Particularly in the northeastern part of the United States where wicked winters blast the roadways with ice and snow (leaving an endless supply of potholes in their wake), vehicle maintenance is an important part of any car owner’s day to day life. Those who live in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Vermont have come to know VIP Tires & Service as the place to turn to keep their cars running in top condition, no matter what Mother Nature throws at them.
Originally founded in 1958, VIP Tires & Service is the largest tire dealer and automotive service provider in New England. Each of its locations are privately owned and while the chain is not franchised, consistent and quality employee training plays a vital role in the company’s success.
We recently spoke with Denis Daigle, LMS Director and Operations Support Coordinator for VIP Tires & Service, to learn more about how the company trains its employees and how using a Learning Management System has made a pronounced and positive impact on that training.
Using The Right LMS Will Drive Employee Training That Extra Mile
VIP Tires & Service first implemented the use of an LMS several years ago, but it wasn’t set up to track who took the courses or completed them and the program eventually fell to the wayside. In late 2017, the company decided to reinstate the use of an LMS, preferring to find one that would serve as a measuring stick of sorts, an application that Latitude’s LMS was designed to address.
Denis had been with the company for more than 20 years when the opportunity arose to serve as LMS Director for VIP Tires & Service. He brought a fresh perspective with new ideas for its usage and after gaining a firm grasp on the system, began implementing the courses and quizzes that would breathe new life into the company’s training methods.
In doing so, Denis was able to give the operations group exactly what it wanted: effective training courses with a system that measures who is taking them and how they’re faring along the way. Since implementing Latitude’s LMS, Denis told us the benefits have become more and more obvious to everyone in the company. “They’re liking it a lot better,” Denis noted. “They find it a lot easier than it was previously.”
The LMS training at VIP Tires & Service is fully internal and much of it involves video presentations and demonstrations. Latitude’s LMS is compliant with Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) 1.2 and 2004, which enables Denis to easily integrate video presentations made through Adobe Captivate. Once the material is loaded into the LMS app, “it spreads it to every employee and then measures what every employee is doing with it,” Denis explained.
The courses Denis loads into the LMS are designed for managers and every employee in the store, specifically the technicians. VIP Tires & Service offers its employees a varied selection of how-to videos, safety presentations, and a full spectrum of educational content to provide them with the best training possible. “If there’s something that will teach a new employee how to do the job correctly, I’ll load it in,” Denis told us.
Every new employee that joins the VIP Tires & Service team has to complete about a dozen courses before they start working. This thorough and consistent training method not only ensures that the company’s employees are knowledgeable, but that they adhere to the appropriate safety protocol and maintain the brand’s standards in every location it serves.
The LMS training employed by VIP Tires & Service delivers a comprehensive education to its staff while also providing the means to measure their individual progress. This broad approach to training will only continue to further company’s success and Latitude is proud to be a part of that undertaking.
About our Training Series
As part of our own expansion and growth, we’re excited to continue our training series. This series encompasses a wide variety of channel topics designed to help channel partners gain knowledge of successful business practices.
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