Innovation in Learning and Development – Digital CxO Podcast EP92

Hello, and welcome to the digital CXO podcast. I'm Amanda Ani. I'm excited to have Des Anderson here today.

He's the CTO and Co-founder of Learn Upon. How are you doing? I'm doing good, Amanda.

It's great to be here. Thanks for, thanks for having me. You on?

Yes. Happy to have you on our show. Can you share a little bit about Learn Upon what services do you provide?

Sure. So, um, learn Upon, um, would've been co-founded by myself and Brendan, uh, who's our CEO. Um, and we originated out of Ireland, or our HQ is in Double Ireland.

So we we're, we're a global company today, we're about 12 years old. Um, and we have offices in Dublin, Belgrade, Serbia, which is where I'm based in Philadelphia, salt Lake City in the us and also Sydney. And that's all about follow the Soul model when it comes to our customers.

So we, we've a global customer base and Learn Pond focuses is ultimately on an LMS or a learning management system. So we're an online cloud-based that solution. Um, and we provide the platform that enables our customers to train different audiences, and the different audiences can be their internal employees or their people, um, or it might be their customers and their partners, um, and members.

So it can be, it can be dependent on the use case, and some of our customers would have multiple use cases as well that's not just tied to one single, let's say thing. Um, but that, that's effectively learned upon in another shop. Wonderful.

Well, that leads us into our topic of the day, which is learning and development. So can you share a little bit about the digital transformation of this field and what are you bringing as far as innovation? Sure, sure.

I mean, it's, it's a great topic. You know, certainly from, for myself, uh, without boring you easier than the audience. Like I've, I've, since I graduated from university in college, many, many moons ago at this stage, back in two thousands, I wondered effectively into l and d space, didn't really know what I was getting into, but it ultimately fell in love with it.

And, and what I mean by that is, to your question, it's so broad. There's so many different things going on and so many different aspects to the technology as well. And of course, me being a technologist going and I, I especially love that, you know, um, but for me, you know, since that time, a lot of the customers I was dealing with then in the company, WBT that I was working for on their MS, they had training manuals, which is a document, you know, and they were scanning it into, um, a printer and then trying to upload that into their platform and trying to digitize that.

Um, whereas now you, you transfer it to today and, um, I'm sure we'll get to talk about it, you've got things like AI and all, we're not starting from a paper-based sort of learning manual, everything that digitizes, right. And that's been a huge transformation, um, over those years and absolutely massive technological leaps, um, when it comes to not only just the element space, but you know, l and d and, and sort of technology in general. And I would've sent my first email, um, when I was in college, like the first day in college.

I remember it's the first email I sent from the lab in, in Dunham City University. And again, you fast forward to today, um, it's, it's a very different world that we live in, like, you know, so we're, we're constantly having to innovate and evolve and, and and so forth. Um, particularly when I think about, you know, um, technologies today, they like the browser applications.

There's a whole lot of stuff going on in them today right now. But I was back then, um, when I first started out as a software engineer, there was maybe one browser with Internet Explorer. Um, and the idea of dragging and dropping entities around a screen was like science fiction, right?

Um, whereas now you've got applications where you've got full on video editing, um, and image editing going on right there in front of you in your browser. You don't need to install application once your, um, laptop, nevermind a mobile device, you know, and all these different things. So, um, it's certainly an exciting time, um, and certainly lots going on, which it's certainly, as I say, are quite the introverted neuro it and the technologist.

So it certainly, um, excites me. Well, can you share some, some different perhaps use cases or company journeys with us that, um, improve the learning and development? Um, yeah, sure.

Absolutely. Like, I guess like, you know, we, we've various different customers that we serve. It could be everything from, um, Gusto to Adecco Group, um, Twilio, um, and just by mentioning those names, you'll get a sense of just the diversity in, um, to different types of companies.

And as a result, the audiences that we're serving. Um, so like when we started Learn Upon, um, it was really simple. It was really under the basis of actually e-learning should be simple.

