Could you introduce your role at bioMérieux and the training challenges you oversee?

I work within Global Customer Service, in the Learning & Development function. Together with my colleagues, we are responsible for training and skills development for the teams who work directly on our systems. This mainly includes Application Specialists, System Engineers and IT teams, as well as our distributors, whom we train according to the same standards as our own employees.

Our mission is to ensure that the right training, the right technical content and the right learning pathways are made available to teams across the globe. The people we support are required to install, maintain and troubleshoot our systems directly at customer sites. They therefore need a very high level of mastery of both the products and the procedures. In many ways, we operate with a job-role certification mindset.

Why is skills mastery particularly critical in your business?

The people we train often work alone at customer sites. They need to be able to install a system, perform maintenance or resolve a breakdown in sometimes complex environments. Ultimately, there is a patient waiting for an answer and relying on our equipment to function properly.

For a long time, we operated with training centers based in China, the United States and France. Employees would travel to those locations to receive training, but this involved significant constraints. Between travel costs, administrative difficulties in certain countries and broader geopolitical challenges, we realized that we were not always able to train everyone concerned.

We also discovered that some regions had developed their own practices and training systems. In India, for example, a training center was created during the COVID-19 pandemic with very high-quality processes, but we did not have a global view of everything that was being done. Our objective is therefore to harmonize practices, ensure a degree of equity across regions and better identify the development needs of our teams.

You already had an internal LMS. Why was that no longer enough?

We have been using Cornerstone for more than fifteen years, and it meets certain training administration needs very well. However, when it comes to accurately assessing knowledge and, above all, making effective use of the results, we quickly reached its limits.

We needed to go much further in competency analysis. The questionnaires already existed, but making use of the data remained complex and often required manual handling. If you have to export Excel files, rework them and then rebuild the analysis, it becomes difficult to provide managers with a clear and actionable view of their teams.

We had also tested other solutions, but we often encountered the same difficulties. We were looking for a platform that was genuinely designed for knowledge assessment, with dynamic dashboards, a centralized database and the ability to immediately leverage the results obtained.

What were your selection criteria?

We had several non-negotiable criteria. The first was how results would be presented. We did not want employees to simply receive a score. Our goal was not to assess in order to penalize, but to assess in order to develop skills.

We also needed highly visual dashboards capable of highlighting the activities that are working well and those that require support. Managers had to be able to use this information easily, without needing to reprocess the data.

The international dimension was also essential. Assessments needed to be available in local languages, and the whole process had to remain easy to administer. Finally, we were looking for a platform capable of integrating with our technical environment and supported by a responsive team able to support us in a global project.

Why did you choose Experquiz?

I had known Experquiz for several years. When our project gained momentum, we launched a formal tender process with a very detailed set of specifications. We had particularly strong requirements in terms of LMS integration, results analysis, multilingual management and reporting.

Several providers were consulted. Some quickly indicated that they would not be able to meet all of our criteria. In the end, only two solutions truly remained in contention.

What made the difference with Experquiz was first and foremost their understanding of our needs. We asked them to project themselves into our environment and show us concretely how their solution could address our challenges. The demonstrations were highly focused on our use cases, and we had direct access to technical contacts, which meant we could get immediate answers to the most complex questions.

We also found that most of the features we needed were already available in the platform. Other solutions offered interesting ideas, but they still relied on future developments or additional tools. With Experquiz, we felt we had an immediately mature solution capable of meeting our expectations without multiplying technical layers or manual processing.

How are you using Experquiz today?

We have built questionnaires to assess different levels of knowledge depending on the target populations. Some questionnaires focus on the fundamentals that should be mastered after initial training, while others assess more advanced skills, particularly around troubleshooting and situations encountered in the field.

The objective is not simply to check whether someone has achieved a good overall score. What we really want is to understand precisely which activities they are comfortable with and where they need support. These assessments are now part of a much broader reflection on skills certification. In the longer term, they will become one of the elements enabling managers to validate the level of proficiency of their teams.

How do managers use the results?

The dashboards now allow managers to quickly identify areas for improvement within their teams. The objective is not to penalize but to support development. Employees receive recommendations tailored to their situation, while the manager always remains responsible for interpreting the results.

Depending on the context, managers can then put in place individual coaching, a collective action plan, field support or additional training. We have therefore moved from a model where we simply offered training to one where we actively manage skills development.

How did the integration with your technical environment go?

Our goal was to make the experience as seamless as possible for learners. We did not want to impose a new platform or new login credentials on them. Everything needed to integrate naturally into the environment they were already using.

One of the major challenges was enabling our LMS and Experquiz to communicate with each other. We wanted certain HR data to be transmitted automatically to the platform, and then for the results to flow back into our training system.

This integration represented a real technical challenge, as we had never implemented this type of connection with such a high level of data exchange before. The work carried out jointly by our teams and the Experquiz teams resulted in a smooth solution that now gives us much greater autonomy in the way we use and exploit data.

How does Experquiz address your international challenges?

We very quickly realized that assessments needed to be completed in local languages. Employees may be able to work with documentation in English, but when it comes to accurately assessing their knowledge, it is essential that they be able to do so in their own language.

The translation features offered by Experquiz enabled us to take a major step forward. Content is translated and then reviewed by local experts to ensure quality. We have therefore been able to roll out questionnaires in several languages and approach global deployment much more confidently.

This ability to manage translations while maintaining centralized administration is a real asset for an organization like ours.

What did you particularly appreciate about the support provided by the Experquiz teams?

What I particularly appreciated was the closeness of the teams and their ability to quickly understand our challenges. Throughout the project, they were able to propose solutions tailored to our context and guide us toward alternatives whenever certain requests could not be implemented exactly as initially envisioned.

This transparency allowed us to move forward efficiently and build a genuine relationship of trust. Several enhancements were also made to the platform to meet our specific needs, which demonstrates a real willingness to collaborate.

What benefits are you seeing today, and what are the next steps?

Experquiz has enabled us to move from a means-based approach to a results-based approach. Managers now have much clearer visibility into their teams’ skills and can put appropriate development actions in place.

Beyond the operational gains, this also helps improve employees’ confidence when they are working on customer sites. A better-prepared person is more confident, more effective and delivers a higher quality of service.

The project is still far from finished. So far, we have only covered part of the bioMérieux population, and we are continuing the rollout in new regions. The assessments will also be integrated into our future global certification program.

What is particularly exciting is that we are not working with a fixed system. We continue to evolve our practices, and we can rely on the Experquiz teams to support this transformation.