Our society, our economy, and our workplace are in constant states of change. The speed and frequency at which we experience change are ever-increasing. The world population is growing, and traditional time-and-space barriers dissipate, leading to more rapid globalization. As if the force by which technological change asks us to adjust was not enough, we seem to be reminded by the current situation that we are ever less politely urged to change by the environment, and our younger generations.
In the grand ambition for a better tomorrow, all contributions are merely puzzle pieces, yet every effort is a valuable part of the sum. A vision has no missing parts, and so the current struggle lies in identifying all the puzzle pieces and where they fit in.
Let me take a step back from grand schemes to tell you about our puzzle piece and how we drive the change we feel is needed.
The 3DEXPERIENCE® platform is a Business Experience platform. It provides software solutions for every organization in your company – from engineering to marketing to sales – that help you in your value creation process to create differentiating consumer experiences.
Within 3DEXCITE, we firmly believe that upskilling is the best way to shape our WORKFORCE OF THE FUTURE. For this, we created the PIONEERS Initiative that evolves and expands our employees’ traditional toolsets and supports them to migrate their workflow onto the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
One component consists of traditional training in virtual classrooms and e-tutorials with online exams. Another more significant feature is a commitment to a Learning-by-doing approach that transforms our business the same way it transforms our workforce.
PIONEERS acts as an enablement platform and offers a learning path to three subsequent Certifications.
The ROVER level qualifies participants to work in the toolsets on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, focusing on our brands’ offerings. Participants are enabled to work on 3DEXPERIENCE related projects by using our software in a boot-camp training, and by obtaining two certifications focusing on the platform and 3DEXCITE related knowledge.
The PIONEERS project portfolio is quite broad and enables a wide variety of skill-sets, thus allowing PIONEERS to enable on a broad spectrum of skills needed by our WORKFORCE OF THE FUTURE. The PIONEERS portfolio includes on-the-job projects guided by our customer consultants’ team, driving our clients’ marketing transformation. Other projects are not directly customer-related but generate value for our company, driving our transformation and creating an opportunity to generate more business in the future.
The next level, we call PATHFINDER. This section of the learning path evolves around execution and communication. While the PIONEERS participants are highly qualified professionals, the performance revolves around learning by using the new toolset and a slightly adapted workflow. The communication portion of this certification level already indicates the transfer of possibly new skill-sets. On the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, we have a fully collaborative environment that also contains dash-boarding and communities.
The transfer of communication, even partially, into a community-driven approach requires a new skill-set and a change of mind. Communication happens in networks, is more open, and feels more public. The tools are different. If the team is widespread and work occurs on the platform, interaction becomes digital. The larger the audience, the better visual tools like videos work for communication. Stakeholder engagement and management are quite different with higher transparency. Their input can come earlier, which can be stressful, but they can be part of the solution for a problem. Working within more significant networks can create great ideas, and the platform offers ways to harness and manage them. While we teach the tool’s usage, we need to ensure the simultaneous adoption of the method.
On top of that, we have directly connected the PIONEERS initiative to our user-enablement. The enablement starts with more experienced PIONEERS pulling others along the learning path, supported by R&D through communities to facilitate platform software adoption. We also connect PIONEERS to our external Users through Marketing User Advocacy to support and foster the software’s adoption overall. PIONEERS projects and participants in the program have the opportunity to contribute to our User Community, structured by thought leadership articles, Webinars, how-to and quick tip videos, and unstructured by community participation.
Indeed, you can see how different and difficult a simple change in digital tools can be. Still, with a more holistic approach such as PIONEERS, we can ensure the upskilling path for our workforce doesn’t end, before it can no longer grow alongside technology and, besides a few exceptions, eventually has to turn to reskilling.
Following this thought process we introduced a third and final certification level in our learning path, the SHERPA. While this certification level still founds on execution within projects, it has a strong focus on communication skills and requires participants to excel in supporting our user-enablement efforts. The SHERPA’s are our evangelists charged with transporting our vision to large groups, the same way they can communicate tool usage on a pro-to-pro level while consulting our clients.
At the end of the journey, we will have people who breathe the logic of a platform economy, ready to carry the weight of leadership and drive our transformation and our clients’ transformation.
So this is our approach, our puzzle piece.
What’s yours? How do you drive your transformation?
Real-time 3D Enthusiast, based in Munich, Germany, over 20 years experience in IT and Digital Marketing. Member of the 3DEXCITE Digital Marketing team.