The digital transformation is the industrial revolution of our time. And it’s happening overnight. Look at taxi cabs. Look at Blockbuster. Look at where self-driving trucks – and automation in general – could take that industry and many more. Which business model is next? Yours? 

72% of CEOs agree the next 3 years will be more critical for their business than the last 50. Companies are realizing entire business models are at risk, and if they’re going to stay relevant, they must adopt new technologies, now. This is what keeps business leaders up at night—and if if doesn’t, it should. So, how do you stay competitive and current? How does your business survive? 

It starts with your people. It’s not about just checking the box on learning or fulfilling required training around something like compliance. This approach to training won’t help your organization accomplish its corporate strategy. On the other hand, technology learning is operationally critical and it can drive business outcomes. Leadership must acknowledge and identify the critical skills gaps that exist within their technology organization and then provide a path that empowers employees to close those gaps. 

And Pluralsight is at the epicenter of it all. Today, we’re introducing a new platform experience for the enterprise with mentoring, skills analytics and channels. These experiences give technology leaders even more powerful tools to combat a growing skills gap. But, it’s not just about these experiences. It’s about the problem these experiences solve: the ability to make your employees more efficient, uncover the skills on your teams and allow learners to focus on what’s most important, not only for them and their careers, but to achieve big business goals. 

Mentoring for business: Accelerating the pace of skills adoption

Keeping pace with technology is affecting every business in the world right now. So even the smallest of setbacks and roadblocks add up to time and resources wasted, and ultimately drain a company’s ability to stay relevant. 

Imagine how much time could be saved and how quickly skill development could progress if your team members had someone to help when they get hung up tough problems. Imagine if they had an expert available instantly. 

This is exactly why we created on-demand mentoring—so learners could get 1:1 help in real-time. Learners can request a mentor instantly through the platform, get the help they need and get back to work. So, instead of employees becoming overwhelmed, frustrated and burnt out after trying to solve a problem for hours, they can ask a real subject matter expert and get personalized help. It’s this experience that enables your organization to accelerate the pace of technology adoption. It’s a completely seamless and clear path to close skills gaps faster, and no one else in the world is offering anything like it. 

Skills analytics: Uncovering the brilliance on your teams and measuring results

As a leader, it’s a daunting task to understand exactly where the talent lies within your organization. Closing skills gaps and harnessing talent is one of the biggest drivers behind your business, and never before have technology leaders been able to get this level of visibility into the skills that exist on their teams. But, you have to start with the learner.

Everyone always wants to know why learner first. The answer? You can't have a valuable ROI or impact on business unless you have engaged employees who are continuously learning. You first have to understand what makes your team tick. If the company expects certain skills or outcomes from people, it’s important as a leader to know how to inspire your team to achieve those objectives in a way that appeals to them, not just the organization. So, once you understand what makes your team tick, you can motivate them to develop the skills that also provide ROI and impact on the business. 

This is why our skill assessments are embedded in paths. Nobody wants to sit through things they already know, whether it’s in a classroom or online. It’s all about the efficiency of learning. It's a superpower. It's a personalized way to learn. With our platform, a team member can drop into a test, and within five minutes and 20 questions, not only do they know where they’re at, you know where your entire team is at. And you truly begin to see the skills gaps on your team closing. You can actually measure it. 

Because of this, skill analytics are highly useful to identify top talent for strategic projects and understand areas you may need to strengthen within the business. For example: You may need to rewrite a stack of technology, jump into a new project or hire people more quickly. Now you’re able to get people up to speed faster and have them immediately provide value that links back to strategic projects or company objectives. When you know the talent that exists on your teams, you can put the right people on the right projects. And ultimately, the talent on your teams ends up driving your most important business objectives. What other product or tool empowers you like this? 

Channels: Allowing employees to stay productive and focus on what matters most 

The last mile for every company in this digital transformation is different and something they have to own. Your languages, frameworks, tools and processes aren’t going to be the same as the next organization’s. So, it becomes a unique experience for you and your teams, and with channels, we’re catering to that level of customization. 

With channels, learners are able to follow other curated channels from experts or even team members. But, what’s really powerful is having a leader that's really dialed in on what the team's trying to accomplish. And this person can go through Pluralsight’s 6,000 courses and handpick through the entire library, create a custom channel, invite the entire team and send them on a learning journey. 

An organization may want to rewrite a technology stack from COBOL to Java. They may want it done in three years. But you know what? With Pluralsight, we plan on guiding a company to a re-write within a year or two earlier depending on the size and the problem. This becomes possible with channels. When a business takes control of creating a custom learning solution to solve their own problems, they’re better able to measure the impact and ROI and accomplish the goals they set.

Beyond closing the skills gap 

It’s exciting to witness the power of our platform firsthand. We have the best subject matter experts in the world creating content that learners crave. Then that high-trade return on investment produces talented employees that feed company objectives. 

As I wake up every day, I face the same challenges as other technology leaders, so it’s really exciting to be able to build a product that solves these problems. Never before has there been a true, all-encompassing tool for technology leaders to accurately measure the talent on their teams, adopt new technologies quicker and align learning to business objectives. Today, it’s either disrupt or be disrupted. So, we thought we’d shake things up a bit. We hope you enjoy. 

Explore our new platform experience for the enterprise here.