Case Study: Dutch retail giant De Mandemakers Groep cuts training days by 80% with Totara Learn

Dutch retail giant DMG cuts training days by 80% with Totara Learn

De Mandemakers Groep (DMG) is the Netherlands’ largest kitchen, bathroom and furniture retailer with more than 350 outlets and about 5,000 employees. DMG needed a consistent, scalable way to ensure new and existing staff deliver the same high-quality customer experience across all stores—but past e-learning attempts failed when they couldn’t own or edit content. E‑learning developer Tom Scholte led research and a tender process to find a robust, editable solution.

DMG partnered with Totara Partner UP Learning to build a Totara Learn environment with modules, quizzes, videos and practical assignments reviewed by in-store trainers; five internal trainers now develop content. Since launch in September 2015 over 1,000 employees use the system, training days per new hire dropped from 30 to 6 (an 80% reduction), and the time to train ~130 learners fell from a year to 4–5 months. DMG plans to scale Totara to all departments and its full workforce of 5,000+.

De Mandemakers Groep

Tom Scholte

E-learning Developer