Sanlam Personal Finance had been running standalone assessments via Questionmark™ Perception™ for ten years when it was decided to integrate Perception with the SAP Human Resources and Learning Management System. The integration has enabled Sanlam's training team to record training interventions against the qualifications and learning profiles of learners and at the same time allow the team to give learners feedback within Perception at a detailed topic level.

Each of Sanlam's seven business units has one or two assessment authors who develop assessments. Authors use a shared repository, a single server, and a SQL database. Some create questions and assessments using Perception Windows Authoring while other use Word documents that are converted to ASCII files for importing into Perception. Each high-stakes assessment starts with a Declaration of Authenticity.

At any one time, about 4,000 people in Kenya, Botswana, South Africa and Namibia are taking surveys, quizzes, or tests; on average, 14,000 assessments are taken per month. A robust server handles these assessments smoothly and efficiently. The company has used a wide variety of delivery platforms, including an intranet, offline delivery, and CDs.

The integration of Perception and SAP has helped Sanlam reduce training costs while improving its results and how they are reported. Perception reports help the training team convey the significance of employee survey results to business units. Org structure level reports generated on SAP can determine who completed the assessments; business unit heads can be informed of those individuals who have not completed the assessment as well as those deemed competent or not yet competent.