The two-pager on Coorpacademy in the latest special issue of Capital Magazine

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4 years ago

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“Coorpacademy: the Netflix of knowledge. Say goodbye to boring training! This Franco-Swiss startup is revolutionizing corporate training by putting the user back at the center of a collaborative and playful experience.”

This is how the article from Benjamin Janssens starts in the latest special issue of Capital Magazine. By interviewing Frédérick Bénichou, co-founder of Coorpacademy, he showcases the stand-out factors of the platform, from ‘simplexity’ to the soft skills catalogue, from the ludic and addictive features to the engaging and individualized learning paths.

Discover this article (translated from French):

“When La Redoute definitely went from paper catalogue to focus solely on digital, they had to train their employees on digital culture and tools and on the latest trends of e-commerce. And what better way to do this than through proposing… online training! The retailer chose Coorpacademy to conceive a digital learning branded platform with tailored content meeting their needs. In 6 months, 800 employees were connected on the platform and – most notably – 88% of started courses got completed. Way faster and more efficient than the old ways – when face-to-face training were needed for each and everyone of the employees. 

Moreover, traditional training usually focus on developing ‘hard skills’, technical skills, at the expense of ‘soft skills’, those more human and cross-sectional skills – the ones robots can’t acquire – which are more and more sought after by employers and recruiters. It is with the idea to fill that void that Jean-Marc Tassetto, Arnauld Mitre and Frédérick Bénichou, two former Google executives and one serial web entrepreneur, launched Coorpacademy in 2013. This Franco-Swiss startup, which won a lot of awards since then, started to put together a disruptive pedagogical method  based on soft skills assimilation. The concept? ‘Simplexity’. Behind this portmanteau word is a very easy-to-use, ludic and engaging user interface, but giving access to targeted and relevant content. 

“We’ve conceived a flexible tool which adapts to the user: our content pieces can be consumed everywhere at any time, in 20 minutes on average, or even in 5 minutes thanks to microlearning”, Frédérick Bénichou, one of the co-founders, says. 

More specifically, how does it work? “We use the flipped pedagogy. The learner watches a 2 minute video or answers questions, and it is only just after that the learner will access to the pedagogical content. This content allows learners to either correct themselves, or go further, and the whole thing infuses a new dynamic to the learning process.

The success amongst employees can also be explained by the playful aspect of the platform: we score points at each levels, progressively. Numbers prove that offering gaming elements creates high engagement rates and a healthy competition between coworkers. “For a company, it is also a good way to find hidden talents within the company, people that will potentially turn very helpful for the company”, Frédérick Bénichou adds. At Pernod Ricard for example, the employee who had the best score on digital culture was a storekeeper in Cognac; his knowledge on the topic and the fact that his bosses realized this brought him to coach the Chief Marketing Officer.” While having fun, one develops his digital culture and his emotional intelligence with the possibility to challenge his peers or to be helped and coached by another learner within his organization. 

So what’s the link with Netflix? Training modules, short and playful videos are all accessible anytime from any support (smartphone, tablet, computer). And thanks to machine learning, played content pieces help to recommend others – the startup created 27 distinct learners’ profiles. 

After having tried at the beginning to target individuals, Coorpacademy revised its business model since then and only works in B2B for large accounts (Crédit agricole, Renault, Auchan, L’Oréal, Engie, Michelin…). Companies pay a subscription which allow their employees to access the training catalogue. Rates are decreasing depending on the number of users: from 9,90 euros a month for less than 100 employees to less than 7,90 euros from 300 employees, without any fixed-term appointment. It can be specific training content made for the company or the more general catalogue with soft skills oriented training – or a mix of both.  

Coorpacademy recently implemented an internal control training program for Pernod Ricard, or a platform to make ‘La vie en bleu’ – a program around healthy good, health and wellbeing – known to all 350 000 employees at the Auchan Retail group. For soft skills training that are proposed to all companies, Coorpacademy is relying on a network of more than 40 partners and experts, including Capital and Management magazines, but also Dunod, Bescherelle, Video Arts, IBM. The website offers more than 1,000 videos and 8,000 questions (digital culture, management and leadership, future of work…) and covers more than 90% of soft skills identified by the World Economic Forum. A 10 million euros fundraising in 2016 allowed Coorpacademy to go abroad, by translating the training content in English.”

Benjamin Janssens

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