3Dlabs Inc., a leading supplier of graphics accelerator solutions to a broad range of professionals including the computer-aided design (CAD), digital content creation (DCC) and visual simulation markets, was looking to outfit key business groups such as sales and marketing with an easy-to-use solution to educate and train their employees and prospects. These business groups needed a better way to educate and inform 3Dlabs’ partners, customers and prospects on products, technical architecture, core benefits, pricing, etc. The communications team was looking to provide knowledge delivery that was complete, easy to understand and, most importantly, concise.
3Dlabs first wanted to incorporate e-learning technology to educate 200 worldwide editors and analysts about new visual processing architecture, which delivers professional graphics using visual programmability. This strategic announcement was more than just another new product—it was a new concept that the company was pioneering. With this in mind, 3Dlabs needed to engage the press and explain its story with details and content that enabled the editors to fully understand 3Dlabs’ newly coined term, “VPU.” 3Dlabs choose Presedia Express because the system can easily incorporate audio, animations, slides, graphics, quizzes and surveys to engage and educate audiences.
“With Presedia Express, we are able to now educate, train and inform employees and critical constituents about new products and corporate initiatives in a more rapid and consistent manner,” said Neil Trevett, senior vice president of market intelligence for 3Dlabs.
Prior to adopting Presedia’s e-learning technology, product personnel and product specialists used to fly all over the world to deliver presentations in person about new technology developments or product introductions. This was particularly critical to 3Dlabs as it was planning to unveil an industry-first graphics architecture while also introducing a new industry term associated with the announcement.
3Dlabs previously used e-mail with slide presentations, Web sites with presentation downloads, conference calls and in-person visits to communicate new product introductions to key constituents, including press, analysts, prospects, employees and partners.
The solutions to 3Dlabs’ training and education challenges included Presedia Express and Microsoft PowerPoint, a common business tool used to help create presentations and courses. Presedia Express is an enterprise-level, rapid e-learning system that creates, delivers and tracks Web-based, multimedia e-learning content in minutes.
Using the Presedia system became more strategic as 3Dlabs also wanted to educate their geographically dispersed employees, customers and partners about the concept they were planning to unveil. Since its successful application, 3Dlabs now communicates and educates its employees and partners using the Presedia Express system. Moreover, the company has added quizzes and surveys at the end of the presentations and courses to gather feedback from employees and partners, so they can evaluate how well the audience has retained the information relayed.
Presedia helped 3Dlabs get its message out more effectively to a wide audience in a short period of time. 3Dlabs was able to educate more than 7,000 prospects and industry leaders in less than two days. Presedia interactive multimedia increases retention of knowledge 60 percent more than static text, so 3Dlabs knew that the prospects and industry leaders would be able to absorb the new information. Through the e-learning, 3Dlabs delivered an engaging and consistent message from subject matter experts to a worldwide audience. “We were able to inform and train over 7,000 employees and partners worldwide in just two days,” said Kim Stowe, senior marketing communications manager for 3Dlabs.
In addition, 3Dlabs was able to assess the knowledge gained through the e-learning, as well as seeing immediate benefits in the form of feedback. Senior management was able to evaluate the retention of the information through the quizzing feature. And the marketing team was able to analyze immediate feedback from partners and prospects through the survey feature.
3Dlabs can now educate, train and inform critical constituents about new products and corporate initiatives in a more rapid, consistent and impactful manner. Employees and partners can now receive communication directly from 3Dlabs in-house technology expert Trevett via convenient, on-demand e-learing presentations. Likewise, Trevett is able to communicate corporate knowledge efficiently to hundreds of people in a single day and no longer has to spend inordinate amounts of time traveling between airports and cities.
Also important to 3Dlabs is that its partners and resellers are now able to recommunicate key information related to technology, compatibility and pricing with more speed, accuracy and consistency.
“3Dlabs has been extremely impressed with the simplicity of employing multimedia presentations to our Web site, e-mail correspondence and international press communications. We found it simple to employ and update,” said Stowe. “For instance, we posted our presentation with links on product pages, editorial forums and in personal e-mail to customers and press. We continue to come up with fresh new ideas of how to take advantage of the Presidia technology.”
Stowe estimates that 3Dlabs has significantly reduced the time required to roll out training presentations—by 75 percent, from four weeks to one week. At the same time, 3Dlabs has reduced time and travel costs by approximately $100,000 per year. In addition, Stowe boasts that for this product launch, 3Dlabs was able to inform and train more than 7,000 employees, partners, editors and customers worldwide in just two days.
“We utilized the Presedia Express system to deliver our important, time-critical, new product training information faster and more cost-effectively than our previous classroom training approaches,” said Stowe. “It has been an incredible addition to our face-to-face training activities, and the 3Dlabs’ international offices are equally thrilled to have this content for localization of materials in their respective regions.”
Eric Vidal is director of marketing at Presedia, Inc. Eric has a diverse marketing background with an expertise of the e-learning space. He’s been directly responsible for simplifying and accelerating online training for numerous Global 2000 companies.
