Goodwood-based Rolls-Royce Motor Cars (R-RMC) is using the Absorb learning management system (LMS), supplied by Omniplex, to facilitate its global dealership training.

Staff at the 107 year old prestige car maker’s 84 dealerships around the world – including those in China, Japan, the Middle East and the USA – selling the Rolls-Royce brand, along with the growing number of ‘service facilitators’ which offer servicing but don’t sell Rolls-Royce cars, now have access to specialist product knowledge, sales and after-sales related e-learning materials via the Absorb LMS.

Johannes Wentzel, Aftersales Training Manager at R-RMC, explained: “We realised that we needed to begin using an LMS when we expanded our product range – around 2008/09 – notably with the launch of the Ghost model range. A growing product range, allied to a growing number of outlets for our products around the world meant that we needed to communicate more frequently and in greater depth with everyone – throughout the world – who is connected with R-RMC. Principally, the LMS offers us an excellent – and highly efficient and effective – way of providing product knowledge updates along with systems and other training on a worldwide basis. It’s particularly useful for getting information to our international partners.”

To date, some 1,500 people have been logged in to the LMS. According to Wentzel, this number is set to rise dramatically as R-RMC expands its worldwide market.

Omniplex’s Stephen Miller explained: “One of the beauties of the Absorb LMS is that it evolves to match a client’s unique workflow – rather than forcing the client to adapt to the LMS. This has a great appeal for highly specialised, perhaps ‘elite’, brands which want an LMS that meets their operating requirements rather than vice versa.”

Comment: It’s rare that R-RMC – or any other prestige brand for that matter – allows its name to be associated, even loosely, with ‘other’ products, especially those in the learning and development world. This suggests that Absorb and, perhaps, Omniplex, are giving R-RMC not only what it wants but also helping it to create and maintain a global competitive advantage through developing its dealers’ workforces.