Cloud solution doubles digital output at GP Strategies

With many organizations facing seismic changes in working practices – accelerated by the COVID pandemic – companies are turning to GP Strategies to improve workforce training and development. Josh Ellyson, Senior Digital Asset Management Analyst at GP Strategies, says, “Businesses spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and many more hours on instructor-led training. The pandemic stopped this approach and showed businesses could improve efficiency and work in a smarter way long term.”

To address this change and meet customer demand, GP Strategies needed to improve the way it developed and delivered its workforce training solutions. Its existing on-premises system was difficult to use — and crucially, did not support e-learning video and interactive content effectively, an essential requirement for delivering modern, high-quality e-learning courses.

Historically, GP Strategies had a divisional structure with teams working autonomously. The CEO introduced the ‘One GP’ strategy to increase cohesion in the business, which paved the way for a single, centralized solution.

After reviewing the key players, GP Strategies selected Sitecore. It has deployed Sitecore Content Hub, not as a marketing DAM, but as a training program development platform, which GP Strategies calls its Learning Content Hub.

“There are so many features of Sitecore Content Hub that drove our decision,” Ellyson says. “A key one is automatically creating headless content microsites so that in one click clients can preview and publish their training programs. Nobody else can do that.” Other standout features are the consistent and simple user interface and project management flexibility.

Sitecore Content Hub DAM has created a centralized content resource used by 1,500 GP Strategies staff and the company’s clients to create, manage, and store training assets and programs. Content Hub supports a wide variety of courses including technical and regulation training, ethics, IT, HR, and executive development used by leading global manufacturers, banks, and government organizations. GP Strategies has published thousands of courses in Content Hub, spanning short videos to multi-hour, multi-media programs.

Content Hub supports the global shift toward hybrid training courses, which has dramatically accelerated during the pandemic. These are a blend of face-to-face, virtual instructor-led training, and e-learning content. Content typically includes interactive video, images, and PDFs along with support material that trainers and delegates can download. Other powerful features available in Content Hub, such as Digital Rights Management (DRM), streamline and simplify audio and visual media content use.

GP Strategies now has a digital platform that reduces the time and cost to produce and host high-quality, workforce enablement training content and programs – and helps clients speed up and improve workforce transformation. With Content Hub, GP strategies has doubled its number of digitally delivered courses, from around 1,000 in the two years prior to Sitecore, to nearly 3,000 in the following two years.

Under the new process, clients participate earlier in the development lifecycle which shortens time to publish and improves quality. Changes and errors are handled before full production, reducing costly and time-consuming alterations and reworks later, so courses are being published faster. And since it’s a cloud-based, simple sign-on solution, Content Hub makes it easy to create, manage, and deliver assets anywhere in the world independent of learning management system format.

“What customers love about Sitecore Content Hub is having a single, centralized location that is quick and simple to access, which makes it easy to find a course or content assets,” says Ellyson.

“Sitecore Content Hub enabled GP Strategies to build the gold standard for developing and housing agile workforce transformation solutions, so we enable our clients to move rapidly from in-person to online training,” says Ellyson. GP Strategies is already reaping the rewards of its digital transformation. In recognition of its achievements within the human capital management industry, the business - in partnership with nine of its global brand clients, has won 20 coveted Brandon Hall Group awards for empowering organizational excellence.

Sitecore has improved productivity and resource utilization for GP strategies across the board and projects are being completed faster through more reuse and less repetition. Teams use Content Hub to collaborate, share knowledge, and cross-pollinate ideas - all of which supports the company's new 'One GP' strategy.