Designed a scalable, SLA-driven webinar workflow for 3M EMEA Healthcare and onboarded 100+ stakeholders across multiple countries within 40 days.
→ 100+ stakeholders onboarded in 40 days.
Problem
3M's EMEA Healthcare Business Group was running webinars manually across multiple business units with no consistent process, no SLA framework, and significant time being lost to repeated setup and coordination work.
Context
This was within 3M's EMEA Healthcare Business Group, where webinars were run by individual business units rather than through any shared process. Each unit set up and coordinated its own webinars from scratch, which is where the lost time and the lack of an SLA framework came from.
Business objective
Design and implement a scalable webinar workflow and onboard over 100 stakeholders across multiple countries within 40 days.
Customer/user objective
The business units and regional teams running webinars needed a workflow simple enough to adopt across multiple countries inside a 40-day window, with ownership clear enough at each step that nobody was left guessing who was responsible for what.
Constraints
Forty days to design a new workflow and onboard more than 100 stakeholders across multiple countries, with no existing SLA framework or consistent process to build from. Business units were used to running webinars their own way, so the new process had to be adopted across all of them inside that same window, not phased in gradually.
Stakeholders
Over 100 stakeholders across multiple countries and business units within 3M's EMEA Healthcare group, each needing onboarding onto the new workflow inside the 40-day window.
Research and discovery
The starting point was mapping how webinars were actually being run business unit by business unit, since 'no consistent process' meant each one had its own version. That mapping is what surfaced where the SLA gap sat and where the repeated setup and coordination work was actually being lost.
Options considered
One option was to write a standard process document and circulate it, leaving each business unit to interpret and adopt it in their own way. The other was to build the SLA and ownership directly into the workflow itself, backed by training and onboarding sessions, so there was less room for local reinterpretation. I went with the second, since a document alone wouldn't have created the consistency the business needed across that many units and countries.
Prioritisation
Mapping the existing process and identifying where the inefficiencies actually sat came first, since designing a new workflow without that would have meant guessing at what to fix. Training and onboarding came once the workflow itself was defined, not before.
Delivery
Mapped the existing webinar process and identified inefficiencies. Designed a new SLA-driven workflow with clear ownership and standardised processes. Created training materials and delivered onboarding sessions across regional teams.
Decisions made
The most consequential decision was to build ownership and SLA targets into the workflow itself, rather than issue guidance and rely on business units to follow it consistently. With multiple business units and countries involved, guidance alone had already produced the inconsistency described above.
Trade-offs
Designing the workflow around defined ownership and SLA targets took more upfront design work than a lighter-touch guidance document would have. I accepted that because the lighter option was closer to what had produced the inconsistent process in the first place.
Business outcome
New workflow adopted as standard across all EMEA healthcare webinar activity. 100+ stakeholders onboarded within 40 days.
Customer outcome
Regional teams and business units now work to one standard workflow instead of each running webinars their own way. Over 100 stakeholders were onboarded within the 40-day window, so the new process reached the same scale as the original problem.
Lessons learned
A process only becomes consistent if ownership and SLA targets are built into the workflow itself, not left as guidance for people to interpret in their own way. At this scale, over 100 stakeholders across multiple countries, having training materials to refer back to mattered as much as the onboarding sessions themselves.
What I'd improve today
I'd want to build in a way to check the new workflow was actually being followed consistently a few weeks after onboarding, rather than treating adoption as complete once the sessions were delivered. Forty days is enough time to launch a workflow but not necessarily enough to know if it's sticking.
