Oracle Training Portal

A Global Electronic Company that includes Worldwide Leading Brands such as Panasonic and Technics.

In a multinational organisation, keeping your staff well trained and well versed in the latest methodologies is business critical.

For Matsushita Electric, an industry leader in the provision of consumer electronic products, this is a business imperative.  Matsushita Training Centre in Europe runs the entire range of training courses for the European group from the head office in the UK.  More than 60 different courses are offered, from purchasing and marketing to MD level training.

The process of running the courses was becoming extremely administration intensive, requiring delegate approvals, accommodation booking and authorisation from training parties, which was all run via a manual system.

Matsushita had previously been working with Sopra Group on an event management system which has since been implemented, so it was a natural progression to assess them as a project partner to support Matsushita in the update of its global training system.

Jeff Currall, General Manager at Matsushita explained the background: "We place a very high priority in the training of our staff at every level and the system that was previously in place was becoming extremely hard to administer.  With 30,000 employees in Europe, we needed to implement a system that would eliminate the administration and allow users to manage their own training requirements."

Following the successful completion of a range of projects for the company, Matsushita selected the Sopra Group team to assist with the project.

He commented: "Based on their previous work with our team we felt that Sopra Group had an excellent understanding of our requirements and would be able to work with us to create a more functional and dynamic training portal."

The Project

In order to simplify the administration process, the IS team at Matsushita was looking to develop a new training infrastructure that would be more of a self-service based solution.  Specifically it needed to integrate with other systems and have a user interface that was both easy to use and 'sticky.'

John Batchelor, chief technical architect at Sopra Group, talked about the remit given by Matsushita: "Jeff Currall and his team were precise in their objectives.  It was clear that reducing the administration overhead was a priority and so we jointly felt that the Oracle Portal would be the most cost effective mechanism for this."

The Oracle Portal is an integral element of the Oracle 9iAS suite of products, which provides the infrastructure to assemble content, view course catalogues and online courses, assess and measure knowledge, and review training history for employees, customers, and partners.

The system took four months to implement and is now being piloted on a pan-European basis with a view to a global rollout.  Sopra Group had two staff onsite who worked jointly with the Matsushita staff to create and develop the portal.

The System

The portal is browser based. All data is stored in an Oracle server, which is connected to Oracle Reports software, which provides PDF reports.  A key feature is the e-mail driven automated workflow solution, which allows users to self-register for a course, in turn automating a range of actions to facilitate this process.

The system has three main functions:

• The HR department from each company will now be able to produce annual training plans for their staff. These plans will be produced via the iPortal and will detail each employee's training schedule.
• A user can express interest in individual courses and begin the workflow procedure to determine authorisation.
• Each user will have a personalised home page detailing their unique training schedule including specific information on courses and discussion forums.

The Portal is security protected, meaning registered users can access their information only by using Oracle Single Sign On.

The Benefits

• The new system delivers both financial and operational benefits to the Matsushita organisation.
• The interface is user friendly, enabling simple navigation of the site.
• The new training system has transformed the training services function from an administration intensive job to an automated, online service that allows staff to self-administer their individual training needs.

The Portal is simple to maintain.  Overall control is managed by the Matsushita Training Centre in Europe (MTCE), representatives from this group are able to set up courses and discussion forum topics as well as manage the administrative processes behind the system.  Each regional HR representative is then able to manage local information.

Financial Benefits

The new system will deliver efficiency savings of at least 2 man weeks per month.  It is now more accurate.  The system will pay for itself in one training year.

Jeff Currall, General Manager at Matsushita concludes: "We were keen to create a system that was both simple and intuitive to use, I am sure that we have succeeded!  A key requirement for us was the ability to work with an organisation that understood our culture and business needs, Sopra Group made every effort to work with us to create a system that worked for us."