B’digit app brings digital culture awareness to 106,000 Groupe BPCE employees

Groupe BPCE, the second largest banking group in France, is active in all areas of banking and insurance via its two cooperative networks, Banque Populaire and Caisse d’Épargne, as well as through its subsidiaries (such as Natixis, Crédit Foncier, Banque Palatine and Crédit Coopératif).
Groupe BPCE has placed its digital transformation at the heart of its new strategic plan, TEC2020.

View video interviews with Marion ROUSO (Director of Digital Transformation and Employee Experience), Delphine COSTEDOAT (B’digit Project Officer) and David NATAF (IS Project Manager) from the Group, filmed during their visit to Teach on Mars on April 19 2018.

Driving digital culture for 106,000 Group employees

A mobile learning project driven by the operational requirements of the field

“We carried out a survey with employees on the ground to find out what the real needs and expectations around the new application were,” states Marion Rouso, Director of Digital Transformation and Employee Experience for the Group, “People were talking about the need for flexibility in use, the need to integrate a microlearning approach, things like that. It became clear that Mobile Learning was going to be the most appropriate solution.”

Next came a formal Request for Proposals, culminating in a pitch session for short-listed potential partners before representatives of the different Group entities.” Teach on Mars emerged as the leader when it comes to mobile learning. Their solution is flexible while being powerful and comprehensive enough to meet all the requirements defined by the users. It enables us to produce customised content ourselves in-house, or to buy off-the-shelf learning resources if necessary. The format offered everything we were looking for: microlearning, gamification, “challenges” to encourage a community dynamic and interaction between employees.” Groupe BPCE also liked the way the new app could be customised in line with its visual identity – and with the space-themed graphic universe it had selected – and this was another factor that tipped the balance in the favour of Teach on Mars.

A revolutionary solution to set new paradigms

“Groupe BPCE already had a digital learning offer in place,” continues Marion. “There were e-learning courses, MOOCs and serious games, but nothing gave us the ‘Wow!’ effect we were looking for. That’s what we were able to deliver through the gamification of B’digit. We also wanted our employees to be able to use the app on all the devices they use in the course of their ultra-connected daily lives – computers, smartphones and tablets. Teach on Mars has enabled us to do that.”

Two-stage deployment process

October 2017 saw the organisation of a pilot targeting a sample population of 200 users across all 40 entities. Once this pilot had been pronounced conclusive, the deployment continued progressively across all group entities. By mid-April 2018, more than 13 000 Groupe BPCE staff had connected to B’digit, which was more than 30% of total staff in the 20 entities that had deployed the app up to that point.  “Our primary objective was that learners complete the skills assessment,” recounts Delphine Costedoat, B’digit Project Officer, referring to a 60-question positioning quiz that had been developed to determine the “digital profile” of individual learners and recommend the training courses each of them should complete as a priority. “11 000 of the 13 000 employees connected have already done the quiz, so we’ve hit our first goal. The challenge now is to encourage learners to complete the training courses that have been recommended to them. Bearing in mind that the objective of the Group’s TEC2020 Strategic Plan is an ambitious one: 100% of group employees to be trained in digital culture by 2020!”.

In order make the adoption of B’digit as seamless as possible and get maximum impact from its launch, Delphine supports and coaches each entity individually, with a detailed action plan that is defined in collaboration with a local project manager in each case. Every entity gets a personalised communication kit, as well as specially designed materials to market the new mobile learning offer via a programme of automated newsletters which help to stir the curiosity of learners, counter any possible resistance and build a desire to try out the new tool. At the same time, the mobile learning training catalogue will be reinforced over time by the addition of new courses designed by the Group digital learning team and through learning content produced locally in the entities using the Teach on Mars mobile-native authoring tool.

Enthusiastic reception from the learners

“Our learners are basically delighted with B’digit. Everyone loves the simplicity, the gamified aspects and the competitive dimensions provided by the leaderboards. They particularly like the skills assessment, a new learning activity that was created specifically for our project,” continues Delphine.
Groupe BPCE staff are also fans of the flexibility and accessibility of the Teach on Mars solution. “Staff like the fact that they can access training via their office PC between meetings and appointments, but also via their smartphone when they’re out and about. The application lets them learn whenever and wherever they want, which is helping them develop a new mindset of taking responsibility for their own learning,” adds Delphine.



Tight collaboration between technical teams on both sides

3 best practices for a successful mobile learning project, from Delphine Costedoat of Groupe BPCE :

• Invest all you can in learner communication: ” Mobile learning is still new and unfamiliar, so it’s essential to do all you can to encourage learners to connect to the new app and discover a whole new way to train and learn. It really is about “marketing” your new learning offer.”
• Support and coach your entity project managers through the deployment. “We can’t interact with the learners directly, so the local project managers are an essential link in the chain. We used frequent meetings and interactions with our local project contacts in each entity to smooth the deployment process and mobilise the learner populations.”
• Encourage best practice sharing: “We created a Yammer group to enable all our entity project managers to share best practices. Each project manager also created a customised communication kit for the local employees and shared it on Yammer. As deployments progressed, each new project manager was therefore able to benefit from the combined experience of the growing list of project managers who had already deployed.”