THE CHALLENGE

With a network of nearly 700 stores and more than 18,000 employees and franchise partners, Carrefour Belgium serves as a driving force in the retail industry. Yet providing consistent, effective training to such a large and diverse workforce proved increasingly difficult with traditional methods.

Carrefour initially relied on outsourced training content, but much of it was too costly, inflexible, or generic to truly resonate. However, internally produced training content poses a different kind of barrier: the Authoring Tool in use, Articulate Storyline, was too complex for teams without technical expertise to create engaging training content.

“We don’t have the time, we don’t have the specific skills,” Johan notes. “These training tools are not intuitive if you’re not a specialist.”

Their subject matter experts (SMEs), all from diverse fields such as butchery, non-foods, fruits & vegetables, or store operations, were essentially being asked to take on the role of a trainer. But without pedagogical backgrounds, many defaulted to info-heavy presentations or live sessions that were difficult to scale and often ineffective.

Other key issues include:

⚡️ Digital learning was often seen as time-consuming or hard to access by store staff, reducing overall engagement

⚡️ Delivering training across franchisees was challenging because the general LMS (SuccessFactors) was too complex and the license costs were too high

⚡️ Frequent updates made it difficult to keep training accurate, aligned, and up to date across all locations

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THE VISION

Carrefour Belgium set out to rethink its training strategy by shifting to a decentralized, digital-first approach. The goal was to empower subject matter experts and create relevant, high-quality learning content without needing advanced technical or pedagogical skills. Additionally, they wanted to ensure training was easy to reach for frontline employees and effortless to maintain in a fast-changing retail environment.

By rethinking their approach, the L&D team aimed to not only deliver consistent and efficient training across all franchise locations, but also give their local teams the flexibility to adapt content to their daily reality.

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THE SOLUTION

To make learning scalable, flexible, and effective for its franchise partners, Carrefour Belgium turned to FLOWSPARKS as a complementary solution to Articulate Storyline and SAP SuccessFactors to support its decentralized training strategy:

⚡️ Using the Authoring Tool to empower subject matter experts across a wide variety of roles to create relevant, structured training, without needing technical or instructional design expertise.

⚡️ Using the FLOWSPARKS LMS as a user-friendly alternative for distributing training to franchisees and shop-floor teams.

This setup gave Carrefour the flexibility to create, maintain, and deliver training quickly and effectively, tailored to their operational reality.

1. Empower subject matter experts to create training without the need for
formal teaching skills

Rather than centralizing training production, Carrefour enabled its subject matter experts to create their own digital training. And because of FLOWSPARKS’ ready-to-use didactic templates, even non-designers can build structured, engaging training.

“With FLOWSPARKS, our subject matter experts can create e-Learning that follows a didactic structure without even realizing it,” explains Johan Wöhr.

This approach not only lightens the load for the L&D team, but also gives ownership to the people closest to the work, resulting in more relevant and practical content.

The L&D team still oversees quality and alignment but acts as a supervising guide, not the sole driver.

2. Break training into short, time-friendly modules for store staff

Carrefour adopted a microlearning model to make training easier to digest and fit into their busy schedules.

“Participants don’t get overwhelmed with too much information at once,” Johan notes. “Now, it’s 10 sessions of 15 minutes instead of one long training.”

This format proved far more appealing and manageable for employees who often balance tight operational responsibilities.

3. Keep up with change through instant updates

In a dynamic retail environment, procedures and safety guidelines evolve quickly. FLOWSPARKS allows Carrefour to keep all content accurate and up to date, without the need for time-consuming manual work.

“Now we can update training content instantly and as often as needed,” says Johan. “Compared to tools like Articulate, this is a huge benefit.”

This agility ensures that training always reflects Carrefour’s latest policies, processes, and expectations, without delays.

4. An effective training distribution system across all franchise locations

Getting shop employees to engage with digital learning used to be a challenge, especially for those without regular device access or LMS familiarity. Training is now quick and easy for frontline workers, with direct access via simple QR code scans.

Employees scan a code with their mobile device or work tablet, landing directly in the training module without needing to log in or navigate a system.

“Now, in less than a minute, they’re learning,” Johan says. “It brings the training much closer to the shop floor.”

Next to the Authoring Tool, Carrefour uses the FLOWSPARKS LMS as a flexible extension of SAP SuccessFactors, their main Learning Management System. For franchise partners and shop-floor teams, FLOWSPARKS serves as a more accessible and user-friendly platform to follow training, tailored to their specific operational context.

“That’s one of the main reasons we use it,” Johan confirms. “We needed a solution that could do both.”

This all-in-one setup helps Carrefour efficiently create, update, and distribute training content, supporting everything from onboarding to operational rollouts without added complexity.

THE IMPACT

A standout example of how Carrefour elevated their learning strategy is the rollout of their internal “555” concept, a new approach to customer friendliness built around 3 key themes and 15 concrete actions.

“We created a learning in FLOWSPARKS and embedded the 555 into all existing e-Learnings,” says Johan Wöhr. “We rolled it out to almost 9,000 people in just a couple of weeks. Without FLOWSPARKS, it would’ve taken us months.”

Carrefour also emphasizes the importance of FLOWSPARKS’ customer success support, not just for technical questions, but as a true learning partner.

“The customer success coach isn’t just there for problems,” says Johan. “They help us think through challenges, suggest examples from other companies, and really save us time.”

What was once a slow, top-down process has evolved into a decentralized way of learning that fits Carrefour’s operational pace and empowers people on the ground to contribute directly.

As Johan explains:

“We need a solution that works every time, is easy to use, and lets us move fast. For us, that’s FLOWSPARKS.”