Suresh Ramakrishnan, Executive Director of Eduriser Learning Solutions, tells us about their E-Learning solutions that go beyond ‘resilience’ and ‘digital fluency’, the two most desirable skills globally.
Tell us about you, your career, and how you joined Eduriser Learning Solutions.
Suresh Ramakrishnan: I joined Eduriser Learning Solutions in the year 2016. It’s been a roller-coaster ride over the last six years. We had to re-look at the business and evaluate each vertical for its market potential, viability, and profitability. The restructuring process took close to 18 months, and we managed to create a lean and mean organization geared for growth. We intensified our focus on the service quotient and extended ourselves with a careful foothold into the consulting domain, especially in structuring the relevant learning journey for everyone in the organizations we partnered with. The CrossKnowledge Platform (in a strategic alliance with CrossKnowledge in Paris, a Wiley company) offers a robust learning experience through its inherent blended learning capability. This holistic approach seamlessly blends both online and offline interventions to cater to every individual’s career transformation.
Do you have small habits that made a meaningful impact on your life and business?
Suresh Ramakrishnan: The habit of reading every passing day. I ensure I read 6-10 pages of a book every day and feed on several articles related to our business vertical or any business in general if it has nuances either related to business decisions, marketing, leadership, or people management embedded in them.
Music is another passion I nurture outside of work. I train at an academy to learn Hindustani light music.
I make it a point to work out at least five days a week. It helps me remain agile and energetic throughout the day.
How does Eduriser Learning Solutions market its product/services online?
Suresh Ramakrishnan: We focus intensively on ensuring our website carries the right features and message that prospective customers should view and get interested in getting in touch with us.
Linked In is one of the primary platforms for us to write to the relevant people and target new customers.
Our carefully curated media campaigns through Facebook and Instagram help us with the visibility – more in terms of what we stand for, our people-centric policies, and our content/platform curating abilities.
We use google ads too – selectively.
What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to manage your online marketing?
Suresh Ramakrishnan: We have signed up for the analytics report and closely monitor every aspect to see which pages, stories, and features attract visitors.
We have a demo request feature that appears at key junctures while you surf, and when the curiosity factor piques, the visitor is prompted to seek a demo from us. That is a good hook point.
We have uploaded our case studies which contain key statistics that reflect the collaborative effort between the relevant client and us to make a learning journey worth its while. Yes, we share more details when the visitor chooses to call us or write to us.
What is your hiring policy/process, and how do you retain your employees?
Suresh Ramakrishnan: We have specific people in our Human Resources team who are in charge of hiring.
We use online portals and several head-hunters who help us in our search. We use the latter, especially for senior positions.
The first level screening is done by HR, and then the technical/functional interview takes place. The final stage is when I come into the picture.
We carry out psychometric and skill tests for all candidates to see cultural and functional fit.
We have several people-centric policies, and each manager/leader is trained/coached to watch people’s needs. These are discussed every week in management meetings, and every incident/concern is discussed and debated to bring out optimal solutions.
Several employee engagement techniques have been deployed to foster teamwork and bonding between our personnel.
How are you funding your growth?
Suresh Ramakrishnan: Through our own internal accruals.
We do take short term loans to fulfill our working capital requirement (as and when the need arises)
Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?
Suresh Ramakrishnan: There are several on the platform side (LMS, LXP) and some more on the content side.
We stay ahead in the game because of the beautiful blend that we bring where a client can have the power of our technology and curated content (from the best business and academic minds in the world) combined with a fantastic learning experience.
Beyond the platform, our service element adds the much-needed strength – structuring learning journeys, bringing in the necessary offline interventions, and conducting regular meetings where we use the extensive statistics that our system generates to evaluate the timely changes to make learning meaningful and effective.
Tell us a customer success story of yours.
Suresh Ramakrishnan: A customer we signed up with (a demanding one at that) collaborated (in the true sense of the word) to structure a learning journey for their key personnel.
We had the complete freedom to create a learning portal that had all the learning elements and collaborate with other learners.
The power of the platform ensured that we used the early adopters and passionate learners as our ambassadors (who spoke about the benefits they derived) to push for higher adoption.
There was significant discussion on the content/course to be administered to each learning based on their requirement and skill gaps. The client lapped up our suggestions and valuable insights
The current statistics prove how a powerful platform combined with optimum collaboration can do wonders for the learning program in an organization.
Your final thoughts?
Suresh Ramakrishnan: My sole intent has been to nurture future leaders. Our growth journey will entail new product/service introductions, and it is imperative that we have able leaders from within the organization who can rise to lead them.
Products and solutions are effective only if the team working on them is collaborative, coherent, and exceedingly passionate.
To achieve the above, the people-centric policies have to take CenterStage.
While we offer learning solutions to several small and large organizations across the country, our own appetite for learning and being ahead in the game has to be very high.
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