The Need to Save on Training Costs—Without Losing Effectiveness

Before new sales reps at Kellanova made their first pitch, they used to train in the aisles of a full-scale supermarket built just for role plays. They learned to identify opportunities for upsells, to make sure displays met brand standards, and to spot potential safety hazards.

The simulated store provided the environment a trainee needed to practice Kellanova’s eight-step sales process. It felt real because it was—but that realism came at a steep cost.

“Having an on-site grocery store is super cool because you’ve got the realness factor, but you can imagine how incredibly expensive it is when we onboard new hires quarterly,” said Tomissa Smittendorf, Senior Director of Commercial Capability at Kellanova.

In addition to the cost of maintaining the physical store, the training program involved a lot of personnel. Every time a trainee went through a role play, up to five supervisors were involved as actors or observers. Cameras recorded the role play from multiple angles, allowing trainers to evaluate everything from body language to eye tracking.

The staged store was extremely effective, but the cost of maintaining it was just too great. On deciding it had to go, Kellanova was determined to keep simulations in its training curriculum. The challenge was finding a role-play environment that worked as well as the simulated store.

Trainers tried taking groups of new sales reps into actual grocery stores, planning their trips for the early morning to avoid disrupting shoppers. They quickly realized large-group role plays were not going to work—nor was taking a one-time field trip to a store.

Reimagining Training in VR

At an event for chief learning officers, Tomissa met representatives from Roundtable Learning, a developer of extended reality learning solutions. She talked with them about replicating the staged store in virtual reality.

Roundtable’s process starts with understanding the organization and identifying areas where extended reality (XR) can make a difference. They presented Tomissa with multiple ways to optimize Kellanova’s training program.

VR Makes Training Simulations Scalable

As she began exploring virtual reality training options, Tomissa had three non-negotiables: the training had to effectively simulate a real environment, fit in the existing training budget, and have the potential to be leveraged in multiple ways.

To meet those criteria, Roundtable developed several grocery store environments. In addition to teaching retail sales reps how to upsell store managers, the environments can be repurposed for other future training needs.

As the sales trainee looks around the virtual store and interacts with simulated people, the app tracks all the behaviors that once required multiple human observers to measure: like body language, eye tracking, and verbal communication.

ArborXR’s mobile device management (MDM) solution enables Roundtable to install programming on all Kellanova’s headsets without physically touching them. The MDM makes it possible to manage both the devices and the content on them, so training can easily scale across as many devices as Kellanova needs.

VR Training Boosts Critical Thinking Skills

Key to the training program for new sales associates is the freedom of choice. Once in the headset, users are not locked into a story that requires them to respond to a situation or gives them a limited option set.

“As they’re walking through the grocery store and they see a good display opportunity, they can decide if they want to do something with that,” explained Scott Stachiw, Vice President of XR Development and Design at Roundtable. “They can choose what product to place, and where in the aisle it should be. They can choose to restock a shelf or address a safety issue. They practice spotting these things and making decisions in real time.”

When new hires enter Kellanova training, they’re put in a headset right away. They’re introduced to Kellanova’s process and given self-paced opportunities to apply what they’ve learned.

At the end of the week, trainees put on the headset again to make a virtual sales call. Trainers can review the data collected by the program to measure performance improvement over the course of the week.

VR Enables Personalized Learning

Virtual reality adjusts to the responses of each person, so every trainee gets the same education even if they learn in different ways. There are no distractions in a headset, so learners who might be easily distracted in a classroom or group role play can focus.

For a global company like Kellanova, virtual reality also enables training to scale well beyond corporate headquarters. Every employee can experience the same training scenarios, no matter where in the world they are located. And with ArborXR, all of those devices and the content on them can be managed from a central hub, without any need for the tech team to physically interact with the headsets.

How ArborXR Made Scaling VR Training Painless

As businesses like Kellanova scale their use of virtual and extended reality, device and content management can become a headache. ArborXR’s MDM solution makes installing, deploying, and updating applications across devices easy.

Once applications are installed, Kiosk Mode enables Kellanova or Roundtable to lock down headsets so users can only access specific programs. This keeps people from becoming distracted by the web, the app store, or programs intended for other departments.

When Roundtable is developing a new program, they can test it in a deployment channel before pushing it to production, so by the time it hits the headsets the bugs have been worked out. And if Kellanova needs technical support, ArborXR makes it easy for them to get it.

“From a user perspective, it’s a big deal when you can implement something and have zero issues. How often does that happen? But that’s what happened here.”

Tomissa Smittendorf
Senior Director of Commercial Capability

Shifting from their physical staged store to VR training has yielded seven-figure savings for Kellanova, without any reduction in the effectiveness of training. Trainees are still mastering the eight-step process, and reps that complete the VR training are 90% more successful at upsells.

Let ArborXR help your organization affordably scale your training program while still delivering high-quality results. We can help you plan your VR program, from choosing hardware to finding the right content developer to deploying headsets and software.

Get started for free today.