Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, everybody, I've got a very exciting guest today. Rita Azevedo from sana, now part of workday. Rita has worked with us for quite a few years. I don't remember how many years. And she's one of the leaders in the SANA learning business. But, Rita, why don't you introduce yourself to everybody and tell us a little bit about your background.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Absolutely. First of all, Josh, it's really great to be here.
I'm really excited that we get to do this together.
But, yeah, a little bit about myself. So I actually didn't start in tech. I started in the NGO business, so to speak. And, you know, that's really where I fell in love with coaching people and change and learning and not really like, compliance or anything, but doing coaching to people around me. And I think that feeling never left me. So then I actually followed more formally into L and D properly this time. I went back to school and I was working at Klarna at the same time. And this really gave me, like, the frameworks and the langu language to articulate something that I kind of felt intuitively that maybe organizations today approach learning, you know, in a bit of a backwards manner. And, yeah, those lessons I took to Klarna as a head of learning a few years later, this was an organization with 7,000 people, 18 markets. So we had to work very fast, and we were growing very quick as well. And actually, the fun fact about all this stories that I was actually one of the earliest customers of Sana, and at the time, so as head of learning, we purchased Sana and I experienced the products as a customer.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: So it must have been a pretty small company when you bought it.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: It was, I think Klarna was client number eight or something like that. And Sana was maybe 10, 15 employees. And then actually when I joined, we were a team of 30. So I also joined very, very early on. And, like, we're now like 400 people, obviously part of work day, a big family as well. So it just feels like something such an incredible journey. And today at sana, for context, I lead our CX and engagement team. So basically that's the team that supports with the change management projects around learning once clients become sana learned clients, basically. So that's a little bit of what I do today.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: Okay, beautiful. So, so you've done learning and development. You've thought about it a lot. You've worked for a big company. Now you worked for a small company. Now you're working for a big company again.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Let's Talk about the revolution a little, because you. We've worked with you guys I don't know how many years. It seems like a long time now. When did we start?
[00:02:33] Speaker B: I think close to three years now, actually, because you started with our Sana product, and then we work together on the. On the Learn product.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: So let me run this by you, and I want to get your perspective on this. I've been doing L and D for probably too long, since the late 90s, and I think the world is beginning to wake up to the fact that this is a revolutionary change in. In the way we do training, learning, and what I call really business enablement through AI, which we could never do before. This is a $400 billion market. If you look at technology, consultants, trainers, content, content developers, tools, it's a really, really, really big market and it's very fragmented and lots of niches within it. And then Sana came along, and when I first met you guys, other than you, a lot of people at Sana didn't know a lot about the L and D space. Where do you think Sana is trying to.
Would you like to see happen in the market? And then we can talk about all the things you guys are doing specifically.
[00:03:31] Speaker B: Absolutely. And that's interesting that you said that, because that was an intentional decision to only have me knowing a bit about L and D, because from the get go, we knew that we were first and foremost an AI company. And I think that in the end of the day, we actually entered the world of learning. But, you know, really what we're trying to achieve is we are an AI lab, and we're built around this belief that we want to be able to augment human intelligence with AI. And that essentially means how can people obtain knowledge, become more effective? And yes, I would say learning is a big part of that. So then closer to 2020, we found a great product fit with SANAA Learn, which today has grown into this AI native learning learning platform. But I think that has been a very conscious choice, that we are problem first and not necessarily trying to fit into that.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Well, let's talk about that. So let's talk about problem first. So it's interesting to me that very early, after you guys were acquired, Workday decided to change the name of the product to Workday Learning Powered by Sana, not Sana Learning for Workday.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: I think that is a really good question and actually gives me the chance to clarify as well. So we have Workday Learning Powered by Sana, and is getting great momentum, but that side of the Business is specifically for workday customers. So obviously want to be able to use the momentum and the reach that we already have by having a lot of workday customers. I will say that we still have sun and Learn, and sun and Learn is standalone and is very much thriving post acquisition. So what the Workday Partnership gives us is the momentum, the reach, the incredible influence around the world and this industry, but actually doesn't change what sunderlearn is or who it's for. So that actually is where we still very much innovate as a standalone Learn product.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: So the product velocity is on Sauna Learning, not Workday Learning.