Case study
Industry
Financial Services
Company HQ
London, UK
Number of Employees
250+
Office Locations
4 Countries
4most Blends Internally Curated Content with Udemy Courses to Upskill Workforce Quicker and More Efficiently
Udemy driving business outcomes
Case study details
With a team of financial services risk consultants working with major clients worldwide, 4most needs to offer wide-ranging skills-based training aligned with specific stages in employees’ careers and client project needs.
Using Udemy Business as its foundation, the company has accelerated skills development across the company while improving efficiency. Through empowering its learners and course creators to drive the company’s L&D strategy, 4most can now support better learning outcomes that benefit individual careers and clients.
An ambiguous L&D approach in need of acceleration
As one of the leading risk analytics consultancy for financial services organisations, 4most boasts a team of expert consultants across a wide range of disciplines. By hand-selecting a mix of skilled consultants for each client project, the company can deliver specialist analytics-led solutions worldwide.
In order to do this, 4most needed a detailed understanding of what skills it has available and enabling opportunities to develop the right skills quickly and at scale.
Alysha Nickerson, Consultant Director at 4most, explains: “Each project we work on is different, and we pride ourselves on the depth and breadth of practical industry knowledge that supports our clients. Our consultants continuously learn through exposure on the job; however, individuals sometimes want to kickstart their learning within a different specialist area or supplement their skills to reach their own development goals. The demand for particular skills and variety of learning styles is something we need to be able to cater for at scale.”
What’s more, Alysha and Craig found that this often resulted in the fallback to one-to-one support training, which while effective, was resource-heavy and an inefficient way to manage L&D across the team.
Craig Watters, Chief Operating Officer at 4most, adds: “We couldn’t always match learners to skill experts on demand and at the right time due to client commitments; and as we continue to grow, this approach was becoming more unsustainable.”
4most needed an online L&D solution to build a foundation of learning and blend existing courses with its own internally created content in a more structured way.
Chief Operating Officer, 4most
Hybrid L&D — combining online learning and internally curated content
After assessing three different online learning vendors — and conducting a poll across the company to garner user preferences — 4most chose Udemy Business to support the company’s goal of blending video learning with self-built courses and structured Learning Paths.
“A big advantage of Udemy Business is the ability to create our own courses on the platform, so we can have a one-stop shop that incorporates our own knowledge and approaches to our core specialist areas,” says Alysha. “This allows us to focus resources on developing specialist courses in the right way for 4most and our clients. We’ve created a structure in Udemy Business that enables participation across the whole company. Whether people are learning new skills through enrolling in a course, or teaching, we’re consistently nurturing our employees’ skills.”
By combining Udemy Business with the company’s internal content creation processes, 4most can now empower its people to create their own courses based on expert knowledge. This ability to create content easily has also accelerated production, enabling creators to publish courses and collaborate with others to curate learning paths to meet the learning objectives of the company.
This culture of enhanced learning and collaboration has helped the company improve knowledge sharing, and flexibility to deliver training across a range of learning methods to support individuals. For example, Udemy provides a platform for users to learn skills in their own time, with access to experts and in-person sessions to consolidate learning across a range of skills and develop best practice approaches across all levels of experience.
Continual data collection that feeds improvement loops
4most takes full advantage of data-driven insights in Udemy Business by using dashboard information to understand how its people use the platform and which courses are popular. This helps the team spot learning trends and skills gaps to provide further focus on the courses they should promote, or additional learning opportunities that should be offered.
The data also allows 4most to match anecdotal evidence with how people use the platform in practice, coupled with upcoming demand for skills and consultant preferences to ensure 4most is making the right L&D decisions to support the company’s strategy.
Custom Learning Paths that give better direction
4most was eager to build Learning Paths in Udemy Business from the beginning, using them to onboard new employees quickly and get people up to speed on fundamental company skills.
This foundation now means that the company can build entire templates for skillsets and lines of business, allowing managers to bookmark the most relevant courses for each area of personal development. And when combined with the platform’s data insights, 4most can target which parts of the business need what skills, creating greater cohesion.
Consultant Director, 4most
Improved resource efficiency at scale
One of the biggest benefits of a unified L&D platform for 4most is the pressure it takes off the team to deliver early-stage training across a broad range of skills.
“The platform’s approach helps us give greater direction to skills training and makes the whole process resource efficient,” says Craig. “Udemy Business gives us access to wide-range of training and gives us the opportunity to turn intensive one-on-one training into custom courses that consultants can take on demand, freeing our experts to provide more bespoke and advanced support and training.”
The combination of self-serve L&D courses — combined with internally curated content — has empowered 4most’s people to drive their own skills development while making it easier for 4most to facilitate training.
“The ability to blend online learning with face-to-face sessions is very important to us; it’s helped us bridge skills gaps quicker than before.” says Craig.
Consultant Director, 4most
Building on early successes to remain flexible and agile
Following a successful first year using Udemy Business, 4most has plans to further integrate the company’s internally created content with Udemy’s platform. This also means continually improving the range and flexibility of its training programs through Learning Paths, and seamlessly moving between Udemy on-demand training and practical in-person workshops.
4most’s vision and strategy for L&D are shared through an L&D framework and enable the wider team at 4most to share their knowledge and passion across the company rather than having a dedicated L&D team.
What’s more, the company will focus on enhancing its successful graduate training program through Udemy Business and enhance its technical skills training with a blended approach to learning to meet the skill needs as 4most continues to grow.
Alysha has this advice for companies like 4most in a similar situation: “Don’t overthink implementing a new L&D platform and strategy — you should be open to trying new things and seeing how it works in practice, getting feedback, and focussing on engagement. Udemy Business has helped us rethink how we provide skills development and be able to make significant progress towards our target state.”
Chief Operating Officer, 4most
Consultant Director, 4most
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