BenefitMall Uses SilkRoad’s Learning Management System

Salespeople Were Sidetracked

Dallas, TX-based BenefitMall is a national provider of employee benefit services. Through a sales/distribution network of more than 25,000 insurance brokers and CPAs, the company helps 200,000 firms provide employee health insurance, streamline HR processes, and more. BenefitMall provides a self-service portal for brokers to obtain insurance quotes for their clients. Despite the system’s self-service features, the company faced an ongoing challenge: brokers called their BenefitMall sales reps to run the quotes. “Instead of establishing or growing relationships, our salespeople were spending a lot of time running quotes for brokers,” says Audrenia Graham, BenefitMall’s director of HR. “We had a very clear goal—get sales people back to selling.” To achieve that goal, the company planned for an upgrade to the portal and decided a new approach to training was needed. “We tried a file sharing solution,” says Graham. “That didn’t work. We posted videos with the same result. Then we tried SilkRoad Learning … I wish we had tried SilkRoad first.”

Learning In The Fast Lane

Graham and her team had clear objectives as they searched for a learning management system:

Flexible and cloud-based for distributed access
Comprehensive online help to minimize help desk involvement
Easy implementation

After a thorough vetting process, Graham and her team selected SilkRoad’s Learning Management System. “The demo showed us how easy it can be to manage everything, and for people to find and use the training content they want,” says Graham. Because SilkRoad Learning is cloud-based, BenefitMall’s solution was up and running in just weeks. By pre-selling the system internally, interest was high. “The rollout was at midnight, and people were using it within minutes,” she adds.

BenefitMall has been able to:

Create a single, branded training destination with all content for the broker network and employees
Centrally manage everything over the web
Improve training utilization and effectiveness
Gain better insight into broker engagement
Reduce travel and help desk costs

“It has everything we’ve needed,” says Graham. “The structure is all there, and it’s easy to use.”

We’re increasing sales productivity, trimming costs, making things easier for customers. That’s all good for the bottom line.

More Productive Conversations

The company has embraced SilkRoad for internal education, too. The change has been dramatic. According to Graham, employees’ usage of training materials has improved to 95% participation. Onboarding has also improved. “New hires are learning a consistent message about our culture and values,” says Graham. “We never had that before. Managers love it so much, now they’re asking when more training will be available.”

Mission Accomplished…And More

Graham and her team accomplished the goal—increased self-service usage of their quotation portal. But the company has also gained other, unexpected advantages. “It’s given us a competitive edge,” says Graham. “Reps use SilkRoad to demonstrate how great BenefitMall is at supporting our customers. Plus, it helped us reduce travel costs, and even serves as our platform for webinars.”

SilkRoad Results

A single, flexible training destination for 28,000 users—easy to deploy, use, and manage
Salespeople freed up to spend more time on finding new customers and expanding existing relationships
Improved visibility to measure learning content value, customer interest and engagement, usage trends, and much more
Added competitive advantage for sales and marketing—proof point for outstanding customer support

Challenges

Increase self-service usage of insurance quote portal—reduce the amount of time salespeople spend helping brokers use the portal
Provide a single branded location for 28,000 users to find all needed training content quickly
Give salespeople a quick and easy way to help their customers find and use training materials
Increase training options and flexibility, so individuals can chose just the content needed and self-guide through each course to completion
Improve tracking of ‘what, when, and who’ for training materials usage

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