Bertelsmann AG: A Company-wide Online Academy

The Company

With over 100,000 employees in sixty-three different countries, Bertelsmann AG is the most international media group worldwide. In addition, its 175-year company history ranks among the richest legacies of any existing media corporation. Its some five hundred subsidiaries include Random House, the RTL Group, Gruner + Jahr and Arvato.

Speaking the Same Language

Proficiency with foreign languages is of special importance for internal communication and the accompanying success of the Bertelsmann Group. The improvement of foreign language skills for employees at all levels throughout the world is of high priority for the transnational media corporation.

However, the use of traditional, on-site language trainings coordinated by internal foreign language departments was resulting in the following problems:

• The adequate provision of qualified, effective language trainers for over one hundred separate locations throughout Germany alone was time consuming, cost-intensive and often next to impossible.

• Especially for higher level management, the inherent inflexibility of classroom-based courses prevented their consistent participation in often urgently needed foreign language training sessions.

• Teams with members in the field could only take part in trainings together when they happened to be at the same place, at the same time – a situation that too infrequently.

The Requirements

In order to address the problems listed above, Bertelsmann sought out a training partner capable of meeting the following requirements:

• High quality lessons for both private and group classes

• A wide range of available course content in order to meet the individual language needs of employees from across departments

• The possibility of servicing all Bertelsmann subdivisions, branches and subsidiaries

• Available courses regardless of employee location with extremely flexible meeting times

The Solution with LearnShip

Bertelsmann decided to address these requirements with a customized, enterprise product from LearnShip. LearnShip’s solution for Bertelsmann was comprised of the following provisions:

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• The creation of an Online Academy specially for the company named "BeTraining", customized to the design of the Bertelsmann brand, and managed entirely by LearnShip

• One source, company-wide foreign language training in private and group classes for Business English and German (to be complemented shortly by courses in French and Spanish)

• The development of tailor-made course plans and the selection of trainers from LearnShip’s international pool of instructors on the basis of the individual needs of course participants

• Access to a range of up-to-the-minute course statistics through LearnShip’s online reporting tools

The Results

• Every one of Bertelsmann’s 100 company locations across German was able to receive the same high-quality, online live language training minus the coordination costs. (The worldwide rollout of the platform in all 63 countries is scheduled for 2011.)

• The flexibility of LearnShip’s online platform for live training provided busy, travelling professionals the previously unavailable opportunity to effectively improve their foreign language skills.

• For the first time, employees working at separate locations could take part in group classes with no additional difficulty.

• The acceptance of LearnShip’s innovative solutions to language training as a more than satisfactory replacement for traditional language courses has taken root. An internal customer satisfaction survey revealed that the quality of instruction in LearnShip’s courses matched or exceeded that of their on-site counterparts. Employees reported being excited about the modern form of training and the ability to take part in courses comfortably from home, at work or while travelling.

• Training costs were able to be reduced significatly compared to previous on- site courses without any loss in quality

In fact, the Bertelsmann Corporation was apparently so impressed by the quality of LearnShip’s product that in September 2010 they became an investor in the company.

"We are totally satisfied with the solution LearnShip provided our company. The feedback from students is overwhelmingly positive. In addition to the high quality of the lessons and the unique flexibility of the platform, our employees seem completely taken by this innovative, modern form of language learning. LearnShip is by far the best solution for long-distance education we could imagine!"