When we talk about learning technologies, we often focus on employees. But what about the people outside your organisation who still make or break your success? Think resellers, contractors, distributors, or specialist partners. If they don’t have the right skills, your customers don’t get the right experience.

This is the challenge heating and ventilation giant Vaillant faced. A 150-year-old German company, family-owned since the start, Vaillant is known across Europe for boilers and home heating systems. Today, it’s investing heavily in renewable energy and heat pump technologies to help deliver the energy transition.

That change brings with it a huge demand for new skills. Vaillant works with a network of around 80,000 specialist partners worldwide, many of them installers who meet customers in their homes every day. These partners need to be able to explain, fit, and service new technologies confidently. And they need to do it fast.

So how do you take an extended network that size, spread across 16 countries, and bring their training up to date?

 

Why traditional training wasn’t enough

Like many industries, Vaillant relied heavily on face-to-face sessions in local training centres, supported by booking systems and content stored across different platforms. It worked, up to a point. But as demand for new skills grew, the cracks started to show.

• Scale: Classroom sessions couldn’t keep up with how fast installers needed to upskill
• Fragmentation: Data was scattered across different systems and countries. Pulling it together into a single picture was slow and frustrating
• Transparency: Without reliable insights, it was difficult to know what was really working
• Digital demand: Covid sped up the need for flexible, remote learning, but the infrastructure wasn’t ready

Which might sound familiar, as many organisations in the UK face the same challenges, especially those with technical products or dispersed networks.

 

Building digital academies

Vaillant’s answer was to rethink its whole approach to partner learning. Working with Valamis, it built a digital backbone that could support and connect everything - without losing the value of in-person training.

Three priorities shaped the project:

• Make upskilling accessible: Create online learning paths, short lessons, and webinars so partners could learn at their own pace, whenever they had time
• Improve transparency: Bring all the data together into one system so uptake, engagement, and outcomes could be measured
• Push digital: Not as a temporary solution but as a permanent way to make training scalable, mobile, and future-ready

The result was a network of digital academies, each tailored to local markets with the right language and content. Partners could dip in on the move, while still attending in-person sessions where hands-on training was essential.

 

Meeting learners where they are

One of the smartest moves was recognising how installers actually work. They’re not desk-based employees with time to sit through an hour-long eLearning module. They’re mobile, often under pressure, and need quick access to relevant content.

The digital academies delivered that flexibility. Content was mobile-friendly, short, and easy to consume between jobs. Webinars and microlearning modules could be completed at the learner’s pace.

It also meant that when people turned up for in-person training, they already had the same baseline knowledge. Trainers could dive straight into more advanced practice, making those sessions more valuable. In some cases, digital learning paths replaced classroom training entirely.

 

Why data made the difference

The most important shift came with data. With everything in one place, Vaillant could suddenly see what was happening in real time:

• Which courses partners were choosing
• The times and days they were most active
• Where learners dropped off
• What types of content drove the most engagement

This reporting focused on what worked, and then improving it. For example, analysing data helped pinpoint the ideal length for video content. It also allowed the company to compare engagement across countries and replicate best practices.

For Vaillant, this made a huge difference. For the wider L&D community, it’s a reminder that data should be used for decision-making, and not stop at dashboards.

 

The results

The numbers tell their own story:

• 19 digital academies rolled out in 16 countries
• 80,000 partners with 24/7 access to over 1,700 digital lessons
• 240% increase in clicks on eLearning content since launch

That scale simply wouldn’t have been possible with classroom-only training.

 

Lessons for L&D professionals

What can the UK learning technologies audience take from Vaillant’s journey? A few key takeaways stand out:

• Think beyond employees: Customers, partners, and contractors need learning too. Sometimes even more urgently
• Blended is about sequencing, not just format: Digital and classroom sessions should build on each other, not compete
• Design for real life: Understand how your learners work day to day. Mobile, flexible, bite-sized content is essential if they’re always on the move
• Make data your friend: Real-time insights are what let you adapt, improve, and prove value
• Localisation is non-negotiable: Global doesn’t mean identical. Local languages and cultural context matter if you want adoption

 

What’s next for Vaillant

Vaillant never stands still. The company is pushing ahead - rolling out more learning academies across its global network, embedding blended learning deeper into everyday practice, and using data insights to continually refine what works.

And here’s the bigger picture: yes, cost savings, efficiency, and compliance all matter. But the real prize is bigger: enabling the green transition at scale. By equipping thousands of partners with the skills and confidence they need, Vaillant is helping households everywhere adopt sustainable energy systems faster.

 

Wrapping up

Vaillant’s story, supported by Valamis, shows how partner training is changing. What used to be scattered systems and classroom courses is now integrated, measurable, and digital-first. Traditional training still has its place, but it becomes part of a learning ecosystem that works at scale.

For UK learning professionals, the lesson is simple: if your learning strategy stops at the walls of your own organisation, you may be missing the bigger opportunity. The people who sell, install, or represent your products matter just as much as your employees.

Give them the right tools, and the impact can be transformative - for your business, your customers, and, as Vaillant shows, for the planet.

 

Nicola Cox  

Marketing Specialist at Valamis