Case Study: DaimlerChrysler Engineering Group and VSI Communications Accelerate Employees' Learning Curve

VSI's Mentor™ Training Software is Added to a Menu of Training Tools as Part of a Test Run to Help Engineers Gain Productivity

South Norwalk, Connecticut, USA, 17 October 2000 -- What does it take to spur employee training in a global organization, spread across continents? At DaimlerChrysler, the challenge requires a full complement of training initiatives—everything from traditional classroom instruction to the latest in help desk resources and support. For DaimlerChrysler, it is a multi-dimensional approach, designed to optimize the employee's opportunity to gain all-important productivity. So, when one group inside DaimlerChrysler's engineering department needed to help its engineers at the Technology Center in Auburn Hills, MI, quickly master calendaring and scheduling in Lotus Notes, the decision was made to test a unique tool and add it to an extensive menu of training initiatives.

The group turned to VSI Communications Group's Mentor™ for Lotus Notes, the world's leading just-in-time training solution for organizations committed to helping employees master the application quickly, at their desktop, while they are using Notes. VSI, a subsidiary of PSINet Consulting Solutions, a wholly owned subsidiary of PSINet Inc. (Nasdaq: PSIX), is the leading content development firm focused on creating just-in-time e-Learning tools for major corporations and e-businesses.

Deployed by major corporations worldwide, Mentor™ for Lotus Notes is an e-learning tool that provides the exact training information users need at the precise moment they need it. The result is that users learn the application organically, while they are doing their jobs and working in the very application they need to master. It has proven to be an ingenious approach, one that delivers information in highly memorable, multimedia doses, prescribed for the exact issue a user is currently grappling to learn.

"We viewed VSI's Mentor as an opportunity to test the software with a group of engineers who typically don't have time to attend classroom or computer-based training courses," says Claudia VonDrak, supervisor of DaimlerChrysler's Customer Office Productivity Team. "With Mentor, we were able to give the engineers access to a tutor available wherever and whenever they needed it in order to help master Lotus Notes. The classroom training is important because it shows employees the standard operating procedures for Notes. Mentor helps maintain what they learn in class and access that information while using Notes whether they are in their office, on the road, at home or in a hotel."

To make the engineers aware of the availability of Mentor and to speed employee use of the product, VonDrak's team worked with VSI to develop an internal promotion to introduce the software. The promotion, which included e-mail marketing, a contest and a balloon-filled event, helped build awareness and spurred employee use.

"The last component was the launch itself," says VonDrak. "We sent our engineers e-mails with a link to the Mentor database so they could automatically add it

Mentor to their desktop. The promotion helped our people to realize that Mentor had arrived."

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