Portico Accomplishments

Portico's custom eLearning courseware provided the department with a powerful tool in its effort to rapidly and effectively train a statewide workforce to meet a challenging Federal mandate. In fact, half the target population was trained within the first 30 days.

Client Profile:

The Department of Health and Hospitals is Louisiana's largest state department, with more than 12,000 employees. Its mission is to protect and promote health and to ensure access to medical, preventive, and rehabilitative services for all citizens of the State of Louisiana.

Executive Summary:

In order to meet compliance requirements for new Federal legislation DHH needed to quickly train its entire workforce dispersed throughout every Louisiana parish. A web-based training program from Portico provided a rapidly implemented, cost-effective solution.

Objective:

HIPAA - the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 - is the largest government healthcare initiative since Medicare. This federal legislation protects health-related data, ensures privacy, and improves efficiency throughout the nation's healthcare system .The Privacy Rule became effective in 2003. Failure to comply with the Privacy Rule or other HIPAA standards can result in Federal penalties.

Delivering HIPAA training to the workforce for regulatory compliance is a mandatory and complicated process. DHH recognized the need for a platform that could quickly deliver high quality cost-effective training to more than 12,000 personnel throughout Louisiana, including not only employees, but also members of the larger workforce, such as interns and volunteers.

Solution:

DHH purchased the Portico product from among numerous national competitors. Portico promptly made a number of modifications to its off-the-shelf HIPAA custom eLearning courseware to meet the organization's exact training needs for the vast majority of its workforce. Portico's custom eLearning courseware and CareerMap™ were key components in DHH's solution to meet the rigorous training requirements of the new HIPAA regulations.

Web-based training dramatically reduces the costs and scheduling difficulties associated with traditional instructor-led training. It allows personnel to be trained wherever they are throughout the department's enterprise, at a time that best integrates with their normal responsibilities. This approach provides a significant reduction in total workforce training time.

Results:

With the assistance of Portico's web-based training, DHH was able to rapidly train a workforce that was scattered across the state, with dramatically different work schedules. In fact, over half the target population completed training within the first month.

Portico's CareerMap™ allowed the department to rapidly and efficiently roll out the training programs to all selected employees statewide. While training for most of the workforce was accomplished with a web-based platform, there were some locations where Internet delivery was impractical. For those employees, Portico developed paper and CD versions of the course that could be integrated with the CareerMap™ event management tracking system.

Additionally, DHH prepared an instructor-led course covering its HIPAA privacy policies and procedures in detail. CareerMap™ enabled record-keeping information from instructor-led events to be seamlessly integrated into the comprehensive training data reporting function. This reporting function gives the department the ability to track and maintain important training data needed to document compliance with the regulation. Through CareerMap™, Portico provides complete online management of all training administration and reports. Portico also supplies an annual closeout package in an electronic format that captures all existing training records.

Steve Gerhart, Director of Training for DHH, noted that due to the urgent need to complete the training, DHH had to feel confident about the technology's ability to function within the department's existing infrastructure.

Portico had already demonstrated the adaptability and reliability of CareerMap™ and Portico custom eLearning courseware by effectively delivering an ongoing web-based training program for the department for over a year.

The implementation of the Portico's custom eLearning courseware is projected to save the company $3,000,000.

Client Profile:

With more than 100,000 employees worldwide, GlaxoSmithKline is one of the world's leading research-based pharmaceutical companies and is committed to improving the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better and live longer.

Executive Summary:

GlaxoSmithKline wanted to find a more efficient and effective model for providing environmental, health, and safety training to its employees at its Research Triangle Park campus in North Carolina and its Upper Marion and Upper Providence campuses in Pennsylvania. Its traditional instructor-led training model diverted personnel from their primary responsibilities and required a great amount of annual training time. By partnering with Portico to develop custom eLearning courseware content for part of its training, GSK reduced training time and reduced expenses for the overall training program.

Objective:

GlaxoSmithKline's previous safety training model used in-house industrial hygienists and safety professionals for much of the instruction, to conduct standard instructor-led training. Because of the large volume of training needed, this meant that these professionals were diverted from their primary job responsibilities for substantial amounts of time. There were also logistical obstacles associated with providing training to a large body of employees across multiple campuses and geographic locations.

