FutureLearn: Enabling Transformation with Enterprise Learning Management System

Published: March 2024
Client Name: FutureLearn
Industry: Online education and educational technology (EdTech) provider.

Executive Summary

This case study describes a Transformation project, where the Irysan team worked with the Client to power their Enterprise offering and enable global growth.

During this project, we helped FutureLearn understand and articulate their needs and requirements for a feature-rich PaaS Enterprise Learning Management System (LMS), procure the most suitable solution, and lead the implementation in collaboration with FutureLearn’s internal teams, executive stakeholders and vendor partners.

At the end of the project, we delivered a fully demonstrable, Minimum Viable Product with Cornerstone LMS, which FutureLearn successfully showcased to their Enterprise client - one of the highest-ranking universities in the UK.  

Irysan delivered the project ahead of schedule, setting FutureLearn up for success in growing their market share in the B2B and Enterprise sectors, and enabling expansion into international markets.

Client Background

Launched in 2012, FutureLearn has become a leading online learning platform, democratising access to education through high-quality courses from top universities, such as King’s College London and University of Edinburgh, and organisations worldwide.  Since launch, the company has grown to over 20 million registered users, a catalogue of over 2,000 courses, and partnerships with over 260 institutions. 

Recently acquired by Global University Systems, FutureLearn continues to expand their offerings and innovate in online learning formats.

Challenges

The main challenge was that FutureLearn’s existing LMS could not meet the needs of the B2B market segment. This also hindered the ability of  FutureLearn to participate in government tenders. 

Consequently, FutureLearn struggled to generate new revenues and create new partnerships in the B2B sector and experienced tensions with the existing B2B customers who valued FutureLearn’s content, but felt under-serviced with their platform. Additionally, the lack of an Enterprise-grade LMS solution hindered FutureLearn’s ability to successfully participate in larger government contracts. 

Irysan engaged on the project to implement a brand new Enterprise-grade LMS, which would enable FutureLearn to manage and deliver its learning and development programs to the B2B clients and partners. 

The main constraints of the project were budget, resources and time. The added challenge in this project was the existing in-house platform - a monolithic tightly-coupled legacy system, which was unfit for the B2B market needs, but which powered the direct-to-consumer proposition, and which continued to serve as the Course Creation tool even for the B2B customers. The final constraint was cultural - FutureLearn’s internal teams were invested in their in-house legacy platform, and resisted the change.   

Solutions

Irysan were tasked with taking FutureLearn’s Enterprise vision from zero to implementing a functioning Minimum Viable Product using an off-the shelf platform, which would cater to two main types of B2B customers - those that had their own LMS and wanted only FutureLearn’s content, and those that didn’t have their own LMS and were looking to consume FutureLearn content on a FutureLearn LMS.

FutureLearn’s legacy technology platform, which was built predominantly as a direct-to-consumer platform,  was too complex and expensive to extend to the B2B functionality, however, we had to build integrations between the legacy system and the new Enterprise LMS, which had to consume learning content from the legacy platform.

FutureLearn pivoted their business from technology-first to content-first, accordingly directing most of the investment away from technology and towards sales. Therefore, Irysan looked for a Platform-as-a-Service solution which would meet the business and budgetary requirements of the Client.

We looked at a feature-rich LMS with a comprehensive set of capabilities, including multi-tenancy, and the ability to securely share learning content and its data to external LMS platforms, with FutureLearn maintaining full control of their IP. Other example features included employee onboarding, skill development and compliance training, comprehensive data reporting to enable the LMS administrators and clients to track learner and course performance metrics, automate assignments and issue certificates of completion. Finally, the final LMS had to provide personalised learning recommendations and pathways based on individual needs and skill gaps, as well as enabling social learning. 

After reviewing multiple PaaS solutions with the Client, Irysan recommended Cornerstone LMS, which was what we had successfully implemented. 

Irysan’s involvement in this project included end-to-end requirements gathering, vendor review, vendor engagement, supplier contract and SOW review with FutureLearn’s legal team, vendor onboarding, internal team training and management, project kick-off and implementation of the MVP.

The outcomes achieved

FutureLearn’s B2B product offering had been far behind the market standard for years. And while the Business stakeholders and the B2B clients recognised this gap, the technical department were opposed to procuring an off-the-shelf solution and wanted to build everything in-house, which would take years.

In the space of 3 months, Irysan took FutureLearn from the place of deep dissatisfaction with its B2B value proposition and no solution, to a fully procured, feature-rich working Cornerstone LMS, which FutureLearn were able to demonstrate to their existing and prospective clients. The B2B platform became the main revenue stream for the Client. 

Results and Benefits

Before our engagement, FutureLearn were only able to service their customers via a single, in-house legacy platform, which was catering for both the B2B and the B2C customers. The content had to be created in the legacy platform, and it could not be exported.

After our engagement, FutureLearn were able to separate their B2B and B2C value propositions, dramatically improving their offering to the high-revenue B2B segment while protecting the B2C segment. The Client also gained an ability to export their learning content safely and securely to other LMS platforms. 

In addition to receiving a working product, FutureLearn’s Sales teams felt empowered with the new platform. For the first time in the history of the company, the Sales team understood the platform and technical teams appreciated the needs of the business, and worked harmoniously together to deliver the best outcomes for their clients. 

Last but not least, by selecting a PaaS solution over in-house implementation, FutureLearn was able to play to their strategic strength of being a content company, not an LMS vendor. 

Conclusion

Technology undisputedly enables growth and competitive advantage for every type of business today. However, it is crucial to recognise when technology is THE competitive advantage and when it is the ENABLER of competitive advantage for your business. 

For the vast majority of businesses, technology is an enabler, and therefore, building all systems in-house can lead to mis-directed investment, slow time to market and unhappy shareholders.

Chances are, for most types of businesses there are off-the shelf solutions which can enable business growth faster, and more cost-effectively.  Finding the right solutions is also a skill and that’s where bringing in external, unbiased experts can be a good approach to getting the right solution, and getting the solution right to unlock success for your business.