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As a Drupal Certified Partner Gold and as a Premium Supporting Partner and Organisation Member of the Drupal Association, Factorial has been contributing to the global Drupal community since its foundation in 2015. By sponsoring and organising events (Splash Awards, DrupalCamp, Drupal User Group Hamburg), sponsoring development time for our Drupal developers and submitting sessions, we actively invest in the further development of the framework and the community. As a member of Drupal Business e.V., we are also committed to marketing Drupal in the DACH region.
Creation of a learning portal for the Animal Health division of the family-run pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim. The aim of this Learning Management System (LMS) is to provide independent training and continuing education for veterinarians, veterinary assistants and other animal healthcare professionals. The developed platform plays a central role in the global customer experience ecosystem of Boehringer Ingelheim and serves to identify the company as the most important point of contact for information in the field of veterinary healthcare. In December 2023, the platform was successfully launched in more than 10 countries around the world.
At Drupal Splash Awards Germany and Austria 2023 the 'Learning portal for veterinary professionals Boehringer Ingelheim' project was awarded the Splash Award in the category of Healthcare. The jury acknowledged the work put into the development of the platform with the following words:
'A nice showcase of the versatility of Drupal, which makes it possible to efficiently combine a variety of processes in one single platform.'
The Boehringer Ingelheim learning portal offers high-quality and personalised training content for qualified personnel in the field of veterinary medicine. The target groups of the content are veterinarians, veterinary assistants and other specialist personnel, with a wide range of specialisations and animal species covered by the system. The platform's material includes course types such as short videos, webinars with chapter subdivisions, podcasts, interactive SCORM, live events and documents.
Web engagements, such as the completion of a course, are automatically documented in the customer database and significantly support the sales team in providing advice and deepening the customer relationship. The learning portal also plays an important role in product launch campaigns for customers who want to find out about new treatments and train their employees.
Back to topGoal
The overarching goal of the platform was to provide a centralised solution for the further education and training of veterinary professionals. The company's strategy is to be perceived as a trusted partner for the veterinary sector and to provide a centralised solution that can be gradually rolled out to various markets. Veterinary assistants as well as veterinarians and veterinary assistants should have 24/7 access to the learning content and be able to train themselves independently. At the same time, the portal should support the sales department in collecting information based on the completed learning units in order to be able to offer personalised content for B2B customers for even more effective advice.
Back to topOutcome
The direct result of the project is the efficiency gain in sales, which achieves even more qualified advice and thus a higher conversion rate thanks to the reduced time required. The other deliverables of the Learning Management System in detail:
- Wide range of learning formats: The learning platform offers a wide range of interactive learning content, including short videos, webinars with chapter subdivisions, podcasts, interactive SCORM and documents consisting of text and descriptive image content.
- Gamification approach: Optional quizzes help participants to verify their learning success.
- Integration into the B2B ecosystem: Participants' web engagements are tracked and documented on the VEEVA timeline. Various deep links support email campaigns when addressing existing customers.
- 24/7 provision of information: Interested specialist staff can train anywhere and at any time and complete further training courses independently.
- Automated and personalised certificate creation: By completing selected learning content, customers can earn valuable training points, which are required to renew licences in many countries. As proof, the portal offers high-quality, personalised certificates that can be submitted to the relevant authorities.
- Country-specific configuration: In addition to the provision of country-specific learning content, a variety of other features can be customised to the needs of the respective market: Segmentation of customers* and content, promotions, compilation of learning content in a series, product and campaign pages. All texts and content on the portal can be customised and translated.
- Successful launch in more than 10 countries: The portal is already in operation in numerous countries, including France, New Zealand, the Philippines, Italy, Canada and parts of South America. Further launches are planned.
The project demonstrates the speed with which scalable systems based on Drupal can be launched with a high degree of maturity within just a few months. The advantages of the framework also become clear in relation to the permission-based system, which enables content creators to independently manage and maintain content without restricting existing functionalities for users. Drupal's strength in the area of multilingualism also illustrates how quickly the platform can be localised and thus introduced into new markets with high scalability and cost efficiency.
Thee lean and high-performance solution provided by Factorial is a prime example of the implementation of a learning management system based on Drupal and thus demonstrates the possibilities of the framework in terms of efficient and scalable solutions in the enterprise sector. The result achieved has been such a success with the customer that countries that have relied on local, established solutions for decades are now gradually phasing them out and switching to the learning platform (for example in the UK).
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
A number of modules were used in the development of the learning portal for Boehringer Ingelheim. Below we highlight some of the modules and the value they brought to the project:
Opigno
Modules from Opigno distribution provided the base foundation for a E-Learning Platform. Later the Distribution was stripped down to the bare minimum number of modules that was required for editorial experience as well as basic LMS functionality. Custom Course Types and Players were developed to improve the user experience.
Allowed Languages & Config Pages
Using a combination of “Config Ignore”, “Allowed Languages” and “Config Pages”, we were able to provide a single codebase solution that still allowed customization on each instance. This hugely improved the quality assurance process, since the deviation between code-base (including configuration) was kept to a minimum.
Components
Theme is based on a component library maintained external to the project. Using “Components” module, we were able to consume them by declaring proper namespaces and using composer to manage the library. This helps in fetching updates through composer, without having to commit the component library into the project.
