Regent Inns, the business behind leading eating & drinking brands ‘Walkabout’ and ‘Bar Risa/Jongleurs’, has just undertaken its first e-learning programme. This has enabled the staff within Regent Inns’ distributed network of sixty bars and clubs to quickly and cost-effectively learn how to use the company’s new procurement system, iPOS.

Regent Inns is a highly-respected business, founded in 1977, which last year achieved a turnover of £86.2 million. Much of its business is based on the ‘Walkabout’ and ‘Bar Risa/Jongleurs’ outlets – distinctive bars offering their own unique ambience and hospitality.

When Regent Inns wanted to implement a centralised procurement system, the company chose iPOS, from Professional Advantage, which would integrate with Regent Inns’ current Sun Systems infrastructure. Establishing a centralised procurement system would better position Regent Inns for growth – and enable distributed purchasing to be rationalised.

Regent Inns had realised that getting their staff to learn the new system would be a key factor in its success. But they also had a problem: because the staff were distributed in approximately sixty outlets throughout the UK, providing training by conventional means would be time-consuming and costly.

Regent Inns approached e-learning specialists Harlequin Training Solutions - to provide an e-learning solution. Regent Inns commissioned Harlequin to provide an e-learning ‘tour’ of the new system.

The e-learning had to be fun – and reflect Regent Inn’s chic and contemporary branding. It had to be written and deployed quickly – in fact, Harlequin would have just three-and-a-half weeks to develop the bespoke e-learning content.

It was decided that all employees would be able to view and take all elements of the e-learning should they wish, but that the e-learning would ‘stream’ people to those modules most relevant to them, depending on their role. For example, a house manager would need to learn the ‘requisition’, ‘goods receipt’ and ‘invoice approval’ modules, whereas an accounts payable employee would only need to learn ‘invoice entry’.

The e-learning programme provided a tour of all of the system’s six modules.

Despite the tight deadline, the e-learning tour was delivered on time and has been extremely well-received. It has enabled people to get up to speed on the new iPOS system very quickly – and has been fundamental to the system’s success within Regent Inns.

This was Regent Inn’s first experience of using e-learning – and the company is pleased with the results. So pleased, that Harlequin has now been commissioned to provide e-learning on a second project, a back-of-house point-of-sale system.

Chris Wootton, IT projects manager at Regent Inns, commented that: “Harlequin has provided us with an excellent service. This has allowed us to focus on deploying iPOS - while they proactively created our entirely bespoke e-learning tour. It’s the first time we’ve used e-learning, but now that we’ve worked with Harlequin, it certainly won’t be the last.”

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