Inside Alembic’s most productive training management system

Alembic pharmaceutical is one of those companies which not only look to focus in developing a company’s reputation but it also focuses on its employee training and development.

The company which was established in 1907, is one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in India, is engaged in development, manufacturing and marketing of pharmaceutical products, pharmaceutical substances and Intermediates, with customers in India and across the globe.

Employee training and development has been a major focus for the leading pharmaceutical company and in the area of training and developmental of its field force. Alembic has a dedicated training facility, with trainers at its Vadodara Corporate Center, where all field staff undergo regular training in the respective subject areas. This is the same campus where recently chief minister of Gujarat inaugurated the new anti-cancer drug manufacturing facility.

The IT Head of the company Gopal Rangaraj says, “As part of continued focus training and development enhancement, Alembic Pharmaceuticals has deployed Learning Management Systems (LMS) to address all its employees including large field force. The LMS tool is part of overall HRMS suite, which includes, Employee Central, Recruitment modules, and Payroll processing systems. APL chose SAP Success Factors learning management system (LMS), to address its requirement for online training administration tool.”

According to Rangaraj, the end result of the training provided a high level of engagement and responsive interaction with field force, more effective field force in doctor chamber and reinforcement of medical marketing understanding post classroom training and reduced classroom training (more time spent on the job).

The LMS included cloud-based solution to create courses and training curriculum for different employee groups, with 24×7 access through multi-client environment. Types of training content included audio, video and documents; SCORM-compliant interactive audio visuals; assessments and surveys; and virtual classrooms.

The LMS helped to identify user-specific courses as per their development plans, track the training progress, facilitate training analytics, collect ratings and feedback, and maintain training records through regulatory audit trail.

Rangaraj elaborated on the rollout and business impact of LMS saying, “Deployment of LMS solution for supporting the training needs of APL has been a close collaborative efforts between multiple teams, and was closely monitored and facilitated by the Top management. The usage was closely monitored and a dedicated support team was created to support any user related issues.”

“LMS usage is tracked on weekly basis, with weekly status dashboards published to senior management, with following impact/benefits to the users: reduced classroom training (more time spent on the Job), reduction in travel cost for training programs, more effective field force in doctor chamber, learning gaps identification through test, reinforcement of strategy briefings of cycle meetings and reinforcement of medical and marketing understanding post classroom training.”