Building a Measurable Career

Development Process:
How Caterpillar Developed an Award-Winning Extended
Enterprise Learning Model
©2020 Watershed Systems, Inc.
Building a Measurable Career
Development Process

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction..............................................................02

..........................03
Business / Data Challenge (WHY)

Solution & 5-Step Process Wheel (WHAT)...........04

Approach: People, Processes &

Technology (HOW)..................................................06

Change Management Solutions

(CONSIDERATIONS)...............................................08

Results.....................................................................10

What’s Next?.............................................................11

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Building a Measurable Career
Development Process

Headquarters: Deerfield, Illinois
Year Founded: 1925
Revenue: $54.8 Billion USD (2018)
Employees: 100,000+
Global Scale: Worldwide
Industry: Heavy Construction, Mining, Oil
& Gas, Electric Power, Transportation, and
Financial Services
No. of (HR, Learning, Talent) employees
involved with the implementation: 100
No. of Operations or SME employees
involved with the implementation: 40
No. of contractors involved with
implementation: 10
Timeframe to implement: 18 months
Start date of the program: September 2017
INTRODUCTION
Caterpillar Global Dealer Learning (GDL) is responsible for
supporting Caterpillar’s Dealers in the development of their key
workforce as part of the organization’s global growth strategy.
Combining the expertise from the organization with its dealer
network, Caterpillar has deployed a standard approach to
develop dealers’ key workforce in the areas of leadership, sales,
and service to align with strategic business goals.
Caterpillar’s Dealer network is expansive with 300,000 employees worldwide. By standardizing the customer
experience across the Dealer network, Caterpillar stood to generate billions of additional dollars. As a result, the
Caterpillar GDL team worked with SMEs around the globe to examine People, Processes, and Technology. After
creating competency models for the Leadership, Sales, and Service employee groups, a 5-step process took shape as
the Career Development Process (CDP) Wheel.
The CDP shifts the training focus of the target employee groups from experiential and incidental to data-driven. It
leverages Watershed’s learning analytics platform to streamline metrics and provide real-time data analytics. By
architecting a robust learning ecosystem and conducting multiple training sessions, GDL has been able to deploy
the Career Development Process Wheel program to more than half of Caterpillar’s 172 Dealers, with a target of full
adoption by 2020.

Caterpillar, Inc. is the world’s leading

manufacturer of construction and mining
equipment, diesel and natural gas engines,
industrial gas turbines, and diesel-electric
locomotives. The company principally
operates through its primary segments:
Construction Industries, Resource
Industries, and Energy & Transportation,
and Financial Products.

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Building a Measurable Career
Development Process

BUSINESS / DATA
CHALLENGE (WHY)
While conducting a 2017 organizational study, Caterpillar
found that standardizing the customer experience across
its dealer network would increase annual revenue by
$20 billion USD.

As part of this study, Caterpillar also identified a correlation

between top-performing dealers and under-performing
dealers and how these dealers developed their leadership
pipelines and sales and product support workforces. The
results showed that dealers with a mature learning and
development organization generated better profits—even
during unfavorable economic conditions.

GDL examined how learning and development was being

applied across these key roles (sales and product support)
and identified a vast difference in how learning programs
were implemented across dealers. As a result, GDL
needed to define a more efficient way to design and deploy
learning programs to dealers—with the aim of creating a
simple, standard approach that all dealers could follow,
regardless of their size and business environments.

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Building a Measurable Career
Development Process

SOLUTION &
5-STEP PROCESS
WHEEL (WHAT)
To increase Caterpillar dealerships’ workforce leadership,
sales, and product support-related competencies, GDL
created a competency model for each program. This
competency model:

• serves as a reference for dealers to customize

programs to their business needs.

• provides a link between competency (e.g. skills and

knowledge) and learning activities (e.g. formal and
informal learning).

• offers a reference on the different proficiency levels

within the competency, so progression through the
learning program can be measured and tracked.

• provides cross-functional competency equivalents

to simplify career path competency tracking and
credit during career progression.

