Outsourcing: A healthy solution for this non-profit

As a global player in the telecoms industry, Vodafone’s reputation thrives on their ability to innovate and adapt to market trends. To that end, the Marketing Academy in Vodafone was seeking a relevant, in-depth and effective professional education course to sharpen the digital skills of their workforce.

As Head of Global and Commercial Learning and Development at Vodafone, Mohsin Ghafoor’s task was to raise standards in digital marketing, across the group.

“Our aim was that every marketer at Vodafone reaches what we would describe as a minimum acceptable standard of digital marketing skills, knowledge, and capability, and be able to apply that to their day job and have an impact on our customers.”

But not only does Vodafone have a very large workforce, it is also spread all over the world. Natasha Brookes is a Learning and Development Specialist at Vodafone. For her, it was clear that a digital marketing course needed an online solution.

“Vodafone is a large global organization. In order to reach all of the marketers within the different markets, what better way to do it than having one place where marketers can come and learn? And it will be a consistent learning approach.”

The Digital Marketing Institute realized early on that Vodafone is a company that wants to set the pace, not just keep up with it. They didn’t just want a foundation to their digital marketing, they also wanted to train their staff to be up-to-date and current in their knowledge and skills, so they could anticipate what their customers would want.

“I had the greatest degree of confidence in the Digital Marketing Institute, both in terms of quality of content and their global certification standard, which we could apply across all of our markets,” stated Ghafoor

Fortunately, the Vodafone Marketing Academy had a learning management system, or e-learning system, already set up. Having a learning management system meant that their staff already knew the benefits of learning online. The next step was to find the right partner, to provide the content the company needed.

To get Vodafone started, The Digital Marketing Institute began by carefully picking topics and courses that were most relevant to Vodafone and their staff. They then agreed a global user license that gave Vodafone’s staff access to 15 of the DMI modules. Their staff could choose from modules in both the Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing and from the Specialist Diplomas.

The Digital Marketing Institute team then worked with Vodafone to integrate core modules and content into their e-learning system to make it easy for their global workforce to train together, wherever they were, and whenever it suited. The video-based learning content is now used by Vodafone Marketing Academy staff all over the world.

A launch was also successfully supported by with a range of creative promotions – from e-flyers to newsletters and helped generate awareness and enthusiasm for the courses through internal campaigns. Today, The Digital Marketing Institute continues to work with Vodafone to certify their workforce, and help the company realize their full digital potential.

“I found the relationship to be a really positive one. One that was constructive. It certainly felt to me that what I was saying about Vodafone’s needs and requirements in this space was being listened to,” concluded Mohsin.