A project manager of product development in the irrigation industry approached Distance Learning Providers with a unique requirement. They wanted to share new product development information with some of their preferred customers to get feedback, to help them refine product design and marketing messages.

Considering this was a research project in its developmental stage, confidentiality was of utmost concern. Traditionally, the client company had gathered this information through regular mail, sending out product information along with a survey. Because of the complex nature of most of these surveys, and because participants did not have anyone available to ask specific questions, they relied on their own intuition and answered the mail-in survey to the best of their abilities.

The company found that this method did not produce accurate results. The company was often forced to visit survey participants on occasion, for clarification or to complete the survey. This added to the client company's product development costs, not to mention the disruptions that were imposed on the client company's own clients.

Distance Learning Providers was able improve this surveying process, using the eLearning technologies that have proven themselves so successful. We took the company's survey and redesigned it for an interactive, on-line session. We created powerful slides detailing each product component, followed by a survey questionnaire which the participants were able to complete and submit on-line.

The survey participants were able to ask questions of the product development manager as they took the survey. This made the survey results more meaningful and accurate. Once the on-line surveys were submitted, the data was stored in Distance Learning Providers database. The product manager was then able to import the results into Microsoft Excel for data analysis.

Customer confidentiality was preserved from beginning to end, as Distance Learning Providers provided secure log-ins and a firewall protected data environment.

Distance Learning Providers was proud to add value to an innovative approach to information gathering.

"Distance Learning Providers' ability to design consultative content has opened exciting opportunities for us at Rain Bird to collect live-online market data from our customers."

Karl Pearson
Project Manager
RainBird