Anora is the leading wine and spirits brand house in the Nordic countries. The company operates as a manufacturer, importer, and distributor of beverages. In addition to alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, the company produces technical ethanol, which is used in various industrial sectors, such as geothermal fluid, pharmaceuticals, nail polish removers, and the paper industry. Anora has around 1,200 employees, and the large size of the workforce influences the needs and priorities concerning the learning environment and training processes.
Anna Väkeväinen has a versatile, international role in Anora’s HR team. Her responsibilities include everything related to staff development, well-being, and engagement. In addition, she supports the spirits business in matters related to personnel.
The merger of two large companies required updates to the learning platform systems
When Anora was formed from the merger of two Nordic companies, it was an excellent time to make changes to the learning platform systems. The company had grown rapidly, and it was important to ensure that the new learning environment would meet the company’s expanded needs and strategic goals. Anora aimed to make the learning process smoother and more efficient. With the merger, content production and especially reporting needed to be developed to meet the company’s increasing development needs.
Anora conducted a competitive process in acquiring a learning environment, with clear requirements set for the system. Vuolearning met these requirements excellently. The ease of use, customization options, and efficient reporting tools of the Vuolearning platform were important factors in the selection of the learning environment. The Vuolearning platform has supported Anora’s post-merger training needs since the end of 2021.
Anora specified three core areas that the new learning environment should address:
- The platform should be simple for the users, regardless of the device.
- Producing trainings should be achievable even by those who are not training professionals or digital natives.
- The reporting capabilities of the learning platform should meet the requirements of a publicly listed company.
The selected learning platform needed to be as user-friendly as possible for Anora’s employees, and in addition, it had to be accessible to external people who are trained, for example, in safety procedures at factories before entering the premises. Anora conducts a lot of safety-related training in-house, so it was important for them to find a solution where the system is simple enough for experts in their own fields to produce online training, even if they don’t have a background in education.
The reporting of the learning environment had to be such that it could be used in Anora’s annual planning and reporting, as well as in verifying competencies. The company needs to be able to verify that the users have completed the required trainings. Additionally, they hoped for the ability to remind the users about completed and not completed online courses.
“This was a great opportunity to create an option designed for Anora rather than using the old system of either of the merged companies. Overall, it felt like Vuolearning met our needs, and that the platform was tailored exactly for us.”
The Vuolearning platform enabled Anora’s internal training production, saving time and resources
Vuolearning was able to support Anora for example in faster and more efficient production of online courses, as well as in possibilities for tracking the user progress and reporting. Anna Väkeväinen explains, “With the merger, the training materials had to be standardized and adapted to the new brand. It was great that we received help from Vuolearning with this, and we were able to ‘Anorify’ the materials together.”
The Vuolearning platform enabled the company’s internal content production, significantly reducing the need for external content production, and online courses now take less time and resources to produce.
“Through trial and error, we’ve tried some things on the platform to see what works and what we won’t do in the future.”
In addition to the ease of use of the Vuolearning platform, Väkeväinen appreciates the smooth cooperation and support services. Particularly, the instructions on the Vuolearning platform’s Help page have been an important resource for the users, reducing the number of phone inquiries. Customer-specific customizations were implemented for Anora, and Väkeväinen is satisfied with the interaction and cooperation regarding these. For example, the mass creation of the user accounts on the Vuolearning platform has been a useful feature for managing a large, international workforce. Guest user identification has played a central role in the safety and hygiene training for collaborative partners. This has allowed the factory control rooms to verify that the required conditions have been met before someone enters the factory. “There was always a solution for everything,” Väkeväinen summarizes.
At Anora’s production sites, training is required in the local language. The Vuolearning platform helped to manage the needs for different languages and enabled customized training in various languages. Anora’s employees have mostly received the Vuolearning platform well. The implementation required some learning, but the users have found the necessary instructions on the platform and solutions to the problems. Anora’s production workers have embraced the platform very well, and its integration into their daily work has gone smoothly.
“There has been very little feedback about the platform, which is generally a good thing because if there’s a lot of feedback, it usually means things aren’t working.”
Väkeväinen has found the analytics provided by the learning environment particularly useful for non-mandatory training. With the analytics, it's possible to view for example in which stage the users are at in course completion, how many users have completed the course, when the users last logged in, and how many participants there have been on each course in the last month or 12 months.
“The reports are very clear, visually appealing, and easy to extract from the platform.”
Vuolearning is a flexible and easy-to-use learning environment
Väkeväinen has found the quality of the customer service to be good and has always received help with challenges related to using the Vuolearning platform. She also feels that customers are treated with respect, which makes it easy to ask for help.
“It’s really nice that the customer service responds very quickly if there are any questions about using the Vuolearning platform.”
Väkeväinen recommends the Vuolearning platform especially for organizations that want to create and manage their trainings and need a flexible and easy-to-use learning environment. The versatile features of the Vuolearning platform have helped Anora to achieve its training goals. Anora has been able to produce and customize training materials efficiently, manage user information, and closely monitor the user progress.
“If you need a system that allows you to produce a lot of your own material, customize it easily, and quickly create new course versions, making life relatively easy for training producers, then Vuolearning is a really good fit,” Väkeväinen concludes.