Trane, a leader in industrial machinery manufacturing, faced significant challenges in managing and developing the skills of its vast technician workforce. Initially relying on cumbersome Excel spreadsheets, Trane sought a more efficient and scalable solution to track and enhance the skills of its technicians across North and Latin America. By adopting Skills Base, Trane has successfully streamlined its skills management process, resulting in improved training programs and more effective technician deployment.
The benefits
- Improved Skill Visibility: Managers now have a clear understanding of technician skills at individual, team, and regional levels. This visibility helps identify skill gaps and plan targeted training interventions.
- Enhanced Training Programs: Skills Base data is used to recommend relevant LMS courses to technicians, ensuring they receive the training needed to close skill gaps and advance their careers.
- Efficient Technician Deployment: Integrating Skills Base with Salesforce allows Trane to assign the right technician to the right job, improving service efficiency and customer satisfaction.
- Consistent Skill Standards: Standardized skill assessments ensure that technicians are evaluated uniformly, regardless of their location.
The use cases
The Challenge
Mike Soucy, Service Solutions Architect Commercial HVAC Americas at Trane, described the initial situation as having inconsistent skill assessments. Technicians across different regions were assessed using varied criteria, leading to inconsistencies in skill evaluations. Additionally, managing skill data for 250 technicians with over 200 skills in Excel spreadsheets quickly became unmanageable. Technicians also often lacked clear guidance on the training they needed to advance their skills and careers.
Implementation and Outcome
Trane adopted Skills Base to address these challenges, starting with a pilot program of 250 Technicians in the Southern Atlantic region and eventually expanding to cover North and Latin America. Skills Base has now grown to include the remaining Regions in their CHVAC Americas business which includes 2926 Service Users, 157 Contracting Users (soon to grow to over 600) and a handful of General Leadership and Corporate users.
Key steps in the implementation included building a comprehensive skills matrix tailored to the specific needs of HVAC technicians. Skills Base enabled Trane to standardize skill assessments across different regions, ensuring consistency and reliability. Plans were also made to integrate Skills Base with Trane’s Learning Management System (LMS) and Salesforce, enhancing data utilization and automation.
Skills Base has transformed the way we manage and develop our technicians’ skills. The visibility and consistency it provides are invaluable. Our technicians now have a clear path for growth, and we can deploy them more effectively, improving our overall service quality.
Mike Soucy,
Service Solutions Architect
Commercial HVAC Americas
By partnering with Skills Base, Trane has made significant strides in enhancing its technician training and development programs. The plan moving forward is to continue to expand across Resource Coordinators (Dispatchers) and Project Administrators with a goal of delivering even greater efficiencies and improvements. Taking a skills-first approach is positioning Trane as a leader in technician development within the HVAC industry while also advancing its commitment to sustainability and global change.