Founded in the city of Curvelo, Center-North region of the State of Minas Gerais, Banco Mercantil goes back to the 40’s. Banco Mercantil do Brasil has now approximately 170 service units strategically distributed throughout Brazil’s main geo-economic centers, with greater concentration on the Southeastern Region, especially Minas Gerais, which is its geographic focus of operation. In 2006, concerned with the ongoing development of its employees and partners, and also the provision of better services to its clients, the bank invested in the latest trends of people management. The bank tried to offer conditions to enable its employees to develop according to their performance and talents. “With that in mind, we knew that the correct tool should be chosen; we needed a system which would enable us to better manage our activities and monitor as closely as possible the training activities performed by our employees. Thus, we would have total control of all development stages and as a result provide our employees with more knowledge and professional improvement”, says Neuza de Fátima Souto, Human Development Coordinator for Banco Mercantil do Brasil. Without the LMS, virtual training management was deficient. Controlling people and their training activities was difficult. Course validation was obtained only by means of a Knowledge Assessment procedure, available on the bank’s intranet. According to Neuza, nowadays virtual training represents 80% of the training performed by employees. And with the implementation of the LMS, costs reduced significantly. Training was expanded to all partners and third-party contractors, and consequently the number of people with access to knowledge increased in a significant manner.
After studying a number of alternatives, the company decided to invest in a structure based on full management of all development activities performed by the employees and in the possibility of integrating the system to other solutions used by MB. “We had an isolated e-learning pilot project, but W3net introduced us to something much bigger; a long-term vision, the possibility of integrating other systems and expanding HR work with performance appraisals. That made us realize that W3net had alternatives which could help us with our goals by means of system integration”, says Neuza Souto. The W3Learning was the solution implemented; it is an e-learning management system, which supports and organizes the organization’s educational initiatives. At MB it is known as “Knowledge Station” and seeks to develop competences allied to the Bank’s business strategies. It enables the publication of virtual courses, creation of interactive environments and discussion forums for themes of interest to the company.
The implementation started in May 2007 and in order to ensure a smooth migration and assess employees’ reaction, the company opted for a gradual installation of the new system. The first phase was directed to the bank’s 2600 employees. The second phase occurred one month later, and was implemented for 600 employees of Minas Brasil Seguradora. The third and last phase took place in September 2007 for brokers and their teams. At all phases, the bank had the support of W3net team through a specialized consulting service for the development, jointly with the client, of a more suitable conceptual structure for the e-learning system; as well as technology support. The W3Learning, which has been nominated for four consecutive years to the Brazil E-learning award, was a highlight in all editions as National Benchmark and in 2007 was 1st in the Diamond category, and has been the bank’s single training interface. It is a user-friendly and clear solution, with well-defined activities, permanent interaction and information sharing, either in virtual or presential training activities.
Amongst the main benefits of the W3Learning, the following has been used in the “Knowledge Station” project: user-friendly interface, control and issuance of reports of each employee, guarantee of integrity of information linked to training and development processes, management of differentiated profiles, in addition to issuance of certificates and utilization of integration tools, such as Forum, Chat and mural, which ensure exchange of information by system users.
The system accelerated the work of the HR team, and the time saved through optimization was oriented to the management of a greater number of activities, and the development and application of new training activities, increasingly improving the contents and decreasing costs. The partnership between W3net and the bank is stronger than ever; W3net team is permanently in line with MB’s business. The company is always seeking and offering modern solutions and high quality services. Thanks to the success of the initiative, the technology is currently used by the 6,200 employees and third-party contractors of the bank. Thus, MB’s commitment is to integrate its whole team and all of its systems, and also maintain a high level of motivation and development of its employees and partners.
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