Here we speak with Brendan Noud, founder and CEO of LearnUpon, a pioneering Learning Management System (LMS) company that has revolutionized the way businesses deliver training to their employees, partners, and customers.
After identifying 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 providing 24/7 support through working 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 providing learning and resource management systems, 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 when LearnUpon was born.
Alongside its founder, Des Anderson, they developed LearnUpon to support the learning needs of businesses. From the beginning, Brendan and Des placed a strong emphasis on customer service, ensuring that customers were able to access and receive the support they needed. Before their first hire in 2013, Brendan and Des worked 12-hour shifts to provide 24/7 support to their clients. Fast forward to today, and they have a global business with over 1,500 customers.
LearnUpon’s mission is to work with businesses who believe that delivering 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 goals.
With Brendan at the helm of LearnUpon, the company has gained widespread recognition and won numerous industry awards. His leadership has fueled significant growth, with LearnUpon now serving clients in a variety of industries and establishing itself as a leader in the LMS space.
What is the biggest problem you solve for your customers?
At LearnUpon, we help businesses deliver the LearnUpon experience 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 made you start your business—did you want to shake up the status quo, or was it a gap in the market to fill?
My co-founder, Des, and I have both worked in the learning industry for over 20 years. We have worked with many people and businesses who were unhappy with their learning solution. They were dated, bloated, and unfocused on what really mattered: the user experience.
We decided to invest in building a solution that we believe meets the needs of real companies out there, focusing on making the student experience as attractive and simple as possible and the management experience as automated and efficient as possible.
What are your product prices?
LearnUpon has many brand values, but the most important is “putting the customer at the heart of everything”. Nothing is decided, built, or achieved without asking the question: Does this put our customers at heart? We are a customer first company; we create their needs. Our guide, our community, our conference—it’s all about customer experience and putting them first.
Is team culture important to your business?
From day one, we’ve had a strong sense of the LearnUpon company culture. It has since been greatly improved. Today, our cultural code expresses the beliefs, values, and shared practices that are important to us. We encourage all employees to celebrate when these standards are followed and feel free to highlight situations where they are not.
This falls into a few buckets: putting customers at the heart of what we do; leading with curiosity, asking questions, and learning from mistakes; leading by example in a positive and caring way; and quality delivery, which we believe is best done through diverse voices and experiences.
Above all, we hire great people and we trust them to do a good job, we try to use a team that is flexible, strong, collaborative, compassionate, driven, humble, and fun. Culture is a very important part of running a successful business.
What do you do to go the extra mile to show your team that you value them?
We offer many benefits to show our appreciation to our team, but it’s the daily actions that really shape our company culture. We trust our team members and encourage them to take risks and explore new ideas.
In addition, we believe in full transparency. Every month, we hold 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 people value the most.
Regarding your messages, do you think you are speaking directly to your consumers in a clear way?
Transparency is huge at LearnUpon, especially for our customers. If a thought speaks to us and we feel like we won’t be the right solution for them, we’re in the clear. And we will direct them to another solution that we feel is right. 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 reflected in our reviews and retention rates.
How often do you review the data you pull and target your KPIs, and why?
Every decision we make is driven by data, be it quality or quantity. We constantly monitor customer metrics such as happiness, NPS, retention, and product acquisition. We also give our customers the opportunity to talk to us, either 1-1 on the phone 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.
For our employees to be happy, this is also a priority. We do two surveys a year. A year-end survey to gauge team sentiment and a mid-year pulse survey. It is important that we know how our employees feel and that we live up to our company culture.
Does technology play a very large part in the day-to-day operations of your company?
It’s big. As a technology company, we want to be on the cutting edge and use the best technology internally, and provide it to our customers. We have strong processes in the company to use the latest technology, and we have a strong roadmap for our customers around AI. Additionally, we have a strong focus on automation. Our customers and our team’s time are precious; therefore, we want to provide solutions that allow them to do more in less time.
What is your opinion about your competitors?
The learning technology space is full of competitors. It’s a busy place with an estimated 1,000+ learning solutions on the market today. At LearnUpon, we don’t consider it a bad thing to have a competitive market. For us it means opportunity. It means that there is a growing market and a growing demand for business education.
Do you have any advice for anyone starting a business?
Consider your company’s values ​​from the get-go. When Des and I started LearnUpon, we wanted businesses to have the best support in the industry. But since it’s just the two of us, this meant splitting 12-hour shifts so we could provide 24/7 support.
That drive for excellent customer support has never waned. Instead, it’s augmented with LearnUpon’s customer-savvy team, still offering 24/7 support.
It can be a lonely and stressful place to be a leading business decision maker. What do you do to relax, recharge, and sharpen your focus?
I consider myself very lucky to have Des, the founder of LearnUpon by my side. I have known Des for 20+ years; we both came together in the industry, and I can always count on him to be a sounding board and make sure we’re making the right decision for our team, our customers, and LearnUpon as a whole. Also, playing sports with my kids is always a great break!
Do you believe in the 12-week methodology, or do you use longer planning strategies?
We have a long-term vision but to get there, we are working in residential areas. At the beginning of each quarter, we set team- and company-wide OKRs that we are all working on. Each month, the entire company is updated on progress. It keeps everyone committed and focused on the overall goal.
What three things do you hope will work over the next 12 months?
At the beginning of each year, we review and review our company goals, our brand vision, and our market position. We want to be safe from those things. The growth of the group is also an important indicator. We are opening new offices and growing teams, and we would like to continue to bring the best talent to our business.
