Esker System New Vendor Tutorial

Overview

Role: Instructional Designer

Target Audience: Billing Department New Hires and Current Employees at Inogen.

Tools & Modalities: Interactive Screen Recording & Walkthrough (Camtasia / Premiere Pro), Microlearning Architecture, LMS Integration, Job Aids / Quick Reference Guides

Situation
The Enterprise Enablement and Training team was trapped in a resource-draining cycle of repetitive facilitation, committing over 20 hours per week to live 1:1 and small-group onboarding and remedial retraining on the Esker Billing platform.

  • The Problem: Software updates, process variations, and cognitive overload during onboarding caused high error rates in live billing cycles.

  • The Root Cause: Without on-demand, asynchronous documentation, employees relied on informal "shoulder taps" and live trainer intervention whenever edge cases or complex billing workflows arose. This created a high operational bottleneck that stalled trainer capacity and delayed employee speed-to-proficiency.

Task
Design and deploy a scalable, self-paced learning and performance support solution to:

  • Eliminate recurring live retraining sessions while maintaining or improving billing data accuracy.

  • Transition procedural training to an asynchronous model, giving learners an intuitive reference tool at the point of need.

  • Recapture ~80 hours/month of trainer capacity so the enablement team could refocus on high-impact strategic initiatives.

Action (Instructional Strategy & Execution)
Rather than producing a single, passive lecture video, I applied Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller) and Mayer’s Multimedia Principles to build an intentional, modular digital learning experience:

  1. Needs Analysis & Task Mapping:
    Partnered with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and high-performing billing specialists to break down the end-to-end Esker workflow into core procedural milestones.
    Identified primary failure modes and high-friction choke points where users consistently made input errors.

  2. Modular Microlearning Architecture:
    Scaffolding: Segmented complex end-to-end billing workflows into digestible, short, bite-sized walkthrough modules rather than an overwhelming 30-minute overview (segmenting principle).
    Dual-Coding & Visual Signaling: Leveraged dynamic callouts, visual zoom/pan techniques, and synchronized voiceover narration to direct visual attention to critical interface fields without cognitive clutter (signaling principle).

  3. Performance Support & Just-In-Time Integration:
    Embedded interactive checkpoints and chapter bookmarks so experienced staff needing a quick refresher could skip directly to specific workflows (e.g., handling invoice exceptions or split billing).
    Paired the media with an accompanying step-by-step job aid / SOP reference guide hosted alongside the module in the LMS, facilitating immediate transfer to on-the-job execution.

Result & Business Impact

  • 100% Recaptured Facilitator Capacity: Fully eliminated the 20 hours/week of recurring live retraining, returning ~1,000+ annualized hours back to the training team to dedicate toward higher-value enablement projects.

  • Accelerated Time-to-Autonomy: New hires reached independent, unsupervised billing execution X% faster (e.g., reduced time-to-proficiency from weeks to days) with zero reliance on 1:1 shadow sessions.

  • Self-Sufficiency & Decreased Support Tickets: Achieved full learner autonomy for day-to-day transaction processing; internal billing inquiry tickets dropped significantly as staff leveraged the modular library as a just-in-time performance support system.

  • Scalable Asset Lifecycle: Created a standardized template and recording workflow, enabling rapid version updates whenever the Esker UI undergoes patch releases.