Millercoors Prepares for Roll out of New LMS

For the past three years, MillerCoors University, the learning and development arm of the beer company, has run off the same LMS. Employees complained that the infrastructure was hard to navigate, offered few bite-size learning opportunities and few mobile and social capabilities.

Steve Buchman, director of learning operations at MillerCoors, kept all of the needs in mind when selecting and planning the roll out of the company's new learning management system.

In the past year, the L&D department has laid the groundwork of a paradigmatic shift in how it approaches learning and development to ensure the shift to the new LMS is successful. Check out our video with Steve above—or see the text version of the Q&A below—for more information about necessary steps in rolling out a new LMS.

What does NextGen LMS mean to you?

I think it's very important that in this day and age, learning professionals are up-to-date and up-to-speed and ahead of the game when it comes to technology and technology in learning, and not just fancy technology, but technology that is actually teaching people and building capability to drive business strategy.

NextGen to me is really at the forefront of being able to think about what is next: How are we going to build capability with all the technology as fast as technology changes and have the systems to support it, so we assure we're measuring it to assure we can tie it to business results.

It sounds like there's an evolution going on with how we're looking at learning with how we're measuring learning. Thinking of your work at MillerCoors, how is your approach to learning changing? Have you been changing how you're thinking about your LMS?

We have. We've been on the same LMS for about three years now, and next year we're going to be going on a new LMS.

Basically, our old LMS was a tracking system, so we could put instructor-led training in there. We could put e-learning, and that was about it.

It was difficult to pull statistics out of. You can't tie it into other systems very easily, so we began thinking about two years ago: How are we going to move technology forward in learning with this LMS that we have in place now with the understanding that in a year from now, we're going to have a new LMS that can be much more social learning based, where you can put other things up there besides just an e-learning or an instructor-led course.

It's more than just a logistical tracking system. So we take that lens in all of the learning that we built, and right now we're using a bunch of different technologies in order to be able to deliver our learning strategy with the LMS that we have, but being prepared for the new LMS.

So, let me give you a couple of examples. We have a mobile app that goes out to our customers. We've leveraged that mobile app for our internal employees to be able to deliver bite-size video training on tools that they need at the right time and the right place at the right moment when they're talking to their customers.

Another example: We're using a third party vendor for a social learning platform for our top leadership at MillerCoors and about every six weeks, they have a different topic where they go in and take courses. We started out with performance management and now it's finance, and that's bite-size videos, that's discussion boards, that's TED talks. That's everything that you kind of think about when it comes to a blended learning solution.

Those are two things that we're doing with the eye on the future. So I challenged my team to say, okay, here's what we have and here's where we're going, let's make sure we're building for where we're going.

I think most importably, are we using technology and are we making those investments now where it's driving business strategy?

It's very easy to buy technology for technology. We do it all the time at home when we have six different phones and four different iPads and notebooks and things like that just because you're a technology person. That doesn't make sense in today's business world. So are we making the investments in the technology that are going to drive the business?

Another example is we have our Best of U guide, which is basically a curriculum of all of the courses that we offer at MillerCoors University and it's tied to the enterprise competencies and leadership requirements.

So, for the first time that is now mobile. People can get the courses when they need it and get to the information. The idea is that will transition into our new LMS and be fully linked, so once you see a class, you'll be able to click on it, get all of the information on the class.

Going off of that, one of the things I want to talk about is mobile learning and micro learning. That's going to be a big part of your discussion at NextGen LMS. Your session is titled "The Devices of Our Times: Designing Micro-Learning Environments for More Relevant Training Programs." Can you talk about that move from your traditional instructor-led or e-learning model to something that is more bite size? How that changed learning at your organization?

We've been going through a transformation over the past three years of becoming an enterprise learning culture where we had learning in bits and pieces and we had some award winning learning and leadership development, for instance.

We're still fairly new with our overall sales curriculum. That's about three years old. Our marketing curriculum is only a year old, and now we've just embarked on our curriculum for our integrated supply chain. And traditionally people thought about learning as come to a classroom, whether it's in your plant or in Milwaukee where we have our MillerCoors University physical space, or go take an e-learning because I was told to go take an e-learning or it's something I need to know.

I like to push leaders to think about it a little differently, and I actually had this conversation with some regional vice presidents the other day. I said, if you broke a window at your house, how would you go about finding out how to fix it?

Well, I would Google it and watch a YouTube video and then read a document about the window itself and maybe go to the Home Depot website and see if I can get a replacement window, and I said, that's what we need to do to think about learning. And we're starting to to do that in areas, but really thinking about it when they need it, where they need it and how they need it.

With such a diverse workforce, where we have salespeople that are home based and on the road 300 days a year to our plant and manufacturing hourly workforce that are 8 hours on their feet running a bottle line or can line. How do we make sure we're delivering learning to fit that audience, but doing it in a way that's blended?

I know you'll be offering a lot of advice in your session, but one of the things that I found most interesting is how you've been preparing for the roll out of your new LMS. This is not just we picked a new LMS and we're just going to roll it out in a few weeks or a few months. It's a multi-year process. How do you even dip your toes in the water when you're accustomed to these ILT models to go to a curriculum focused on bite-size learning?

I think it's a couple of things to make sure that I'm asking those questions and getting to where we need to go to.

I have a tremendous team and they come in to my office a couple of times a day and end up showing me new things. So I think that's one thing—having a team that comes to you with ideas, and it's not only my team.

I'll get emails from the senior director of learning and development or even our chief human resource officer, saying, hey, have you seen this new technology? Check it out. Or let's sit down for 30 minutes and talk about it, understanding that we're not going to buy everything, you're not going to be able to do everything. So that's kind of the second thing: getting that information from peers and from superiors.

The third thing is: I am partnered extremely tightly with the person who is rolling our LMS. She and I talk daily, multiple times a day. So I'll ask question about what the system will be able to do, and then be able to go to the rest of our learning team and say, hey, let's start thinking about it this way, so it works within the system.

The other way I push her is by asking: Is this going to drive our business or our learning strategy? How can we make changes to it or how can make updates or what are some things we need to think about to make sure we're not saying that our strategy is going to be driven by limitations or a new LMS?