Provider Innovation ACTO, AdMed, Scrimmage, Syneos Health & The Inception Company

Five companies were the finalists for the Provider Innovation title in the 5th Annual LTEN Excellence Awards, representing a wide variety of innovative and engaging work for their clients.

ACTO Technologies

Originally on the market for a new learning management system, Philips Respironics instead partnered with ACTO on a training-led, company-wide innovation. Implementing ACTO resulted in consolidating training, sales and marketing tools into a platform that enhanced the learning experience at the individual and organizational level.

In under 12 weeks, ACTO reduced Philips’ asset library from more than 2,600 to under 800 assets and digitally migrated over 70 percent of Philips’ library from their legacy LMS to ACTO’s cloud platform. Departments can now combine key performance indicators and share knowledge to refine training programs, sales strategies, marketing collateral and compliance practices.

“ACTO and Philips met at the LTEN Conference in June 2018,” said ACTO’s Taebah Khan. “ACTO enabled Philips’ training department to drive a company-wide innovation by giving reps a one-stop-shop training, sales and marketing tool they could use from hire to retire while being compliant.”

Regular touchpoints between Philips and ACTO as well as the data tracked on ACTO’s app will be used to evaluate the consolidation and its effects on learning.

AdMed

AstraZeneca was looking for a memorable way to help sales representatives learn critical concepts, and they found it. They turned to AdMed’s Trivia Sweep game to generate engagement and content retention.

The game was offered as both a print card game or an app, with those components reinforcing one another — effective card play decisions yield trivia question opportunities, and successful applications of core content knowledge to answer these trivia questions extend turns and permit additional card play decisions.

“This card game is meant to recast the way sales representatives apply and evaluate their understanding of core content knowledge,” said Chris Francy, AdMed vice president. “Not only can they revisit the information they are learning in a new context, they can also apply that knowledge in their interactions with other teams. In doing so, players more effectively learn the content they need to know.

“One special challenge presented was the first introduction to gameplay,” Francy added. “No one had prior experience with the gameplay. Highly visual instructions were provided, and a train-the-trainer session was conducted, which immediately resulted in a successful close in the learning gap.”

Scrimmage

A rising biopharmaceutical firm launched its first lead product following FDA approval in 2017. The training & education department then had to fully onboard a new sales team. Working with Scrimmage, the company created an innovative, multiprong, even risky learning program with a learner-first approach that used mobile technology to empower anytime, anywhere learning.

Also featuring gamification to drive knowledge and performance and robust reporting to immediately show gaps, the program enjoyed high engagement by learners, proven learning transfer and increased time-to-impact skill development.

“The company truly invested wisely in innovation, while using learner impact as its main driver,” said Sharon Steeley, director of marketing and communications for Scrimmage. “The learning also had to identify any knowledge and skills gaps and then pivot to address such gaps. The mobile platform supported assessments and other feedback tools for all stakeholders to support and coach the learners, as well as target-related training.

“It was risky, it was bold and it was innovative,” Steeley added. “Yet, the rewards, the success, the surprise outcomes have consistently outweighed any and all of the risks.”

Syneos Health

Syneos Health partnered with Novartis to create simulation-based learning experiences for its national sales meeting, where new clinical information, a new sales model and storytelling was being launched to the field. Syneos also launched a train-the-leader event for 130 account business leaders.

“The environment emulated an engaging in-person experience,” said Jill Myers, senior account executive for Syneos. “We incorporated a television studio space, four interactive sets and costumes, supported by multicamera production capability. It was impactful, innovative and set the stage for the national sales meeting. At the national sales meeting, interactive board gaming, verbalization exercises and competitive teaming led to exciting ways to build competence and confidence.”

The Syneos team worked with Mike Paradiso of Novartis to create the simulations and training over a 12-week period. Paradiso was named a finalist in the Practitioner Innovation category for his work.

“Timing was a challenge so there was a team designated for the trainthe-leader to work with our producer on the technical and creative, while the original project team focused on the live national sales meeting,” Myers said.

The Inception Company

Introduced in May 2018, Pando is a meeting technology platform that delivers the impact of a live meeting virtually. The platform combines a full studio production, five studio cameras and a sound system with an in-studio moderator or moderators and uses a 40-foot “Pandorama” video wall display showing up to 60 participants with another 5,000 participants or observers able to join the meeting off-wall.

The Inception Company worked with Allergan on an implementation, earning Allergan a finalist spot in the Innovation Practitioner category.

“Since launch, clients have used Pando to train sales reps on new product or indication launches and physician segmentation, healthcare provider speaker training, sales plan of action meetings, and surgical procedure trainings,” said Ellynn Szoke of The Inception Company. “The industry continues to look for more efficient and cost-effective solutions to meetings. While live meetings are the gold standard, they are expensive, challenging to schedule and in the case of providerfacing representatives, steal valuable field time, as well as time away from family.  Traditional virtual meeting technology does not offer the engagement or collaboration needed for training. Pando meets the needs of both.”