Millennium Chemicals Going Global: OnDemand Personal Navigator™ Helps Millennium Chemicals Pull it All Together Customer Profile Many companies call themselves "global," but few fit the description more accurately than Millennium Chemicals. The world's second-largest producer of titanium dioxide-a bright white powder that is a crucial ingredient in coatings, paints, plastics, papers, and more-Millennium has plants in Australia, Brazil, France, the United Kingdom and the United States. The company has leading market positions in a broad range of commodity, industrial, performance, and specialty chemicals. Situation Worldwide Training Program for Enterprise-wide Application There are incredible demands placed on an IT system that must span three continents. No one understands these challenges better than Pat Ligman, Manager of SAP Training and Documentation for Millenium's Global Business Process Improvement (BPI) Group. Ligman, who's been with Millennium for 23 years, works with the company's 30-person BPI Team. In a 1999 effort to pull together its global organization, Millennium began implementing SAP 3.1h. With plants all over the world, "we needed a unified business process," Ligman says. Previously, each plant used individual business process software. Since Millennium was close to completing a global SAP implementation for more than 4,000 SAP users worldwide, it was imperative that he develop a consistent training methodology in order to meet the greater goal of creating a unified, company-wide business process. The training had to cover every type of SAP user, from process operators and people making purchase requests to those who would only be using SAP on an infrequent basis. The Solution Global Knowledge's OnDemand Personal Navigator Ligman and his team were introduced to OnDemand Personal Navigator, the world's leading SAP in-application training and performance support software. Developed by Global Knowledge, OnDemand Personal Navigator provides corporations with both a highly customizable training development tool as well as an in-application e-Learning solution that allows employees to learn an exact task while working within the actual application. OnDemand Personal Navigator can be used to teach in three different modes: See it, a hands-free animated demonstration of a topic in an environment that accurately simulates the users' real-world application; Try it, which helps users learn by walking them through the steps of a task in a simulation of their real-world software application; and Do it, which navigates users through the successful completion of a task in their live enterprise application. Results Standard Business Processes for 4,000 SAP Users Worldwide OnDemand Personal Navigator provided the consistency Ligman desired for his enterprise training program. He was especially impressed with the Try it mode, which he calls "a brilliant training method." Not only was it helpful as a supplement to classroom training, it also gave users confidence to get through transactions on their own. "OnDemand Personal Navigator also cut the overall training time in half," says Ligman. "[It] has provided a vehicle for training and as well as information on updates to the SAP system quickly. I now have the application installed on the networks at each site, and updates are carried out on a regular basis." Millennium's SAP trainers were equally enthusiastic, reporting to Ligman that the product was "making their lives easier." They also liked its ability to provide ongoing support long after traditional classroom training had ended. Another key highlight was the ability to incorporate SAP "shortcuts" into OnDemand Personal Navigator. Shortly after going "live" with SAP, Ligman and his team discovered that users had developed their own methods and techniques of carrying out a transaction in SAP. "The shortcuts were often helpful because they gave us a quick and realistic way to use the system," Ligman says. "We then incorporated those techniques into the OnDemand Personal Navigator content, and that made our training material more relevant from a user's perspective." Despite the challenges of its huge size and multiple global locations, Millennium Chemicals keeps its business processes as pristine as the gleaming paint on the facade of the White House-paint made with the company's own titanium dioxide, of course. "In a global system like ours, OnDemand Personal Navigator gave us a mechanism that allowed us to standardize our business processes and our transaction steps, and then use these standard techniques as training material," says Ligman. > Open this case study in PDF (new window) < Previous Case|Next Case >
"OnDemand Personal Navigator also cut the overall training time in half"
--Pat Ligman, Manager of SAP's Training and Documentation for Millenium's Global Business Process Improvement (BPI) Group
