Video-Based Training Experiences to Empower Remote Sales and Engineering Teams

Company Profile

CCI Systems Inc. is a US-based communication solutions and services provider. Established in 1955, CCI’s client portfolio includes network service providers as well as private and public sector organizations such as major banks and healthcare providers. The company plans, designs, and deploys network infrastructure and broadband access solutions that provide a wide range of reliable and secure high-speed data services.

While many of CCI’s employees are based in their offices in Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, or Georgia, CCI also has a large number of engineers working remotely across the United States and a small presence in Canada. Their extensive experience and knowledge is an important pillar for CCI’s success, and earning certification for the latest technologies is critical.

The Challenge: Ensuring Evolving Solutions Are Sold and Implemented Correctly and Consistently

Communications infrastructure is a fast-moving field where new technologies are introduced regularly, while old standards are continuously updated. Account teams need to understand how to sell these services while not necessarily having a technical understanding of them.

Meanwhile, engineers must be consistently trained to deliver these technologies. As workers primarily in small teams or operating solo, this training must be easy for them to access and available at any time—they may need to access information while working on or commuting to a client site.

CCI’s training cataloging requirements are complex. Not only is there a need for sales and delivery-related streams covering a wide range of solutions, but they must cover a large number of customer sectors and specific needs.

Though CCI’s existing learning management system (LMS) was capable of hosting the kinds of learning content required, its ability to deliver content to different device types, catalog it, and facilitate collaboration fell short.

“Instilled gives us the ability to leverage and manage rich-media collaboration to deliver training to our sales and technical employees. Everything about the platform reduces complexity while being highly scalable to our requirements. We are very happy with the level of partnership and support we’ve received from the Instilled team so far.” - David R. May, Director, Field Services & Operations, CCI Systems Inc.

The Solution: Easier Access, Admin and Interoperability for Rich-Media Learning Content

Instilled by PeopleFluent coexists comfortably alongside CCI’s existing LMS and other systems. For example, Instilled can pass completion data via SCORM to the LMS—critical for demonstrating employee progress against compliance goals.

With Instilled, CCI’s learning content is now organized into various technology and sector-specific containers. Along with the platform’s powerful search functions, learners can easily find the information that’s most relevant to them. As Instilled supports linking to any kind of content (and hosting a wide range of formats too), it provides a central point for collaboration and knowledge sharing that CCI felt was previously missing.

In particular, CCI values Instilled for its ability to deliver content on multiple devices. Though the majority of the material is accessed on work desktop computers, CCI salespeople use Instilled on mobile devices to revise elevator pitch material while in transit, or to demonstrate features to prospective clients at events. Similarly, engineers can quickly double-check details on the platform while in the field.

“Everyone at CCI who has used Instillled finds it really easy to use, particularly on the administrative side. It’s simple and intuitive, easy to scale, and makes collaboration easy via groups and permissions. There are many opportunities to enhance the training too: adding chapters, descriptive links and dropping B-roll in to enhance the basic video.” - Belle Heidbrier, Training and Development Manager, CCI Systems Inc.

The Results: Expansion to the Wider Business and Finding New Ways to Use Instilled

Initially deployed to a small group of 122 employees, CCI is looking to expand its use of Instilled to more divisions and teams—currently around 600 employees.

Though CCI is relatively early in its relationship with Instilled, the team is quickly finding uses beyond its original plans for the platform. Within the first year of deploying Instilled, the COVID-19 pandemic meant CCI needed to shift to holding its key annual sales meeting entirely virtually.

Instilled was a critical component, storing pre-meeting reference material for all attendees, as well as being used to edit and host library versions of all sessions for staff who couldn’t attend. Each pre-meeting resource was only relevant for a small number of employees—there were around 50-70 views per resource. However, a near-100% completion record for all videos indicates that the material was getting to the right people despite the logistical issues faced in lockdown.

“I have a collaborative relationship with the Instilled team dating to before my time at CCI and before Instilled was in its current form. The Instilled team and their platform have a fantastic track record, have always exceeded my expectations, and served my need to asynchronously collaborate across a tremendous number of teams globally.” - David R. May, Director, Field Services & Operations, CCI Systems Inc.