Here we speak to Brendan Noud, co-founder and CEO of LearnUpon, a pioneering learning management system (LMS) company that has revolutionized the way companies deliver training to their employees, partners and customers.
Having identified a gap in the market for customer-centric LMS solutions, Brendan and his co-founder, Des Anderson, built LearnUpon from the ground up with a commitment to innovation and customer support. From the early days of offering 24/7 support through 12-hour shifts to becoming an industry leader with over 1,500 customers, Brendan shares the insights and values that have driven LearnUpon’s success.
Having previously worked for companies offering learning management systems and services, Brendan Noud saw a gap in the market for something bigger and better. Fed up with the lack of innovation and customer-centric values within the Learning Management System (LMS) space, Brendan decided to start his own company, and that’s how LearnUpon was born.
Together with his co-founder, Des Anderson, they developed LearnUpon to support the learning needs of companies. From the beginning, Brendan and Des have placed great emphasis on customer service, ensuring that customers were able to get in touch and get the support they needed. Before their first hire in 2013, Brendan and Des worked 12-hour shifts to offer 24/7 support to their customers. Fast forward to today and they have a global business with over 1,500 customers.
LearnUpon’s mission is to partner with companies that believe that providing great learning is essential to achieving great results. They focus on helping organizations deliver effective learning that bridges the gap between employee, partner and customer training and business objectives.
With Brendan at the helm of LearnUpon, the company has gained widespread recognition and garnered numerous industry awards. His leadership has driven substantial growth, with LearnUpon now serving clients across multiple industries and establishing itself as a leader in the LMS landscape.
What is the main problem you solve for your customers?
At LearnUpon, we help companies deliver engaging LearnUpon experiences to their employees, partners, and customers, all within one centralized solution. Our goal is to ensure the learning we deliver has an impact on what matters, like performance, retention and growth.
What inspired you to start your business: did you want to disrupt the status quo or was it a gap in the market that you could fill?
My co-founder, Des, and I have both worked in the learning industry for over 20 years. We have interacted with so many people and companies who were unhappy with their learning solution. They were dated, bloated, and didn’t focus on what really mattered: the user experience.
We decided to invest in creating a solution that we believe meets the needs of real businesses out there, focusing on making the student experience as engaging and simple as possible and the admin experience as automated and efficient as possible.
What are your brand values?
LearnUpon has many brand values, but the most important is “putting the customer at the center of everything”. Nothing is decided, built or achieved without asking the question: Does this put our customers at the center? We are a customer-centric company; we build for their needs. Our roadmap, our community, our conference – it’s all about the customer experience and putting them first.
Is team culture an integral part of your business?
From day one, we have had a strong vision for LearnUpon’s corporate culture. It has developed significantly since then. Today, our cultural code outlines the shared beliefs, values, and practices that are important to us. We encourage all employees to celebrate when these values are followed and to feel comfortable pointing out when they are not.
These fall into a few buckets: putting customers at the heart of what we do; lead with curiosity, ask questions and learn from mistakes; lead by example in a constructive and thoughtful way; and deliver quality, which we believe is best done through diverse voices and experiences.
Above all, we hire great people and trust them to do great work, seeking to leverage a team that is adaptable, resilient, collaborative, compassionate, motivated, humble and fun. Culture is the most important component of running a successful business.
What do you do to go the extra mile to show your team that you appreciate them?
We offer numerous benefits to show our appreciation for our team, but it’s the everyday actions that truly shape our company culture. We trust our team members and encourage them to take risks and explore new ideas.
Furthermore, we believe in total transparency. Every month we host a company-wide meeting where we openly share updates, celebrate our successes, and learn from our challenges.
It is this trust and openness that our employees appreciate most.
In terms of messaging, do you think you are speaking directly to your consumers in a clear way?
Transparency is important to LearnUpon, especially with our customers. If a potential client talks to us and we feel we won’t be the right fit for them, we are transparent. And we will direct them towards another solution that we believe is right. We also encourage everyone on our team, from sales to product to customer success, to be honest and open with our customers. That’s why we build authentic relationships, and you can see it shine through in our reviews and retention rates.
How often do you evaluate the data you input and address your KPIs and why?
Every decision we make is driven by data, whether qualitative or quantitative. We constantly monitor customer statistics such as happiness, NPS, retention and product adoption. We also give our customers the opportunity to talk to us, whether it’s on one-on-one calls with our Customer Experience teams, within our customer community or at our conference. We want to know how we can constantly improve to meet their needs.
This is also a big priority for the happiness of our employees. We carry out two surveys every year. An end-of-year survey to gauge team sentiment and a mid-year pulse survey. It’s critical to know how our employees feel and whether we’re living up to our company culture.
Does technology play a much bigger role in the day-to-day running of your business?
It’s huge. As a technology company, we want to be at the forefront and use the best technology internally, as well as providing it to our customers. We have strong processes within the company for using the latest technology and we also have a solid roadmap for our customers around AI. We also focus a lot on automation. Our clients and team’s time is precious; therefore, we want to provide solutions that allow them to do more in less time.
What is your attitude towards your competitors?
The learning technology space is full of competitors. It’s a very busy space with over 1,000 learning solutions estimated on the market today. At LearnUpon, we don’t consider having a competitive market to be a bad thing. For us it means opportunity. It means there is a growing market and growing demand for corporate training.
Do you have any advice for someone starting a business?
Keep your company values in mind from the start. When Des and I started LearnUpon, we wanted businesses to receive the best support in the industry. But with just the two of us, that meant splitting 12-hour shifts so we could offer 24/7 support.
The drive for better customer service has never waned. Instead, it has grown with LearnUpon’s robust customer experience team, which still offers 24/7 support.
It can be a lonely and high-pressure place to be in as the company’s primary decision maker. What do you do to relax, recharge and sharpen your focus?
I consider myself incredibly lucky to have Des, the co-founder of LearnUpon, by my side. I have known Des for more than 20 years; we have both grown up together in the industry and I can always count on him to be a sounding board for ideas and ensure we are making the right decision for our team, our clients and LearnUpon as a whole. Plus, playing sports with my kids is always a nice break!
Do you believe in the 12 week working method or do you use much longer planning strategies?
We have a long-term vision, but we work in quarters to get there. At the start of each quarter we set team- and company-wide OKRs that we all work towards. Every month the entire company is updated on progress. It keeps everyone dedicated and focused on an overall goal.
What are three things you hope to implement in the next 12 months?
At the beginning of each year we evaluate and review our business objectives, our product vision and our market positioning. We want to be sure of these things. Team growth is also a key objective. We are opening new offices and growing teams and would like to continue bringing top talent into our business.