ケーススタディ
業界
Consulting, Marketing, Advertising
本社
Boston, MA
従業員数
20,000
Publicis Sapient: Empowering Workforce with Advanced Cloud Certifications for Direct Business Impact
Udemyがビジネス成果を推進
ケーススタディの詳細
Founded in 1990, Publicis Sapient is a digital transformation company that helps global organizations create and sustain competitive advantage in an increasingly digital world. The company offers a wealth of consulting, data, and technology services that guide businesses to remain consistently relevant through modernized organizations and an elevated customer experience. Today, Publicis Sapient has more than 20,000 employees in 53 offices worldwide—and is poised to continue a trajectory of rapid growth amidst ongoing technological change.
Staying ahead of digital transformation with top-quality advanced learning
Effectively assisting clients with digital transformation means Publicis Sapient’s own workforce must be adept in navigating complex, evolving technologies. As such, the company’s Learning & Development (L&D) organization is tasked with delivering centralized training that builds employees’ technical fluency, prepares them to earn key certifications, and positions them for optimal productivity.
Publicis Sapient had previously implemented a leading Learning Management System (LMS) to address these needs, but the company’s ongoing growth and change revealed several obstacles with the existing setup. To begin with, when Publicis Sapient employees consulted onsite at client locations, they could not access learning resources on the LMS platform through client firewalls. That was a huge loss for L&D, as consultants spent a great deal of time at client offices. “We needed to find a solution that could not only reach our people with content regardless of where they sat, or which computer they were on, but also to give us real-time data to show the skill building activity taking place,” explains Ian Stevens, Head of Capability Development, North America.
The HR and L&D organizations at Publicis Sapient also drove a switch in solutions for the company’s LMS. But while this move addressed platform issues, the company still needed a robust content solution that could meet its stringent technical and soft skills requirements. Specifically, the Publicis Sapient consulting teams—mainly based in the United States and India—needed access to top-quality, advanced content across a wide range of areas, with clearly defined subtopics. Courses needed to keep learners in the driver’s seat by allowing a mix of engaging learning methods and shorter, more consumable courses. From a deployment standpoint, the content solution needed to be proven to launch effectively and on time. And finally, end-user support needed to be top notch, so—unlike with the previous solution—learners knew exactly what was available to them and how to use it.
Head of Capability Development, North America
Choosing top-of-the-line content for upskilling, keeping learners in the driver’s seat
After a thorough search for the right learning content provider, Publicis Sapient chose Udemy Business for the depth and breadth of its technical course catalog. In addition to being both top-quality and up-to-date, Udemy courses could be quickly and easily consumed, and they were downloadable offline—immediately solving its consultants’ access challenges.
Ease of integrating Udemy Business content into the L&D team’s overall training approach was key to the solution, based on the idea that there is no one right path to learning and that everyone is accountable for acquiring new skills to drive business forward. As such, the team opted for a blended delivery mode, via a timeline designed to accommodate work/life balance. Employees were asked to make a formal commitment to 3-5 hours per week for learning and non-billable time. In exchange for this commitment, they could participate in self-paced learning that would directly target the skills needed to fill new, indemand roles at Publicis Sapient—with little to no impact on their schedules.
IT learning paths give consultants the necessary technical fluency to ramp up certifications
Today, Publicis Sapient consultants leverage the technical content of Udemy Business and its extensive catalog of over 6,000+ courses through agile IT learning paths that are comprehensive, scalable, personalized, and quick to complete. Courseware builds skills that are critical to advancing clients’ digital transformation processes, including data science, analytics, cloud spaces, and AI.
At the same time, data engineers in particular use these courses to prepare for technical certifications that are vital to remaining competitive in a changing market. In fact, thanks to Udemy Business advanced courseware, Publicis Sapient consultants are armed with the latest expertise across the most critical technical areas today, including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Big Data.
“The feedback we’ve gotten back on Udemy has been overwhelmingly positive,” says Ian. “Learners love the ease of use, of course, but also the depth of the content and the reputation of Udemy Business instructors. We’re seeing the capabilities in these key IT/ Cloud practices grow significantly, and they’re making a huge impact on the business.”
Engaged workforce, a critical part of the Publicis Sapient L&D program from the start
Getting buy-in and engagement from employees has been easy, thanks to effective internal communication via email and all-hands meetings. Publicis Sapient developed strong, focused messaging that underscored employees’ ownership of their own growth when leveraging Udemy Business content. Role-based learning tracks were the first deployment to help clientspecific teams and emerging technology craft areas harness the skills most relevant to their technical development. The consequence of highlighting this learning is that people began to also seek out career learning courses on topics like management, communication, and presentations. These important skill building course offerings help workers enhance their professional acumen and consulting capabilities as well, rounding out their career growth.
