eLearning Thought Leader Q&A: Talking Custom Learning And Overcoming Hybrid Training Challenges With Suresh Kumar DN

Suresh Kumar DN Discusses Building Values And The Perks Of A Robust Learning Platform

Suresh Kumar DN, the CEO of Tesseract Learning, is a learning professional with over 17 years of experience in strategizing and providing learning solutions for varied customer requirements. He works with several global customers to understand their learning and training needs and propose optimal learning solutions to enhance employees' performance. In this Q&A, Suresh explores the common misconceptions about custom learning development and discusses Teserract's partnership with a nonprofit organization focused on women's empowerment.

One of your areas of expertise is strategizing and providing learning solutions for varied needs. Based on your extensive knowledge, what do you think is the most common misconception about custom learning solutions?

One common misconception about custom learning solutions is that they take a lot of time to build and deploy. This is not true. In my experience, custom learning solutions can be built within weeks and deployed through a platform of the customer's choice. In many cases, my team has researched the content and built it without any SME support rapidly. The goal may be to create an impact through the right intention or accelerate organizational transformation, and custom learning solutions get you there, both together and individually. I have also gotten the impression that people today want the perfect learning solution. It's never going to happen. If it did, half the enterprises would have been out of business. Get the problem statement to be accurate, talk to the right people to get the solution, choose the technology to bring you the optimal output, and then engagement, productivity, efficiency, and performance are just a byproduct.

Tesseract is known for KREDO, which helps learners upskill and adapt to change quickly. Can you tell us a bit more about how it empowers organizations to tackle their biggest challenges?

Many organizations are today facing a hybrid workforce as a reality. Given this, they need to train both remote and on-premises employees. Many of these organizations also have frontline staff who need to be agile and be aware of the products/services and other knowledge required to perform at an optimal level. Organizations also need to know if their teams understand their various products and services, and if they are doing their jobs with clarity.

KREDO can help the organization at many levels:

• Create visually rich and interactive courses within KREDO, learning events, and learning paths easily. KREDO has a rich array of ready-to-use templates that can help build courses.
• KREDO has a powerful analytics engine that provides a dashboard, multiple reports, data, and other insights on learner performance. With KREDO, the management can know how the teams are progressing in their learning.
• Using the data, management can make informed decisions about the type of programs that can be rolled out to the various teams.
• KREDO embraces threats identified through technology disruption and makes it inclusive in the learning journey, thereby creating better learning opportunities.
• Subject Matter Experts with no prior Instructional Design knowledge can cause positive business outcomes by creating hybrid learning journeys.
• KREDO can cater to the baby boomer, Gen X, millennial, and Gen Z audiences.
• KREDO stays up to date with modern technology, which means, if the world transforms, KREDO evolves too.

What is one of your standout eLearning client success stories?

A globally renowned retail outlet manning a 10,000+ employee base needed to ensure a simple sales strategy converted to an amazing learning experience that eventually turned into long-term customer relationships. The learning also had to be flexible to identify the user's learning needs, keeping in mind the end goal of customer satisfaction. KREDO helped identify the similarity needed for synergy in employee learning, considering the dissimilarity of customer requirements. Both had to come together to put together learning modules and the rollout plan, leading to real-time effectiveness seen in the daily business tasks performed. An unrealistic deadline was met for the existing eLearning budgets spread across a roadmap that enabled immediate go-live and a sustainable development model. KREDO is a people's platform that can walk into any enterprise.

 Is there a recent development project, product launch, or another initiative our community should know about?

Yes, and this is exciting for us. We recently volunteered to support a nonprofit organization focused on women's empowerment, not through leadership-related development but by looking at women's rights from adolescence and nurturing them to create a space to help identify what it means when someone says gender equality, caste segregation, and understanding one's sexuality. The intent is to use education aligned to children's mindsets catering to the Indian subcontinent and spreading this across thousands of children as they enter adulthood. Education to us is well beyond business acumen. It is also about building values relevant to a better future.

You've published numerous articles on eLearning Industry over the years. Are there a few standout pieces you'd like to highlight for our readers? Can you give us a brief glimpse of what to expect in 2022?

I love all my articles equally. However, what stands out to me personally is the contribution I made to the role of storytelling and the use of gamification to augment learning experiences. These are the memorable ones.

In 2022, I will focus more on learning journeys, experiences, learning events, and making learning fun for learners. Our aim as an organization is not only to be a standout performer in delivering eLearning solutions, but it is to be that missing piece in the puzzle that anyone in the learning space would like to choose to plug a gap. Our model is based on the faith in partnerships that involve making existing learning and information systems in an enterprise even more powerful and where they need an upgrade to create a smooth transition to start a new journey.

Wrapping Up

We'd like to thank Suresh for participating in our Thought Leader Q&A. Suresh was also featured on our eLearning Trailblazers [2022] list, and you can read the numerous insightful articles he's published on eLearning Industry here.