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Building a Measurable Career
Development Process
CAREER
DEVELOPMENT
PROCESS WHEEL
To achieve competency models for each program, GDL
established the CDP Wheel, a 5-step process to deliver its
learning products and services.
Step 1: Set Goals
The CDP starts by setting the business goal. Learning
consultants work with dealers and Caterpillar business
units to define the competencies needed to win business.
Step 2: Assess
Learning & Identify
Skills Gaps
Through their learning ecosystem, GDL assesses learners
to identify any skills gaps. From there, GDL recommends
appropriate learning activities based on the competency
models (i.e. leadership, sales, and service competencies).
Step 3: Develop
Custom Learning
Plans
Using assessment results from Step 2, GDL works with
dealers to develop individual learning plans for their
respective workforces. GDL also coordinates with dealers’
HR and/or training departments on the people pipeline to
each of the programs. Dealers define their learning plans
and work closely with GDL learning consultants to ensure
those plans are completed as expected.
Step 4: Reinforce
Learning with On-
Demand Tools
Thanks to GDL’s learning ecosystem that provides on-
demand learning tools, GDL can help learners reinforce
and apply knowledge and skills after they’ve completed
formal learning activities. These tools:
• help learners practice the knowledge and skills
acquired through formal learning, such as online or
instructor-led training;
• range from how-to videos and job aids to virtual
coaching and communities of knowledge; and
• can be easily accessed via mobile devices or laptop
computers.
Step 5: Measure &
Validate Competency
Levels
Learners’ competency levels are measured and validated
against the competency models. Based on learners’ needs,
GDL offers multiple solutions—from online exams to in-
person skills assessments—depending on the competency.
To ensure the business goal is being achieved, the results
from these exams and assessments feed back to the CDP
wheel to compare business data with learning data.
The following goals were set to be accomplished by 2020:
• adoption of the process by 172 dealers
• at least a year-over-year growth of 5% on learning
program adoption
For these two goals, about 50% of dealers have started
adopting the CDP process—which has yielded an average
adoption growth per learning program of 10% with an
average increase of 54% on learning products utilization
from 2017 compared to 2018.
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Building a Measurable Career
Development Process

APPROACH: PEOPLE,
PROCESSES & TECHNOLOGY
(HOW)
For the design, GDL applied Lean 6 Sigma methodology to generate rapid changeover
to achieve these aggressive, enterprise-wide business goals.

As a result, the projects portfolio was divided into three streams: People, Processes,
and Technology.

1) People
GDL performed rapid job task analysis to develop and update the competency models and
define the skills and knowledge required for development of people for each of the learning
programs. Through multiple Rapid Improvement Workshops with SMEs, learning consultants,
instructional designers, and dealers, GDL was able to quickly align the competency models to
define the competency behaviors as well as the different proficiency levels.

2) Processes
GDL performed multiple Rapid Improvement Workshops (RIWs) to review its learning
products development and delivery processes. This resulted in changes to better fit
customers’ needs and covered the GDL organization, infrastructure, business operation
management, learning products development, and delivery processes. These changes
enable GDL to increase customer coverage, accelerate development of learning solutions,
and lower distribution cost to serve.

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Building a Measurable Career
Development Process

3) Technology
GDL adopted a flexible learning ecosystem and moved
L&D Management
away from relying solely on an LMS as the delivery
Learning Analytics Platform
platform for dealers. By diversifying the functions of Business Business
Platform Health Monitorin g Processes Intelligence
the learning ecosystem, GDL can better control quality
and velocity of their operation. The projects focus on Learning Prog ram Evaluation

obtaining best-in-class platforms—such as Inkling, Dealer Segmentation And Compariso n Data & IT
Kaltura, OpenSesame, Questionmark, and Watershed— Performance Of High Visibility Initiati ves

Data
to complement the LMS service. By using the learning Anomaly Detection
Warehouse
ecosystem approach, dealers with their own LMSs can
integrate with the ecosystem and use a single touchpoint
for their learners.
Learning Data Ma rt Learning Data Lake Event Query Data Cleansing
(Learning Analytics Platform ) (Learning Record Store ) Processing Interface
This approach has enabled GDL to better manage cost
to serve without affecting quality as well as provide
ease of enabling/disabling functionality in the learning
xAPI
ecosystem. Moreover, the ability to add or remove
multiple authoring tools ensures the learning solution can
be developed in the right format and be delivered through
a common touchpoint. Training Programs Multi-Modal Learning Business Systems

CAT Global
The heart of GDL’s learning ecosystem is a content Sales Workforce Learning
Dealer Directory

and syndication management system provided by Instructor Accreditation Dealer LMS Content Distributio n

OpenSesame. This service allows customers to connect Marine Service & Sales

with GDL-developed learning solutions and third-party Learners Content Authorin g Assessment Managemen t
Electric Power Servic e
learning content via their LMSs.
Oil & Gas Se rvice

The brain of GDL’s learning ecosystem is Watershed’s Leadership Development Enterprise Video Hosting & Delivery

learning analytics platform, which tracks and measures

learner behavior. The capability to collect and standardize
data across all learning platforms in a standard format,
regardless of the source, aids in the continuous
improvement of the learner experience.