Um, and it should be the concept of, um, allowing our customers to create a sign, deliver and track. It's literally down, those are the four pillars, and they still remain to be that today, and that's ultimately what we're focused on and enabling our customers to do. And that can be everything from onboarding.

So if you imagine you have a, a new, uh, member of your team starting today, um, we, um, excel in that ability of creating a personalized onboarding experience for that employee, um, assigning the content in an efficient and automated way, providing a robust ability to track their progress through that training. And then ultimately allowing you maybe as a HR leader, um, to report on that and get, um, analytics from it. So that's like a very classic use case.

You know, when it comes for employee training, let's say, um, all the way through to customer training, it can be, um, we have e-commerce where, you know, we have our customers that might be selling directly to a public facing portal, um, or they're literally just training their customers on their own products. And so we have a lot of software companies that are doing that also. Um, and so as a result, as you can probably get a sense just in a minute or so of me talking, um, it's just, there's a lot of different use cases and a lot of different things and cool things that you can do.

Um, but ultimately for us, like when, when we started, um, it's all about customer. Like we obsessed about customer, and I know company, all companies will played that, right, of course. That that's why they're there.

But I guess like, you know, I bring it right back to our culture and our, and our values. It's the customer supports, you know, and, and ultimately when our customers are happy, when they're happy, we, you know, and that's ultimately, that's our why. Um, and so when we, when we think about that, we, we just, we've, we've built the system.

We're being simple and easy to use and try and remove the, the complexity away, um, from the LMS itself. You know, LMS can be very complex by nature because of all these different things going on and focusing ultimately on the results. So ultimately trying to understand like, what are our customers trying to do, um, and working with the likes of Twilio and Adecco, as I say, understanding like what good looks like and, and trying to ensure that they're set up for success that way.

But it really just to, to pair it all back and certainly just people tuned in and listening and they don't really understand, uh, too much an illness identity. You have to, I think you really need to just understand about what, what it is that you're trying to achieve, what does good look like and what, what are your business goals? And then you start working through it that way, you know, and keep, keep it single.

I know, just from my personal standpoint, I definitely have seen more engaging and interesting trainings out there now. It used to be so dry and boring and right, and if, if the material is dry and boring, it's going in one ear and out the other. And for me, I'm a hands-on person, so if I'm just reading a whole bunch of theoretical material, it's, it's not gonna stick to I'm able to apply it.

So how are you add adding, uh, engaging features, especially with AI now? I imagine there's a lot of different things you can add in to make it more engaging. Hmm, absolutely.

Absolutely. Like, you know, a AI is interesting, you know, I guess like we're, we're applying AI where we see that, as you say, it can create better engagements and it can create better efficiency and, and so on with the, with the platform and ultimately the learning content for the lettering load. Um, so we have tools like that would serve, say, our administrators, so they can very easily engage with the platform to create exams so they can throw a topic right in there, and it could be digitization in the l and d space and create an exam for me and, and AI will go off and create an exam or questions and so forth.

So that's quite engaging way to chat with the platform to create content for yourself, um, all the way through to the learner side. So we have a, what we call an AI coach, which is coming in, um, and it's that idea to engage the learners. So if you, as you say, like, you know, typically speaking to call a spade a spade, like, you know, people come in to do training because they have to, right?

And, and they just wanna get the, the check the box and get the thing done. And sort of the AI coach is a way to bring the letter back and maybe prompt them with questions around, you know, Hey, how did you find the train? What did you learn?

Uh, what did you find challenging? Um, and that can only further then maybe help that leader as manager or, you know, team lead to understand maybe where the person is being challenged. Um, it might indicate maybe where the content could be better.

And again, it can help the, the instructors that are creating that type of content. So, um, I guess it's all, it's all, you know, multipurpose when it comes to AI from that point of view, and we're, we're still discovering and learning more about it. Um, of course, AI can hallucinate and, and you've gotta be careful with that and, and data privacy is also a thing, um, that, that people are talking about.

But I think if you think of AI from the pure sense and, and using it in those ways to engage people, it can be really, really powerful. And that's, that's what we're indexing on. Um, especially when it comes to, to efficiency.