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: Right. And then, of course, we have the second for workday customers. They can still benefit from Sauna Learning. Workday learning powered by Sauna, of course.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: So what I keep hearing from companies is we already have an lms. We'd like an lxp. And a lot of people think Sana is an lx. They call it an lxp.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: We are in the world as well of lxp. We can do that too.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: So the idea, as I understand it, is all the advanced AI features that are in Sana Learning will become available to workday Learning customers. And you're not going to make it difficult for them to get access to all that cool stuff.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: No, exactly. Because with Workday Learning, Part by Sauna, they get what is great about workday learning from an admin standpoint, from a data standpoint, but they also get the element of Sana Learn as well on top of it. So that is absolutely amazing.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: And if I'm not a workday customer. So let's suppose I'm using ADP or success factors or something. You're going to happily sell me Sana Learning.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: Right, Sauna Learn standalone, which is exactly. So. Yeah, so that is exactly.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: Okay, so let's talk about what it is. So tell everybody about it, because I want to hear from your perspective. How do you explain it to people? Because it's not a traditional learning management system.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: No, exactly. And back to my previous point, we kind of. We went into this realm of learning during COVID We helped educate a lot of nurses on actually COVID 19. And that was really how we discovered we can use AI to really speed learning in a more customizable manner as well. So Sana Learn is this AI native learning platform. And the reason I'm using this particular word is that we obviously have elements of an lms, we have elements of an lxp, we have an authoring tool, we have a virtual classroom. So it's really, it's this one to one element where you put all in one. And the idea is that it can really allow you to, well, hopefully change the way that you're approaching learning inside of an organization. Because when you have all in one together with AI, you get to do things a little bit faster. Maybe you get more time to become a business function. Right. Not an HR function like all of those things that we know technology can enable HR professionals to do. So that is very much what Sana learn is today. And actually going into an area where being the AI first company that we are, we know the future is very much a proactive future. I think we were talking about this, Josh, about, you know, this element of dynamic enablement. Right. I know we, we can go there as well. And I think an element of that is how do you make something that today is maybe a little bit reactive into something that is very proactive. And I think it's the world that we're seeing is an agentic world. And that's where I think we want to go as well as Sonnalearn.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: And well, I, you know, I definitely see it and our vision for it in terms of what we've been working on is, is to really think of it as a personalized knowledge support system or enablement system that's sometimes used for formal learning and sometimes used for just asking questions and learning whatever. But, but as you know from your Klarna days, the L and D market is filled with people that build courses.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I know, I've been there.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: So what's going to happen to courses? What? You tell me. Where do you think this is going to go? Terms of courses versus content versus experiences versus super tutors?
[00:08:55] Speaker B: That's a really good question. And I think that I don't want to be the one to say that maybe courses will not have a place anymore because maybe you work in a business that you need to get information very quick. And I, you know, I work with companies, for example in the. In, they sell cars. They, you know, build and sell cars. So of course people selling cars, they still need to get information on time in order to sell the car in the best way possible. Right. So for that I still see a world where the structured element of a course can still play a role. What I think is changing today is that, and we used to, a few years ago, we used to talk about learning in the flow of work, maybe one size fits all. All of these kind of cliche words, right, that we used to say back in the days. But I think that today we finally can actually achieve that. And I think we can achieve that with agentic platform like platforms that can first and foremost enable you in a proactive manner. So it's like, well, I'm going to hire someone. My new joiner is coming into the company next week. What do I need to know in order to have the best possible onboarding versus maybe as a manager being in a one day training months before that? Realistically speaking, I am never going to remember again.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: Let's talk about the, let's talk about the car one for a minute. It's a real customer, right? I think you guys have.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: It is a real customer, yes. Polestar. Polestar.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: Polestar, Great. So I went in to buy a car a year or so ago and the guy was clicking around looking for this, that and the other thing, trying to figure out what to price everything. So traditionally an L and D person would say, let's build a course, an overview of the car, pricing of the car, the features of the car, how to position the car, who's the competitors for the car and then for the sales manager, how to manage your inventory, how to manage your team. So there would be all these courses in the sauna world. What does Polestar do? Did they do the same thing or did they start in a different way?
