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June 23, 2020

Allego Reveals Future of Training at First S3 Virtual Showcase

Companies around the world are rethinking conferences and meetings, and Allego is no exception. Last week, we hosted our first-ever S3 Virtual Showcase, attended by nearly 700 sales, training, and learning and development professionals from hundreds of leading companies. This forward-looking combination of streaming and pre-recorded content leveraged the Allego platform to accommodate attendees’ unique work-from-home environments.

In past years, Allego has held its annual Sales Success Summit (S3) in person. When the pandemic made this impossible, the Allego team brainstormed to deliver a timely event that blended live and pre-recorded content in an interactive format.

“During this pandemic, we don’t have the opportunity to meet face-to-face, so we need to deliver experiences that are engaging and flexible enough to fit your current work environment,” said Mark Magnacca, president and co-founder, Allego. “Particularly as most of us are probably joining from home, and many of you have interruptions from kids, pets and other distractions, it’s easy to miss content as it’s happening live.”

Leveraging Allego’s proprietary technology, conference attendees were invited to watch pre-recorded presentations at their own pace, by changing the playback speed, pausing and rewinding content. This option allowed attendees the flexibility to participate according to their own schedules. The platform also enabled collaboration, as attendees added feedback and questions directly to the inline comments in the video.

Modeling the Future of Training

The event kicked off with a keynote session featuring Allego CEO and Co-Founder Yuchun Lee, moderated by Magnacca. During the session, the two discussed the increased importance of virtual training to help employees be successful, especially as teams adapt to physical distancing.

“Now more than ever, it’s important to put the employee at the center of your organization and figure out what they need in order to be productive,” said Lee. “We know how challenging these times are for everyone and the value of teamwork and collaboration within the organization is at an all-time high. We built Allego to deliver on this continuum of learning, content and collaboration in the flow of work to help every employee to be as successful as possible.”

Mark Magnacca and Yuchun Lee Deliver the S3 Virtual Showcase Keynote Address

Lee made the case that many organizations rely on training approaches that haven’t kept pace with today’s digital environment, drawing comparisons between how people learn at work and in their personal lives. He described a common training scenario in which sales managers pull reps out of the field for multi-day intensive sessions, using outdated or ineffective content, only to see critical information forgotten once sellers leave training. He mentioned managers’ struggle to coach consistently or to tailor coaching to individual reps’ unique strengths and weaknesses.

In contrast, outside of the classroom, Lee described how learners today have instant access to any type of information they want at the exact moment they need it—from how to cook a meal to directions to the closest gas station to reviews for what type of appliance is best.

“Above and beyond traditional learning, employees need the latest and most relevant content from trusted sources and efficient, low-friction ways to collaborate and brainstorm to resolve problems,” added Lee. “Our role is to provide tools and help businesses flesh out processes to ensure that the best content is created and made available at the moment of need for everybody.”

The second keynote by Allego VP of Product Andre Black, shared a sneak peak of the Allego 2020 product roadmap. This included a preview of Allego 6, one of the most comprehensive platform updates in the company’s history. With a focus on helping employees learn in the flow of work, Black’s session highlighted the importance of call coaching, more customizable learning paths and smarter content curation that meets teams’ actual usage, behaviors and even outcomes.

Customer Trailblazers Present Innovative Use Cases

The S3 Virtual Showcase concluded with highly anticipated presentations from finalists in the annual Allego Trailblazer Awards competition. The competition highlights real-world Allego experiences shared by innovative customers. This year’s Trailblazers were Baxter Healthcare Corporation (Tim Kingsford, Senior Manager, Learning, Innovation and Operations), Jackson National Life Distributors LLC (Annabel Chynces, AVP of Distribution Training and Development) and TherapeuticsMD (Melissa Bryant, Senior National Training Manager).

The finalists were selected from a pool of submissions by a panel of expert judges including Nancy Nardin, Founder, Smart Selling Tools & Co-Founder, Vendor Neutral; Lori Richardson, CEO and Founder, Score More Sales & President, Women Sales Pros; and Tim Hagen, Chief Coaching Officer, Progress Coaching.

Nominees shared how their teams have accelerated training, onboarding, coaching, collaboration and other use cases through robust implementations of Allego. After the presentations, attendees voted live and chose Jackson National Life Distributors as the 2020 Trailblazer Award winner for its impactful use of Allego’s sales learning and readiness platform.

“We’re thrilled to have been named Allego’s 2020 Trailblazer Award winner,” said Chynces. “We’ve seen tremendous success from our wholesalers after our initial rollout of the Allego platform and are looking forward to using Allego to continue to evolve our training programs and improve communications with our advisors in a compliant way.”

Jackson National Life Distributors is a leading provider of retirement products for industry professionals and their clients. During her session, AVP of Distribution Training and Development Annabel Chynces shared how Jackson used Allego to improve its Career Development Program and to help train wholesalers throughout the selling process with the use of video learning.

See You Next Year

The Allego team extends a huge thank you to all attendees and presenters who joined our first S3 Virtual Showcase in record numbers. A hearty congratulations to our Trailblazer finalists and especially the team at Jackson National. We wish you a safe and healthy second half of the year and look forward to seeing everyone at S3 2021, either in person or virtually!

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