You know, it can be hugely powerful from the time We know, we're seeing a lot of technologies that have advanced rapidly in the last couple of years, AI being one of them. So from your experience, are you working with any companies that are struggling with staffing and finding the employees with the skill sets that they need and they're looking for a way to train within the company and, and skill up their employees they already have? Mm mm absolutely.

Yeah. Like skill, that's funny. You should say skilled, skilled is really an important topic right now, um, out during the industry and everything from, um, ensuring that your content is tagged with the relative skills that, that content would provide, um, true to understanding, um, ultimately your user base and your employee and ecosystem.

What skills are out there and what do they need to get to the next level? Um, so for example, like we've, we've, um, introduced a lot of different integrations with HR applications so that we can extreme data back and forth. So it can be, we've seen that it's quite key in the industry that, um, as you deliver your training and, and you're working through that, that you can get the analytics back and the analytics is key so that you can bring the data back out to maybe your BI systems, um, literally crunch it, compare it with your employee base and the skill sets that are there to then further understand then the next level up and the next skill.

So that there's, there's plenty of ways to do that. You know, we've got ways that you can tag your user profiles within alert points, for example, so that you can report at that and easily group by, um, different skill sets and, and so forth. So, um, absolutely on point.

That is a great question. It it, and I would say like it's a hot topic out there right now, um, in the industry are just about how you do that and what's the most efficient way. So for, for companies that are looking to implement some sort of training and development program, uh, that have not done it before, what do you recommend to them as the starting point?

Um, that's a great one. I, I, you know, I bring it right back to what, what do you want to achieve? Um, what, what's your, what's your good look like, you know, what's your business results?

So that might be anything, let's say from, uh, it might be employee retention. So if you're trying to ensure that people feel that they're learning and that they're training and they're upskilling and growing in their career, uh, that might be a metric that you want to track. Uh, it might be revenue, uh, that's maybe a growth factor that you need to decide on.

And I think once you know what that means and what what good looks like to you and, and the the why behind what you're doing, then everything else gets easier. And so, for example, like for us, um, we try and not talk to our customers too much about the platform, but we try and understand what it is they're trying to do first, what, what, what's the goal? And then we start trying to pick and choose with them what's the best feature set, uh, what's the best way to achieve that.

Um, so I think start with that. You know, I think, um, there's a plethora of applications out there and not just LMSs and all these different things that you need to try and wade through and, and navigate through. Um, my, my best advice is to step away from it and try and get too distracted by the noise.

Um, the signal is your business result, what you're trying to do, and then work backwards then for, from there. Um, you know, so certainly having content, learning content, having that at the ready is definitely helpful. But having said that, to your point, like with ai, know, it's very easy to generate, uh, very quickly content.

Um, and so that's becoming less and less of a problem, I would've said, particularly for people starting Greenfield, um, and so forth. So yeah, bring it right back to what you're trying to achieve, that that's the most important point. Alright, well if there was one key takeaway you could leave our audience with today, what would that be?

That's a great one. Um, keep learning, always keep learning. Um, you know, I think as humans we absolutely love to learn.

Um, and that can be everything from sort of like new technologies and learning about maybe the l and d space, um, and things like that, you know, um, that's certainly a key thing. But I, I think maybe to bring it back to your question, like if you were starting from Greenfield, and I think there's a lot of people out there now that are, that are doing that, um, is, is to you take, take the time, step back, learn as much as you can. As I said, the LD space is advance, there's a lot of different elements of the platforms out there.

Um, so don't get too, let's say anxious about it or don't get too worried about stuff. There's always a solution to different things. Um, so that's probably the main thing I would say to people.

Certainly ai, um, is the thing, right? And, and I think if people aren't keeping up to speed with AI and the, the sheer speed at which that technology is moving at, um, that definitely something that I would be keeping top of mind. Um, so hopefully that helps listeners.

Alright, well thank you so much for coming on our show and sharing your insights with us today. No problem at all, man. Thanks again for having me.

Lovely to chat. Alright. And thank you to our audience.

Stay tuned. There's more.