Green Hills Market Adds Online Training to its Educational Resources

The Center for Advancing Retail & Technology (CART), a live, in-store technology lab hosted by Syracuse, N.Y.-based independent Green Hills Market, has formed a partnership with Online Training Technologies (OTT) to produce and deliver a series of online educational programs to retailers.

OTT recently launched a series of retail education courses with Hawkins Strategic, an affiliate of CART, to bring proven methodologies and best practices to the global market in scalable form; these courses are now being released in coordination with CART, and more are being developed at its facility.

Says Gary Hawkins of CART, "We believe that OTT's platform continues to be the most effective way to provide best practices and ongoing education to front-line employees and others within an organization,” said Gary Hawkins, CEO of both Green Hills and CART.

According to Hawkins, online courses have proven themselves to be the best vehicle for educating a large workforce, and they are being leveraged accordingly by CART to promulgate its research facility learnings to entire organizations, not just the top levels.

OTT's courses are being offered by CART as a complement to its in-store educational sessions. While CART's in-store courses may be taken by anyone, retail executives are their most frequent participants. CART's courses released with OTT, on the other hand, find their strength in educating the rest of the organization. These courses cover all aspects of retail, and begin with checkout operations and the importance of loyalty.

OTT’s online training programs have already seen great success at Wal-Mart, which uses the online programs as part of its workforce education programs, according to Jerry Nave, managing director of OTT. “According to Tom Miller, operations manager of business intelligence and workforce development, OTT’s solutions helped successfully train over 100,000 Wal-Mart employees and has produced results beneficial to their bottom line,” he said.

Online Training Technologies (OTT) products and solutions are designed to reduce training costs and improve regulatory compliance programs while complimenting and enhancing sales and human resource management training initiatives for users.

CART’s mission is to enhance industry learning through hands-on, behind-the-scenes views into new and forthcoming technologies, as well as discussions focused on changing business practices.