Here we speak with Brendan Naude, co-founder and CEO of LearnUpon, a leading learning management systems (LMS) company that is revolutionizing how companies deliver training to their employees, partners and customers.
After identifying a gap in the market for customer-focused 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 providing 24/7 support to becoming an industry leader with over 1,500 customers, Brendan shares the ideas and values that have led to LearnUpon’s success.
Having previously worked for companies providing learning management systems and services, Brendan Naud discovered a gap in the market for something bigger and better. Fed up with the lack of innovation and customer-focused values in the LMS space, Brendan decided to start his own company, and that’s when LearnUpon was born.
Together with his co-founder, Des Anderson, they developed LearnUpon to support the educational needs of businesses. From the beginning, Brendan and Des have placed a strong focus on customer service, ensuring that customers are able to communicate and get the support they need. Before their first appointment in 2013, Brendan and Des would rotate 12-hour shifts to provide 24/7 support to their clients. Fast forward to today, they have a global business with over 1,500 clients.
LearnUpon’s mission is to partner with companies that believe that providing great education 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 goals.
Thanks to Brendan’s leadership of LearnUpon, the company has gained widespread recognition and received numerous industry awards. His leadership has led to significant growth, with LearnUpon now serving clients across diverse verticals 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 central solution. We aim to ensure that the learning they provide impacts what matters, such as performance, retention and growth.
What prompted you to start your business? Did you want to change the status quo, or was it a gap in the market that you could fill?
My co-founder, Des, and I have worked in the learning industry for over 20 years. We have interacted with many people and companies who were not satisfied with their learning solution. It was outdated, bloated, and lacked focus on what really mattered: the user experience.
We decided to invest in building a solution that we believe meets the needs of real businesses out there, with a focus on making the learner 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 heart of everything”. Nothing is defined, built or achieved without asking the question: Does this put our customers at the heart? We are a customer first 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 had a strong vision for LearnUpon’s company culture. Since then it has developed significantly. Today, our Culture Code sets out the shared beliefs, values and practices that matter to us. We encourage all employees to celebrate when these values are followed and to feel comfortable highlighting instances where they are not.
These fall into a few groups: 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 caring manner; And delivering quality, which we believe is best achieved through diverse voices and experiences.
Above all, we hire great people and trust them to do great work, and we try to harness a team with adaptability, flexibility, collaboration, compassion, leadership, humility and fun. Culture is the most important element in running a successful business.
What do you do to go the extra mile to show your team that you appreciate them?
We offer a lot of perks to show our appreciation for our team, but it’s the day-to-day actions that truly shape our company culture. We trust our team members and encourage them to take risks and explore new ideas.
Moreover, we believe in complete transparency. Every month we hold a company-wide meeting where we openly share updates, celebrate our successes, and learn from the challenges we face.
It is trust and openness that our people value most.
In terms of your messaging, do you think you speak directly to your customers in a clear way?
Transparency is big at LearnUpon, especially with our customers. If a potential client talks to us and we feel we won’t be the right solution for them, we are transparent. We will direct them to another solution that we believe is correct. We also encourage everyone on our team, from sales to product to customer success, to be honest and open with our customers. We build real relationships because of it, and you can see that shine through in our reviews and retention rates.
How often do you evaluate the data you pull and address your KPIs, and why?
Every decision we make is based on 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 via one-on-one calls with our customer experience teams, within our customer community, or at our conference. We want to know how we can continually improve to meet their needs.
For the happiness of our employees, this is a big priority as well. We conduct two surveys every year. End-of-year survey to assess team morale and mid-year pulse survey. It’s important to know how our employees feel and whether we’re living up to our company culture.
Is technology playing a much larger role in the day-to-day running of your company?
It’s huge. As a technology company, we want to be at the forefront and use the best technology internally, as well as provide it to our customers. We have strong processes within the company to use the latest technologies, and we also have a strong roadmap for our customers regarding AI. In addition, we have a strong focus on automation. Our clients and team’s time is valuable; So, 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 crowded space with an estimated 1,000+ learning solutions on the market today. At LearnUpon, we don’t look at a competitive market as a bad thing. For us it means opportunity. This means that there is a growing market and increasing demand for corporate learning.
Do you have any advice for anyone starting out in business?
Keep your company values in mind from the beginning. When Des and I first started LearnUpon, we wanted businesses to have the best support in the industry. But with just the two of us, this meant splitting up 12-hour shifts so we could provide 24/7 support.
This drive for the best customer support has never waned. Instead, it was developed through LearnUpon’s large customer experience team, which still offers 24/7 support.
It can be a lonely and stressful place to be the main decision maker in a company. 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 over 20 years; We’ve grown up in this industry together, and I can always count on him to be a sounding board for ideas and make sure we’re making the right decision for our team, our customers, and LearnUpon as a whole. Plus, exercising with my kids is always a great break!
Do you believe in a 12-week approach, or do you use much longer planning strategies?
We have a long-term vision but to reach this vision, we have to work collectively. At the beginning of each quarter, we set team- and company-wide goals, objectives, and key targets that we are all working towards. Every month, the entire company is updated about the progress. It keeps everyone dedicated and focused on the overall goal.
What are three things you hope to achieve in the next 12 months?
At the beginning of each year, we evaluate and review our company goals, our product vision, and our position in the market. We want to be safe in those things. Team growth is also a main focus. We’re opening new offices and growing teams, and we want to continue bringing the best talent into our business.