Content creation efficiencies eliminated the need for additional headcount.
Creating polished content in a fraction of the time at Platinum Dental
How a lean L&D team uses Axonify Content Studio to customize expert-built training videos
Expert videos from Axonify Content Marketplace can be customized in an hour vs normal production time.
Measurable impact on associate expertise
Users log into Axonify 11.7x/month
The problem: Scaling content steals too much time
Rapid growth benefits the bottom line but can wreak havoc on operational consistency. Platinum Dental experienced this dynamic firsthand when it acquired a large number of private dental practices over a short time.
The two-person L&D team at Platinum Dental knew high-quality training content was crucial to a seamless operational flow and standardizing the patient experience across all locations. But their outdated system—an HR portal, Slack and occasional in-person sessions—just wasn’t cutting it. So they launched Axonify’s frontline learning solution to deliver streamlined critical training and communications.
“Axonify seriously changed the game for us,” says Ashley Winn, Director of Home Office Operations at Platinum Dental. “It allowed us to send out information like standard operating procedures and policies in one place and communicate the ‘why’ behind our strategies. Plus, we could track who was learning from what we sent out.”
But as L&D pros know, content takes a lot of time and effort. Delivering a steady stream of targeted training content required Platinum Dental’s small but mighty team to spend countless hours creating video content from scratch, customizing old slide decks, adding DIY voiceovers and even filming role-play videos in dental offices. A single topic would often take a week or more to complete, and it was difficult to get the quality to match the team’s vision.
“Often, I would throw in the towel at the end and declare it ‘good enough,’” says Victoria Truax, Learning and Development Specialist at Platinum Dental. “We just didn’t have the resources or time to make every video as awesome as we wanted it to be.”
The team’s first “aha” moment came when they started using AI video creation platform Vyond to develop custom videos in mere days instead of weeks—a great start to optimizing custom content creation. Then, Winn and Truax began supplementing their custom builds with off-the-shelf content from Axonify’s Content Marketplace, an 800+ topic library of frontline-focused microlearning content built by expert instructional designers, with topics ranging from healthcare-focused content, like blood-borne pathogens, to empathy training.
But it wasn’t a perfect solution. Some of the Marketplace content they wanted to use was designed for a different industry or used terms that didn’t apply to the Platinum Dental audience.
“We’d find a Content Marketplace video containing information our team needs to know, but then we couldn’t use it [because of] nuances like the voiceover using the term ‘customer’ instead of ‘patient’ or characters wearing aprons instead of white coats,” explains Truax. “We were concerned that it could make team members feel like the content didn’t apply to them.”
Still, their bolted-together content creation methods that combined custom builds and off-the-shelf modules felt comparatively streamlined—but then something truly transformative came along.
Platinum Dental Services empowers dentists across 38 locations to maintain their independence while providing quality, comprehensive dental care to their patients. The business provides dental practices with the resources, capital and connections needed to grow and succeed with autonomy.
The solution: Drag-and-drop customization with Content Studio
The introduction of Axonify Content Studio gave Winn and Truax the power to transcend the typical time needed to create high-quality training videos by customizing off-the-shelf content.
With Content Studio, Platinum Dental was able to select from the hundreds of tried-and-tested, instructional designer-built videos in Axonify’s Content Marketplace and pull the working files directly into Vyond.
From there, Vyond’s video content customization allowed them to change the industry, replace characters, add props, change branding and translate everything in minutes. Suddenly, Winn and Traux could get the most out of Axonify’s off-the-shelf content—while making it super-relevant for their unique audience.
The results: Targeted topics and professional execution that keep learners engaged
Since implementing Content Studio, Winn and Truax have gone from feeling unsure if they could even include a video in training to confidently creating five or six videos a week alongside their other responsibilities.
“The ability to adjust wording and the look of existing Content Marketplace videos means we spend an hour or two,—max—to change a few things and push it out,” says Truax. “And everybody tells us the videos are so helpful now, which I love so much.”
It’s not just the speed of content creation that has the L&D team hooked—it’s the quality.
“Our content wasn’t bad before, it just wasn’t consistent,” says Winn. “Fixing that and adding fun elements has impressed everybody, generating great feedback.”
The improved training experience for Platinum Dental’s frontline staff is also fueling the demand for even more video content. Content Studio lets Winn and Truax easily meet expectations without burning out or requiring more resources.
“Before Content Studio, the time required to create content was so heavy that we were planning on doubling our L&D team to help with the lift,” says Winn. “So that alone saved tens of thousands of dollars this year.”
Now that the content creation machine is running smoothly, Winn and Traux have time to focus on expanding their impact. To meet their growth goals, they plan to use even more features in Axonify, like its robust reporting to learn more about which Platinum Dental employees excel at training.
“As Platinum Dental gets bigger, it’s critical to find the people in the company who are future leaders and promote from within,” says Winn. “Just in the last few weeks, there are people in the company we wouldn’t have recognized as our future leaders without Axonify as a tool to identify them.”
Winn also plans to use Axonify’s communication features to drive engagement among highly distributed teams. “We are heavily invested in making sure our team members are happy, and that means we need feedback from them,” she says. “The best way we can get that feedback starts with Axonify because it’s where every employee logs in to train.”
With Content Studio in their toolbox, Winn and Truax feel confident in their ability to focus on the future while maintaining a high bar for content quality. In fact, they are currently using Content Studio to redo outdated content and take training consistency to the next level.
“Having Platinum Dental branding in these videos makes them feel more professional and legitimizes our learning and development program,” says Winn. “I’ve received great feedback about streamlining the look and cohesiveness of our videos. It’s what I’m most proud of.”
Take the bite out of content creation demands
Learn how Axonify can ease your content creation workload—and much more.