By Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer and Principal HCM Analyst, Brandon Hall Group and
David Wentworth, Principal Learning Analyst, Brandon Hall Group
Following a highly strategic acquisition of its top competitor, Pathgather, Degreed has set its sights on forever changing the way learning is being thought about and delivered in organizations.
We have been covering Degreed since the beginning, along with the rapidly evolving learning experience platform market and are very impressed with the rate of brand awareness and client growth Degreed is putting on the board. Degreed has uniquely built its own technology category from the ground up and it is a hot one. They have also provided a blueprint for what best-in-class looks like as a product and a company.
We recently had the opportunity to attend its client conference, Degreed LENS. No surprise; it provided much more than a traditional deep-dive update of company news, product functionality and client experiences.
What was most impressive is that anyone attending the conference was exposed to a plethora of thought-provoking information about improving the learner experience in their organizations, the steps to accelerate learning to move at the speed of business, and creating a stronger bond between learning and driving individual and organizational performance.
Degreed may have started at the level of a content aggregator, curator and manager but that is now a distant point in their rear-view mirror. They got busy and did a lot of heavy lifting on the product-strategy and client-experience model. What used to be a tactical approach to improving learning delivery has evolved into Degreed assisting some the most prestigious companies in the world (including Booz Allen Hamilton, Capital One, Cisco, Citi, Marsh & McLennan and Unilever) to develop a highly sophisticated approach to data-driven learning analytics to drive learner engagement, accelerate and deepen skill development and create a continuous process-improvement approach to an organization’s learning strategy.
It’s been said many times but it’s proven every day: learning and development organizations must move at the speed of business to provide an agile, nimble and flexible approach to learning. Business today is a set of fluid battlefield conditions where global environments and competitive landscapes present complex and fast-moving challenges and opportunities. The key to a company winning in the marketplace is whether or not they have pulled every available ounce of ingenuity, creativity and innovation from their workforce. One of the conference attendees from American Airlines said it best: the world of learning is moving from ADDIE to agile.
Another organization leveraging Degreed in their learning transformation journey is MMC. Their strategy is matching future competencies and skills needs in finance to create a highly specific and impactful learning strategy for the finance department. Citi is leveraging its IT best practices to rebuild its learning culture to support the need for innovation across their organization. Unilever is working to more closely align the personal goals, milestones and aspirations of its employees with its learning strategy, and to connect systems across the organization to drive better people analytics and a more dynamic workforce planning process. Cisco and Capital One are reimagining their learning organizations by engaging software developers to build microservices to deliver a more self-service learning experience. These knowledge-sharing opportunities and best practices showcases truly transformed the meeting from a traditional user conference to a center of excellence for improving learning.
It has been crystal clear to us why Degreed is an industry leader and market maker in the learning experience space from a technical standpoint for quite some time. What was really a refreshing and energizing discovery is that Degreed is also establishing itself as a primary thought leader in the learning space and any client working with Degreed will benefit immensely from tapping into the deep expertise and experience of Degreed’s team and client community.
