliance.
What Do We Get as A Result?
Thanks to our partnership, a few months after the launch of the end-to-end learning platform, the client's company managed to reduce employee turnover by 30%.
In addition, all employees got the opportunity to acquire new knowledge completely autonomously and in an interactive format. This has accelerated and reduced the cost of obtaining the required qualification level for all drivers of the company, regardless of the length of their current work experience.
Final Thoughts
Thanks to our custom management system for driver training, in addition to solving tactical problems, such as high staff turnover, the client was able to cope with strategic tasks, such as cost optimization (due to the fact that drivers received the necessary knowledge to magggore consciously carry out cargo transportation) and improving the quality of customer satisfaction (new knowledge now helps them avoid delays and carry out cargo transportation with less risk). Thus, our system has formed a solid foundation for long-term competitiveness in tough market conditions.