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Building a Measurable Career
Development Process
CHANGE
MANAGEMENT
SOLUTIONS
(CONSIDERATIONS)
To facilitate these organizational changes, GDL
took the following approaches to prepare, support,
and help Dealers.
1) Structure:
Configure global team to better provide support for
learning programs
Change Action:
To ensure the right expertise is on the right team, GDL
redirected teams from focusing on regions to focusing on
programs and functions.
Challenges / Obstacles:
Team members are spread across the globe, which
presented a communication challenge.
Solutions:
GDL implemented digital collaboration tools—such as
Microsoft 365 and cloud-based services—to ensure
consistent, manageable communication across teams.
They also provided training on how to use the technology
in addition to creating communities of knowledge that
include helpful resources on these tools.
2) Process:
Configure GDL business process to support the Career
Development Programs
Change Action:
Update learning offerings’ development and delivery
processes to support the Career Development Programs.
Ensure a consistent approach across all learning products
to serve Dealers (Leadership, Sales and Service).
Challenges / Obstacles:
• Each program is at a different maturity level.
• The Service Career Development Program is the most
mature and standard.
• The Sales Program was dependent on third-party
suppliers, which increased the distribution cost.
• The Leadership Program was new, so there wasn’t
any training or resources explaining how to launch
and manage it.
Solutions:
Through the RIWs—which incorporated SMEs from
Service, Sales and Leadership—GDL identified
commonalities. As a result, each program was updated to
be delivered in the same format (following the five steps in
the competency model). The RIWs helped unify criteria and
use the expertise of Caterpillar and its dealers to develop
the right processes for GDL’s learning programs.
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Building a Measurable Career
Development Process

3) Culture / People: 4) Metrics:

Change the culture from focusing on Incidental Training
delivery to focus on Talent and Performance improvement
Change Action:
Change GDL employees’ mindset from using a traditional
incidental training delivery approach to a consultative
approach to development.
Challenges / Obstacles:
Differences across employees’ regions, cultures, and/or
knowledge and skill gaps posed a challenge to changing
mindsets.
Solutions:
GDL implemented quarterly career development events at
various operational locations to cascade its mission and
vision statements and created toolkits for employees to
apply the new vision. These events, which incorporated all
GDL employees:
Create metrics that align with business goals
Change Action:
Move decision making from experiential to data driven.
Challenges / Obstacles:
Lack of standard operational metrics aside from financial
indicators (budget). Mostly focused on just meeting a
request, but no time to analyze the impact of delivery.
Solutions:
Streamline metrics through the learning ecosystem and
provide on-time data analytics. Common metrics were
defined for each operation (i.e. Learning Centers, Learning
Ecosystem, and Learning Program Management). Using
data from business platforms and the learning ecosystem,
GDL created cloud-based dashboards to provide
visualizations for leaders and employees, which enhanced
support of the Global Dealer Learning Value Stream.

• provided an avenue for leaders and employees to work

together

• helped lessen any resistance by ensuring employees

were part of the process

• ensured all angles from a diversity and inclusion

standpoint were covered during implementation

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Building a Measurable Career
Development Process

RESULTS
Improvements
Because of how GDL deployed its programs, Caterpillar,
Inc. achieved the following from 2017 to 2018:
• Reduced distribution cost to serve customers by 10%
Lessons Learned
Lessons learned amid managing a cultural change include:
• Not presuming all learning systems vendors
understand the technology and standards to integrate

• Increased adoption/usage of: platforms. Integrating platforms through xAPI proves

that not every vendor in the learning technology world
• All Learning Products by 10% is xAPI enabled.
(approximately)
• Learning terminology needs to be clearly defined from
• Learning Ecosystem Tools and Technology the start to ensure alignment with the end goal. People
by 50% can understand terms based on their backgrounds
coming from academia or from marketing, product
For GDL, achieving growth on the learning programs’
design, etc.
adoption while reducing the cost to achieve it were the
most critical factors. By focusing on their cost structure
and through strategic planning, people, infrastructure
and technology, resources were optimized to achieve the
desired outcomes.

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Building a Measurable Career
Development Process

WHAT’S NEXT?
Because GDL’s work is never truly done, the team continues to expand on its
learning programs, tools, and technologies while also supporting learners to
perform at their best.

New Learning Delivery Platforms

Caterpillar plans on expanding and diversifying its learning ecosystem to enhance
the current tools and technologies in place. This includes augmented reality (AR) and
mixed reality (MR) along with other platforms to help reinforce learning experiences
and programs.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Learning

Management
In addition to adding new technologies, Caterpillar wants to maximize efficiency when
it comes to learning programs. As a result, they are exploring automated triggering,
content curation, learning recommendations, and learning product performance
CONTACT
diagnostics powered by Watershed.
The information provided in this document is based on Caterpillar Inc.’s 2019
award from the Brandon Hall Group in the category of “Best Advance in Creating an
Extended Enterprise Learning Program.” Special thanks to Alfonso Riley, Jeff Barbee,
Learning Experience Improvements Phil Adams, and Paul Gasparro of Caterpillar for their time, contribution, and insights.

And to strengthen overall learning programs and objectives, Caterpillar will continue
to focus on video-based learning development, skills assessment, and robust digital
on-the-job training programs.
info@watershedlrs.com
© 2020 Watershed Systems, Inc.
All rights reserved. No portion of this book/document may be reproduced in any form without permission
from the publisher. To request permission, please contact us by emailing info@watershedlrs.com.

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