In addition, the L&D team worked cross-functionally to include office and business leaders in executing programs and defining the key technical skills needed to grow the business. Internal leaders now serve as “group mentors” for learning cohorts, holding “office hours,” responding to questions, and offering advice. Mentors also lead interactive webinars and moderate online social forums for teams to discuss ideas or share articles. Offline community roundtables further reinforce learning in-person. In this way, business owners are positioned from the start as learning influencers and true partners with L&D, helping to track how learning leads groups to win business.
“Our consultants might have initially turned to Udemy Business to enrich their technology capabilities,” explains Ian, “but once they explored the robust content, they found so many other useful topics, like how to give feedback and how to present. These courses make them want to be better consultants, not just better technologists.”
Head of Capability Development, North America
Workforce turns advanced learning into elevated productivity and accelerated workflows
In partnership, Udemy Business has led Publicis Sapient to a number of proven, measurable improvements across the business in terms of learning advancement and impressive revenue growth.
Retention & Engagement:
Publicis Sapient’s proactive delivery of onboarding programs —plus role specific L&D paths— directly contributed to an impressive 22% uptick in the number of learners now leveraging Udemy. IT professionals alone logged over 335,000 hours of completed training using Udemy Business content focused in web/mobile DevOps, cloud, and certifications.
The biggest winner of all is the entire workforce, thanks to L&D’s success plus an increased internal net-hiring for in-demand roles. The company’s talent retention is strong due in part to employees having clear paths for long-term career development. Net-net: lower external recruiting and hiring costs as more workers are being upskilled and promoted internally.
Revenue-Growth:
It’s not surprising that Publicis Sapient’s increase in consultant-proficiency is now having a lasting positive impact on new business win rate, closing projects faster, and beating the competition. “The continued outperformance of our data and tech capabilities has led us to capture a disproportionate share of the shift in client investment towards digital media, commerce and DTC,” shares Ian. “This was particularly the case in the U.S., where a major competitor delivered +13% and Publicis Sapient was at +20%.”
Sales demand is echoing this shift, reporting 107 new clients in 2021—a 21% increase over the previous year. Thanks to stellar upskilling, consultants are ready for the job armed with Azure and AWS certification-expertise. Empowered by Udemy certified critical new skills, Publicis Sapient experienced a 20% revenue growth in 2021—a $280M impact on the bottom line.
Productivity Gains and Team Satisfaction:
The productivity boost brought about by new learning programs has other indirect benefits as well. With a 20% increase in certification, consultants are closing projects faster due to improved expertise. New hire onboarding is now 66% faster, with processes that used to take three weeks now completed in only one.
Employees are understandably thrilled with these outcomes, as one learner indicated when providing feedback on Udemy Business. “This well-structured program, empowered by Udemy Business, enabled me to sell a winning AI solution for a potential client, capturing new business for our company and driving revenue growth,” they wrote. Other feedback provided shows that 88% of Publicis Sapient employees find Udemy to be extremely helpful in their jobs, 49% say it directly helped them be more productive, and 27% say it helped them learn a new tech skill.
Head of Capability Development, North America
Investing in L&D helps shape skillsets of tomorrow
“Our company’s engagement with Udemy Business has clearly helped unlock multiple business opportunities that have resulted in tangible revenue and productivity growth for our firm,” Ian states. “As a result, our firm is investing more with Udemy in 2022 and beyond.”
That investment will likely take shape in several key ways. To begin with, the Publicis Sapient L&D team will continue to develop impactful programming, moving the needle in measurable outcomes. They also look forward to Udemy’s Labs and Assessment features under Udemy Business Pro, which will enhance courses with more “hands-on” experience. “I think our people have found these features incredibly helpful in improving the learner experience and engagement at Publicis Sapient,” says Ian. The L&D team are also excited to further leverage adaptive learning—the current hot trend in the industry, where content changes based on a learner’s competency or skill level.
While nurturing internal talent continues to be a top priority for the company, the L&D team plan to improve efforts for lateral hire training and the talent pool that encompasses as well— particularly when it comes to engineering talent, which is incredibly competitive both in the United States and India. To address this challenge, Publicis Sapient is committed to hiring IT professionals with less experience in a specific role, with the intent of leveraging Udemy Business courses to quickly deliver the skills and certifications consultants need to succeed. This allows us to move ahead with sourcing talent, growing them quickly, and delivering results for our clients all while growing a learning culture.
“With Udemy Business learners were able to marry the two together, technology and consultant soft skills, and we’re thankful that once they got in and took their key IT courses on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Big Data, and DevOps that they efficiently moved over to Consulting courses to help drive their career forward.” – Ian Stevens, Head of Capability Development, North America
Head of Capability Development, North America
Head of Capability Development, North America
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