To improve the effectiveness of its safety training model, GSK sought to identify courses that might be effectively taught without a live instructor. An internal evaluation team was established and began an in-depth exploration of web-based training as an alternative delivery platform, as well as companies that could support a web-based training initiative.

After a rigorous evaluation of a broad range of potential providers, the field of potential suppliers was narrowed to two. A group of employees representing key GSK departments then evaluated courseware from each finalist, and were asked to vote.

Solution:

Portico was chosen based on the interesting and interactive format in which its custom eLearning courseware presented content, as well as the company's flexibility and willingness to accommodate GSK's vision. To date, Portico has developed twelve custom eLearning courseware courses for GSK related to the environment, health, and safety.

Results:

Within 30 days of being contracted for the project, Portico had already begun offering the first phase of web-based training to 12,000 employees across the three sites. The entire project was implemented in six months.

The versatility of CareerMap™, Portico's proprietary Learning Management System, was fully demonstrated during this project. In addition to CareerMap™ extensive existing reporting capabilities, to meet a specific request from GSK management, Portico also provided custom modifications. GSK's version of CareerMap™ creates additional reports specific to the company's business model.

The efficiency and versatility provided by CareerMap™ and Portico's web-based custom eLearning courseware has allowed GlaxoSmithKline to reduce the number of instructor-led training classes by 20%, allowing personnel who were previously tasked to conduct that instruction to spend more time focused on their other EHS responsibilities. The anywhere/anytime format of Portico web-based training has also reduced the training time for employees by approximately 40% for those courses that can be taught using web-based courseware.

Addendum:

Based on its demonstrated ability to efficiently assist GlaxoSmithKline with its web-based training objectives, Portico has been contracted to provide courseware for multilingual implementation of a new web-based training initiative across GSK's global enterprise.

Portico helped Remington Arms use technology as a vehicle to honor its longtime tradition of providing Remington Arms customers with a high degree of background, history, and safety information about the company's products.

Client Profile:

Remington Arms is one of the nation's oldest continuously operating manufacturers. Remington is the only U.S. manufacturer of both firearms and ammunition products, and one of the largest domestic producers of shotguns and rifles. Founded in1860 the company has a rich history and has developed a lifestyle brand with which outdoor adventure enthusiasts closely associate.

Executive Summary:

Portico created information and training "Webumentaries" for the Remington Arms web site that delivered detailed information about product features and functionality, as well as important safety information. At the same time, the engaging storyline used to present this information reflected the sense of tradition that many Remington Arms customers have passed from generation to generation.

Objective:

Remington Arms wanted to honor and extend the connection that its brand had with hunting enthusiasts, as well continue its ongoing leadership position in firearm safety training. It needed to find a cost effective method for bringing people into a dialogue that engaged them in a spirit of adventure and at the same time provided an experience that advanced their knowledge about both firearm safety and the Remington Arms product line. The perfect solution would have a long life and a global reach.

Solution:

Remington Arms turned to Portico. And Portico delivered. The process began with a team of creative strategists and instructional designers completely immersing themselves in the Remington brand. Many team members were already outdoor enthusiasts making them a natural fit for the assignment. Based on a detailed analysis of Remington's objectives, the Portico team recommended development of highly produced Webumentaries for Remington Arm's Shotgun and Centerfire Rifle product lines.

These interactive experiences bring to life the compelling story of how Remingtons are passed down from generation to generation. Embedded in the narratives is a wealth of product knowledge and firearms safety training, presented in an engaging interactive forum.

Results:

To date, tens of thousands of enthusiasts have visited Remington Arm's web site to interact with the award-winning Webumentaries and continue to build their relationship with the Remington brand .Remington Arms has also been flooded with requests from hunters, education groups, colleges, and law enforcement for copies of the courses to include in their training programs.

Portico's CareerMap™ allowed the department to rapidly and efficiently roll out the training programs to all selected employees statewide. While training for most of the workforce was accomplished with a web-based platform, there were some locations where Internet delivery was impractical. For those employees, Portico developed paper and CD versions of the course that could be integrated with the CareerMap™ event management tracking system.