Tesco - Online Academy

Tesco was looking to develop an Online Academy, a new learning portal which would eventually serve the learning needs of over 400,000 staff across Tesco's global businesses. Tesco was aiming to develop a cost-effective solution, and partnered with Kineo to design and deploy learning portal based on Moodle, the leading open source LMS. This short case study explains how we've collaborated.

Tesco have since moved from Moodle to Totara LMS. Read the new Tesco Totara LMS case study

Challenge

In 2009 Tesco piloted its Academy Online portal as a proof of concept for a learning management solution and portal for their staff across the business. With the success of the pilot, they took the decision to move from pilot to a full solution which could potentially scale up for the whole business over time.

While the pilot used an enterprise learning management solution, for the scale-up Tesco was interested in exploring alternatives with open source technologies. By going with open source, they saw the potential to make a highly customised solution with a strong focus on the user experience. In addition, the cost effectiveness of an open source solution was particularly attractive, given a potential deployment to over 400,000 staff in the long term.

Approach

Kineo was chosen by Tesco to design and develop the portal solution, based on its experience in combining user experience and web design, and development strength in open source tools including Moodle. Tesco worked closely with the Kineo team to design a solution based on the Moodle Open Source LMS coupled with Joomla, the Open Source Content Management System.

Results

By combining Moodle and Joomla, the site provides a highly customised user experience, which filters content depending on the users's role and business area.

The site has been designed to provide a very visual experience and also to allow Tesco's Academy team to manage and update in house. 

Initially rolling out to head office staff in the UK, Tesco plan to extend to all staff across the global operation within two years.

This landmark project makes pioneering use of open source technologies including Moodle and Joomla to allow Tesco staff to access all their learning needs online for the first time. The eventual scale of the project will make it one of the largest ever implementations of the Moodle platform in the corporate learning space.

The solution stands out from others by integrating a web-like portal experience together with the business benefits of tracking and learning content management that a learning management system brings.

Mark Roberts Tesco Academy Senior Project Manager commented:
"Our main focus with this project has been to deliver a world class user experience for our staff. It's important for us to give our staff the highest quality learning opportunities and Academy Online helps deliver this. We looked across the market place to select a partner and Kineo offered us the right expertise in both technology and learning, working with us all the way to ensure our vision was met. The use of this open source technology in our business is a real milestone in our approach to learning. Kineo's support and service has made it possible to turn our vision to reality and in a really short timescale."

Matt Fox, Kineo Director said:
"We are really proud to have worked with such a fantastic brand as Tesco. We've helped them realise their vision for the use of learning through this portal and shown that open source can work in a corporate environment at scale. The portal we've developed provides a deceptively simple user experience but with great flexibility to deal with the complex needs of the business. It shows that open source tools such as Moodle and Joomla can be used to great effect to address corporate needs."

Tesco are now updating their LMS with Kineo to Totara, the custom distribution of Moodle for the corporate sector.

Find out more about Kineo's LMS solutions.