Not-for-profit launches full-scale program to help law schools transition to a new enrollment and admissions management platform.

Challenge

After more than three years of development and redesign, the client was ready to initiate the rollout of their enhanced software platform. Many features and functions were still in development and would require another two-to-three years to complete. However, the core capabilities were in place. They needed a partner like ACS to design a blended-learning curriculum that could scale as additional software capabilities were introduced, help develop pilot and full-scale rollout plans, and deliver training experiences to ignite excitement and provide momentum that would carry the team through future phases of development during the transition of 200+ schools to the new platform.

Approach

ACS cataloged training materials from the existing platform to provide a basis for the new curriculum design. We also worked with the School Services and Marketing teams to establish graphical designs for documents, presentations, and other materials that would be used to deliver training content. Our team collaborated with key members of the Product Development team and the Build team to create a training curriculum that could be distributed at key decision points and help schools with conversion and migration requirements. ACS worked with our client to develop training modules that included a mix of lecture and hands-on training. We developed job aids available during and post-training to reinforce lessons learned. We provided a team of trainers who embraced and delivered the experience that was designed. Finally, we evaluated our results and continued to enhance and evolve the training experience as the rollout continued for several years

Outcome

The ACS team helped create a structured 10-week onboarding journey that combined education with conversion and migration activities. When COVID-19 hit, we were able to easily adapt the training curriculum for virtual training. To ensure every school had a consistent training experience, we worked with our client to establish a dedicated training environment with training data that could be refreshed and reused after each training session. We established an online library of job aids that reinforces key training concepts and tasks. And we scaled the training curriculum to support training beyond the initial onboarding process. The processes we put in place enabled both ACS and client teams to update and maintain the education program while the system was in development, and to keep pace with features and enhancements as functionality was added. The result was a structured and repeatable training experience for each law school and a central library of training content that could be managed with each release.

Project Metrics

• Pilot program and onboarding curriculum delivered 100 days after project start
• 70 instructor-led classes taught
• 10 unique training offerings across five different learning modalities
• By end of 2022, 107 schools transitioned and over 900 individuals trained
• Over 800 deliverables cataloged in a central library for ongoing content management