ADGM Academy leveraged the Totara Talent Experience Platform for anytime, anywhere learning

ADGM Academy is a globally recognized training institute, especially for financial education, with rich and diverse digital and blended offerings. It is a pioneering center in the United Arab Emirates that provides financial education and hosts financial debates, globally. ADGM aims to provide world-class financial research and training services through programs on banking, finance, leadership, entrepreneurship, technical skills and soft skills. It envisions to exemplify the financial literacy of the UAE through its National Development Program.

The Challenge

ADGM Academy wanted to break the barriers by moving into a digital context to stay relevant. Their virtual learning space needed to transform from an “in-person training” services to “anytime-anywhere” learning. The rise of the COVID-19 pandemic strengthened this need as the world moved indoors. Physical distancing and remote learning became the new normal.

To ensure business continuity during the challenging pandemic years, ADGM Academy sought a reliable partner who could provide an end-to-end digital transformation solution. The complexity lay in digitally connecting their entire ecosystem of globally renowned trainers and geographically diverse clientele. To address the rising demand for digital education, the Academy also sought a diverse and rich library of digital courseware.

With this in mind, ADGM Academy’s key challenges included:

• Having an easily accessible online presence in a remote-working world
• Digitization of content and deployment of interactive, engaging offline e-learning for a large audience of banks, corporate financial institutions and government organizations
• A mobile-enabled solution
• A rich course catalog with the right hierarchy and filters, including current knowledge level, desired topics and customizable learning pathways
• The need to assess learner competency online through pre-tests, allowing course recommendations to be made as part of a robust competency framework
• Recognized, sustainable training that could constantly be updated to keep them valid and relevant
• Tracking and reporting based on scoring, course completion and certifications

The Solution

Totara Partner Human Logic implemented Totara Learn and Totara Perform to meet ADGM Academy’s request to build a sustainable line of future business – powered digitally.

The optimal solution for ADGM Academy’s scale – the number and variety of services and courseware – was to take a multi-tenanted approach. This was to make sure that a single digital solution would cater to the needs of many clients. The approach allowed each client to have their own digital space to order, manage and track their own training. This enabled ADGM to assign appropriate trainers based on the number and credentials of the learners at each client organization. This gave operational flexibility to not just serve ADGM’s clients, but also to streamline employee training at ADGM, and the platform combined ADGM’s training expertise with market requirements.

Scheduling and allocation of trainers is handled seamlessly through the platform. In addition to this, the integration of virtual training tools was carried out to enhance training efficiency. Integrating with Microsoft Teams to create a virtual classroom enabled single sign-on and ensured classroom privacy and security. Other aspects of the Office 365 suite were also integrated, such as One Drive for cloud storage and “digital locker access” to recorded portions. This supported hassle-free training, data sharing and collaboration within the learners and peers, further enhancing their e-learning returns.

The platform enabled ADGM to track trainers, their work schedule and availability without going back and forth between calls and emails. This eased resource allocation and greatly expanded the “on-demand” training service provision to an even larger audience.

The most prominent feature of the platform was its strong reporting engine that was deployed across all layers of users and operations. Trainers, learners, ADGM Academy coordinators, prospective buyers and tenant managers. The business intelligence insights provided through dashboards and customized reports played a key role in making business decisions around the promotion and marketing of specific courses, pricing and packaging of programs and more.

Performance management, reviewing and course correction sat at the core of the engine by enabling ADGM Academy to study, visualize and utilize data in their business intelligence across multiple axes, all viewable via personalized dashboards. Customized dashboards were also made available to client organizations to help them evaluate, review, track and reinforce supplementary training guidelines to their employees, plan further training schedules and accurately gauge ROI.

Human Logic’s expertise in e-learning content creation, content curation, management, and delivery accelerated the adoption of the platform. These immersive courses were meticulously made to include gamified interactivity, recent global and regional trends, case studies of conglomerates and assessments with feedback loops. The ready availability of current domain knowledge paired with superior interactivity was specifically implemented to cater to the increasing demand for online learning and to promote increased financial literacy worldwide. These niche, gamified, custom and off-the-shelf courseware were launched for both online and blended delivery.

A feature-rich, native and branded mobile application was deployed to improvise the one-stop shop experience. Along with web browsing access, this mobile app also gave users the freedom to view certain content offline. By leveraging ADGM Academy’s partner network GO1, Human Logic empowered them to join a broad library of training with their own branded courses.

What started as a mere consulting engagement quickly evolved as Human Logic displayed their expertise, conceptualized the solution, deployed the design and operationalized their transformation by leveraging the most appropriate technology and partner network, making them ADGM’s trusted technology enabler and strategic partner.

The Results

Collaborating with Human Logic and leveraging the strength of the Totara Talent Experience Platform (TXP) played a key role in the accelerated upgrade of ADGM Academy from a physical training institute into a digitally transformed and reliable provider of world-class training. This was a significant achievement during the pandemic.

ADGM Academy is now empowered with not just the ability to offer the world’s largest courseware library of over 200,000 assets and an ecommerce e-learning experience for corporate and individual customers, but is also positioned to disrupt the market and cater to diverse customer institutions through refreshingly innovative formats.

Totara’s reporting and tracking features provided business intelligence so that the Academy could strategize to outperform competitors and retain their title as one of the top-performing agencies of Abu Dhabi. Data for powerful business strategies and growth plans was readily available through the reporting engine. Data analysis not only empowered vertical growth of training, but also helped the Academy to increase supply based on demand projections. Introducing pricing models based on the derived insights helped ADGM to make the right moves in this traditional market, gaining them an advantage over the competition.

A unified, intuitive and easy-to-use platform, fueled with familiarity, helped learners and trainers to connect better across time zones. This brought ADGM forward as a “round-the-clock” provider of complete training solutions.

“Sometimes, in adversity, we find a moment to turn the whole situation into something more meaningful. This is how pandemic-led challenges helped ADGM Academy become a fully digitally transformed, “round-the-clock” institute to provide world-class training solutions, seamlessly connecting trainers and candidates across time zones. We appreciate the incredible support we received from our technology enabler and strategic partner, Human Logic, in creating a vast digital ecosystem and the whole gamut of technical solutions that also empowered the Academy to become the world’s largest courseware library of over 200,000 assets.”
– Mr. Mansoor Jaffar, Director, ADGM Academy