Hollister successfully markets its online wound care training modules as a value-added service to clients

  Selling wound care products to hospitals is highly competitive. It’s a crowded market, and finding your differentiator can be a challenge. That was the position that Hollister Wound Care (Libertyville, IL) found itself in a few years ago when Mary Regan joined the company as its Director of Clinical Affairs. Her first mission was to provide comprehensive training to nearly 70 sales representatives spread throughout the nation in less than 3 months. Mary identified specific requirements for the sales training she needed to roll out. The idea was for the training to be engaging and interactive, minimize the sales reps’ time away from the job, and Mary wanted to make sure there was an easy and accurate method for tracking and recording those who had completed the training.   From previous experience, Mary knew the only way she could achieve effective sales training in 3 months was by developing an online education system. Through a referral, Mary contacted Intelladon (Tampa, FL), a learning solutions integrator. Three months later, Intelladon had implemented NetDimensions’ learning management system, EKP, and developed content for eight 15-minute sales training modules using articulate e-learning software. According to Mary, the Intelladon staff was commendable and the course developers made the content come to life. The training has been a hit with the Hollister sales reps as they enjoyed how interactive it was. The next challenge consisted of helping the sales team become a value-added provider to the hospital setting. Hollister achieved its goal when it launched ConnectEd, powered by theNetDimensions EKP platform and delivered by Intelladon. Intelladon partnered with Hollister to develop the branding and is actively involved in new hospital rollouts. Currently, ConnectEd consists of 30 training modules and continues to grow. Hollister offers ConnectEd as an adjunct to their product solutions in order to facilitate the wound care education of bedside healthcare providers in hospital, hospice, and home healthcare settings.   Hollister is keen on the role mobile technology plays in the lives of today’s healthcare providers, particularly medical students and physicians. Thanks to an Intelladon-developed mobile app, ConnectEd, is also available for BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. The EKP platform acts as a linchpin to the mobile app because of its flexibility of interfacing with multiple mobile devices. The app provides one course for all browsers and differentiates which device the learner is using, making it transparent to the user and overcoming the flash compatibility issues with the iPhone and iPad. Additionally, the mobile app is ConnectEd branded and available to Hollister learners via the iTunes store. One of Hollister’s recent client successes involves providing a hospital with immediate wound care training. As the result of a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) audit, the hospital, a Hollister Wound Care client, was required to develop an education program to train all caregivers on how to assess and chart a wound. The hospital was also required to provide documentation showing that the training was successfully completed within 30 days. With Intelladon’s rapid-response support, Hollister had online training available within 8 hours of the initial CMS call. Within 30 days, 80% of the staff had completed the training modules with a passing rate of 85%.   For more information, visit www.intelladon.com or www.hollisterwoundcare.com .