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Success Profile

“We directly attribute the improvement in cus-

tomer satisfaction to the learning manage-

ment system… We needed technology that

would help us assess our employees’ know-

how and deliver the appropriate learning

when we found gaps.”

— Lori Willbanks

Senior Sales Training Manager 

Fast Facts

Industry: High Technology

Countries: USA and Global

Users: 1,600+

SumTotal Product:

SumTotal Learning

Ariba, Inc.

Sunnyvale, CA, USA

www.ariba.com

Measuring and Improving

Employee Competencies to

Increase Performance and

Customer Satisfaction

BUi cHg ■ Identify workforce strengths and weaknesses ■ Measure and improve sales and consulting staff competencies ■ Deliver blended online, self-paced and classroom learning ■ Build specialized e-learning for new hires

Ui ■ Ariba deployed Learning Management from SumTotal® to assess

talent and deliver highly targeted blended learning to increaseemployee competencies

rU ■ Boosts employee skills and competencies

■ Increases customer satisfaction

■ Closes gaps in sales force’s knowledge

■ Enhances consulting force’s expertise

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Ariba delivers sourcing, procurement, and commodity expertise to help organizations

optimize their spending processes and supplier relationships. Companies that want

to squeeze value from every dollar spent on services, materials and goods often

turn to Ariba to help build better contracting, procurement and payment processes.

Ariba has grown considerably since its acquisition of FreeMarkets, Inc., an

auction-based supply-chain management software firm, and now has more

than 1,600 employees. As Ariba grew, its management team needed to identify

the organization’s strengths and weaknesses, particularly among its sales and

consulting staff. The company wanted to build a program for measuring and

improving the competencies of its Commercial organization.

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“The skills of the Commercial organization had never been evaluated formally,”

said Lori Willbanks, senior sales training manager for Ariba. “We lacked a window

into the skills possessed by our sales and consulting staff. And we needed

technology that would help us assess our employees’ know-how and deliver the

appropriate learning when we found gaps.”

According to Willbanks, Ariba hoped to identify the traits and business acumen that

make people in the Commercial organization a success. Knowing this would mean

Ariba could recruit people with the right skills, build targeted training for them once

hired, and coach them to perform at increasingly higher levels.

Ariba started its Competency Development program to create professional

competency models for the Commercial organization, and online courses about

the products sold by the Commercial organization. The initial challenges of this

program were to deploy content creation tools and a learning management system

(LMS) to deliver education and assess talent using the Internet.

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The goal of the Competency Development program was to ensure that employees in

the Commercial organization had the right skills to excel at their jobs. “To get there,

we employed a ‘blended learning model,’ a mix of online, self-paced and classroom

instruction, designed to increase the sales and consulting team’s skill level, while

keeping them in the field as much as possible,” explained Willbanks.

The company deployed the SumTotal learning management system, dubbed

AribaWISE, to help measure the Commercial organization’s competencies. The

SumTotal learning management system (LMS) includes a competency module as

well as a program for defining business goals for the organization and measurement

strategies for Ariba’s executives.

Ariba used the LMS to analyze responses from the Commercial organization on levels

of competency across a range of measures. Within the sales team, for example,the responses showed that the top three competencies were impact, flexibility, and

the ability to persuade, while the bottom three competencies (or areas they scored

themselves lowest) were product knowledge, business acumen, and organizational

acumen. The consulting team’s competencies — strengths and weaknesses — largely

mirrored the sales force’s responses.

“After identifying the gaps for the Commercial team,” said Willbanks, “we created a

training plan to improve their skills.” For example, to help the Commercial organization

better understand Ariba’s products and solutions, the company quickly designed 20

Web-based courses that covered Ariba’s solutions. The content for each course was

designed to help a sales executive achieve better results. “A typical course would

outline the business problems our solution would solve, including success stories,”

Willbanks explained. “Each course contained quizzes to check how well a sales

person retained the instruction.”

Along with the 20 Web-based courses, the company licensed 39 off-the-shelf courses

to teach leadership principles, business practices, consulting and selling skills.

“To get there, we employed a ‘blended learning

model,’ a mix of online, self-paced and

classroom instruction, designed to increase

the sales and consulting team’s skill level, while

keeping them in the field as much as possible.”

— Lori  Willbanks

Ariba, Inc.

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About SumTotalSumTotal Systems, Inc. is the global leader 

strategic Human Capital Management

(HCM) solutions that provide organizations

with a new level of visibility to help make

more informed business decisions and

accelerate growth. Recognized by indus-

try analysts as the most complete solution,

SumTotal provides full employee lifecycle

management, including a core system of 

record, from a single provider for improved

business intelligence. The company offers

customers of all sizes and industries the

most flexibility and choice with multiple

purchase, configuration, and deployment

options. We have increased the perfor-

mance of the world’s largest organizations

including Sony Electronics (NYSE: SNE),

AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN [ADR]; London:

AZN), Amway (KUL:AMWAY), Seagate

(NYSE: STX), Dell (NASDAQ:DELL), and

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information, or to request a demo, please

call +1 (800) 881-2546 (US / Canada),

+1 (508) 358-1072 (international) or visit

www.sumtotalsystems.com

About AribaAriba, Inc. is the leading provider of 

on-demand spending management

solutions. Its mission is to transform the way

companies of all sizes, across all industries,

and geographies operate by delivering

technology, service, and v that enable them

to holistically source, contract, procure, pay,

manage, and analyze their spending and

supplier relationships. Delivered on demand,

its enterprise-class offerings empower 

companies to achieve greater control

of their spending and drive continuous

improvements in financial and supply chain

performance. More than 1,000 companies,

including more than half of the companies

on the Fortune 100, use Ariba solutions to

manage their spending, from sourcing and

orders through invoicing and payment.

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To gauge the effectiveness of the Competency Development program, Ariba tied

the results to improvements in customer satisfaction scores since implementing the

program. “We felt if our Commercial organization took the online solution courses

using the LMS, we would see an improvement in their skills, and, ultimately, higher 

satisfaction among customers,” added Willbanks.

Ariba surveyed its customers prior to the launch of courses with AribaWISE.

At that time, customers said, on average, the sales executives’ knowledge of 

Ariba’s products was 7.37 in a range of 1 to 10. Ariba conducted the same survey

nine months later after launching 20 solution courses. In the second survey,

customers rated, on average, the sales representatives’ knowledge of Ariba’s

products at 7.68.

“We directly attribute the improvement in customer satisfaction to AribaWISE,”said Willbanks. “And we continue to make improvements to AribaWISE and

the training program offered to our Commercial team.” The company recently

created individual learning plans specifically for the sales team — each account

executive will be evaluated based on the completion of his or her plans. As a

result, Ariba continues to see improvements in sales efforts and higher satisfaction

among its customers.

Next Steps 

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