PowerVote, an excellent tool for friendly learning!

Dynamic, fun and… different. The electronic voting system is increasingly proving itself an ideal tool for transmitting knowledge and information, whether at a meeting with the sales forces, or directly in a real-life situation with potential clients. This has certainly been the experience for Nycomed, a Danish pharmaceutical company that set up operations in Spain three years ago.
Training is an important cornerstone for any company seeking an edge, but in the pharmaceutical sector, training is nothing less than essential. In this type of industry, one must be in the forefront of not only scientific innovation, but also employee training, so as to be able to position oneself competitively on the market. That is why multinational companies such as Nycomed have chosen interactive systems for the training of their executives.

“We started off with the remote controls developed by PowerVote in September 2008, when we acquired a total of 75 voting keypads,” explains Nycomed’s Training manager.

Up until now, the laboratory has relied on voting keypads strictly for internal purposes (specifically, during the various in-house training sessions for its sales network). This idea stemmed from the ingenious approach of the company’s National Sales Director, who had previously made use of these interactive devices for other events.
Fun training
“With this system,” explains the Training Manager, “our goal was to render training more interactive and increase our teams’ involvement in the learning process”. To this end, the Training Department developed an entire arsenal of questions in the form of a test, which was then integrated into a competition, the playfulness of which proved a decisive factor. These sessions gathered together 15 to 18 representatives.

“The teams that used the electronic voting keypads were very pleased. These devices are very dynamic and have the great advantage, compared to other systems, of allowing the instructor to capture and hold the trainees’ attention, much more easily than with other traditional training methods,” she explains.

Likewise, according to the Training Manager, the electronic voting keypads encourage the trainees to actively participate in the course. “The participation rate is higher, and not only because of a certain anonymity, but also because the use of these devices engenders a far more dynamic rhythm than training courses which rely on a more standardized methodology. And this, therefore, supposes that the audience is also enjoying itself while it learns,” she explains.

She lists yet another advantage of voting keypads: the fact that they guarantee a better understanding of the ideas transmitted during the training course, as well as the audience’s memorization of course content: “During this initial experience with the PowerVote system, we noticed that it proved very useful to fix concepts linked to specific subjects that we wanted to discuss.”

What is more, the Training Manager believes that it is possible to use electronic voting keypads for any type of training activity, in particular, for the training of small groups with which it is possible to implement a much more dynamic work pace. But she points out that “this will always depend on the type of meeting that must be organized, as well as on the degree of effectiveness and of problem resolution that is being sought.”

Following this initial, successful experience, the Nycomed laboratories plan on using the electronic voting system during upcoming meetings with their clients, specifically with the doctors.
“For this occasion, we will have to come up with a different format, one that is much better suited than that which we adopted for our sales forces,” she states.

About Nycomed
Nycomed is a Danish-based pharmaceutical company active in over a dozen countries, including Spain, where it set up operations in 2005. Nycomed’s way of working differs from other pharmaceutical companies. It is more specialized in the development of molecules and pharmacological products than in fundamental research. Its main activity consists of developing discoveries made by the sector’s companies, by providing them with a specific application and a veritable entry onto the market.
In 2007, Denmark’s Nycomed increased its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) by 31% on the previous year, to €1,220,000 ($1,870,000).