SVI Serves Bite-Sized Info

Judging by its client roster alone, Springdale-based SVI seems to provide just the kinds of training products and services companies crave.

Some of those clients, like Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., even provide online testimonials for SVI’s work. Still, executive partner Tim Harmon understands the limits of traditional training settings.

“If you put someone in a classroom for two days, there’s only so much you can jam into their head — because we’re human — and there’s only so much that stays in their head,” Harmon said.

To that end, SVI earlier this year increased emphasis on its Learner Mobile division. Learner Mobile essentially is a Web-based app that provides SVI clients the ability to access customized training, development and/or leadership material via smartphones and tablets.

“This really provides a follow-up tool,” Harmon said.

The tool has been more useful, perhaps, than even Harmon and SVI expected. That became evident earlier this year, when the company hired Mike Yonker as president of Learner Mobile.

“We put some money toward something and it went really, really well,” Harmon said when asked to describe the genesis of Learner Mobile. “It went amazingly well, in fact, and we kind of got into this position of, ‘Do we continue to shepherd it along the way we have been, which is really not throwing a whole lot of resources at it? Or do we really ramp up and bring in someone like [Yonker], who is first class and has a tremendous amount of experience in the mobile industry?’

“And we felt like it was time. We felt like it was the right time to put the proper resources into this so he can take it to the next level.”

Yonker, meanwhile, credits SVI for finding an effective way to use a mobile platform, something he said the training industry has grappled with for several years.

“They tried to look at how mobile could apply in that space, and I think quite intelligently they didn’t try to force-feed a usage scenario that didn’t make sense for the medium,” Yonker said. “Nobody really wants to sit through hours of training looking at their mobile phone screen.

“What they did was they went and looked at the optimal user experience and how people like to engage with mobile — in bite-sized content, in context — and used mobile to enhance, to reinforce and to augment the existing training and programs that a corporation might have.”

So far, clients like the Dallas-based Cooper Clinic and a Fortune 100 company SVI preferred not to identify have agreed with Yonker. Part of Cooper Clinic’s business stems from consulting with large corporations in terms of improving and maintaining the health of their employees. As a result, Cooper Clinic has employed Learner Mobile to disseminate tips and track metrics, among other uses.

That Fortune 100 company, meanwhile, has used Learner Mobile as part of its program to prepare targeted employees for executive-level management positions. In that scenario, the employees take classes and study relevant topics. The app thus allows them to learn more about particular subjects, as well as communicate with classmates regarding the application of what they’ve been taught.

Another client relationship, one of Learner Mobile’s most successful, is with Dillard’s Inc. The retailer spends significant chunks of time training its employees in the areas of customer service and customer experience, as well as continuing education about products and their applications. This is especially true in its beauty department.

“Learner Mobile can be that lifeline that keeps them up to date on new products, on new applications of products, on relevant data,” Harmon said.

Another example Harmon used is a store that stages an event and shares it via a secure Twitter channel to other stores all over the nation. The result is instant communication of a best practice that might drive excitement and sales surrounding a particular product.

Yonker said the app has potential to be a game-changer “anywhere, honestly, where there’s a dispersed workforce.”

Based in Dallas, Yonker technically is the only Learner Mobile-dedicated employee, but he works with the equivalent of two or three full-time SVI employees to help with the technology, development, graphics and content sides of the business. He said he anticipates hiring maybe as many as five people this year to accommodate the division’s growth.

“I really think Learner Mobile is going to apply in a wide block of spaces,” he said.