[00:10:53] Speaker B: So actually what's interesting about Polestar specifically is actually that their LL function doesn't sit in hr. They actually sit under customer experience. And that's why they focus a lot on.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: That's a big part of this.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: That's a big part of this. Exactly. Because like this tells you what you need to know, right? How they prioritize, things they truly care about. I want to leave a luxury experience to everyone buying a Polestar car. And that means that before Sana, to your point previously, they still had courses. I think there's a really fun story about this because they really struggled with speed. So for example, a Polestar car, actually they have a lot of updates in their apps. It's a very, you know, modern type of, type of vehicle. So they were constantly rolling out models and updates to especially the software element of the car. And usually what was happening is that things were so slow that a salesperson would get to know about the updates from clients that would come to visit the establishment. Where Today things became 200, like faster with the help of the AI, first creation and all of that. But I think today what happens is that sure, there are things that definitely the L and D team sitting in CX has to push to the, to the employees, this is still the form of the course.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: Let me question on that. Just real quick. On Polestar, so the people in CX are L and D people.
They're still L and D people. They have instructional design backgrounds.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: Okay, they have a lot of instructional designers. Yeah, absolutely. They are still lnd people sitting in cx. But today a person, a salesperson, will interact with learning in a structured manner because there are things you definitely need to know about the new Polestar model. But then they go into the system and they want to sell more. So then they go proactively and they interact with simulations about, maybe they get to interact with the AI about a very difficult client. They actually use our search as well. So at any point in time they proactively get that like, okay, I want to know about this one detail. I don't want to do the course. Right. It's a 40 minute experience. But I want to know this one thing. I'm going to go and find that. So I think it's a much more customizable experience, both from like micro learning point of view, but also just genuinely finding information in a world that is very, very fast. And I think where we want to go is where they don't even need to come to sana. They, we know that maybe they are struggling with their quota attainment. So we know that SANA is going to be able to proactively support them with that. So that's, that's really where we want to go now, to this, you know, this ecosystem of proactivity.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: Okay, so a couple, a couple of big things here. So first of all, the L and D people move out of HR and they go into the business, which I think is huge. So this is what's going to happen to corporate L and D is they're going to get disintegrated into business groups, which is great.
But then the user experience now, I mean, one of the things I've always thought was a struggle with L and D is you have to go to an L and D portal that's only L and D. And you're like, here I am at the L and D place trying to find a course and you know, I don't even know how to get here.
So what happens to user experience at polestar? Is SANA learning embedded into the CRM thing they use with clients or what, where, how do they get to it?
[00:14:13] Speaker B: Yeah, there are ways to integrate so that the system knows you very well and allows you to get that. But today you still can go to Sana proactively. But then I think we're focusing on micro experiences rather than a one size fits all type of experience. So they. They can still go and say, I know that the thing that I struggle the most with is how to explain the software part. I'm very good at the hardware part, but not in the software part. So let's get to that. A little bit more customizable.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: Right, that's the. That's the.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: That's the tutor.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: So let's talk about that.
So tell everybody about that because that's really spectacular. We obviously know a lot about it, but I want people to hear about it.
[00:14:51] Speaker B: Yeah, you actually use all of our agents today as part of Galileo. But yeah, so. So these are agents that are already live in production. Right. And you get to try them. All of our clients do. And we have three agents, basically. We have the tutor agent, and that is for the Lear.
We have the editor, and that is of course for subject matter experts and creators. And then we have the admin agent, and that is really for L and D teams. And I think this follows an ambition that we've always tried to do throughout our history, and that is that we want to put together the best for different Personas. So typically, sometimes an LMS is really made for the admin, let's be honest. So we really wanted to have an experience that is really incredible and luxury for the three main people in L and D and the learner as well. So these agents, together, they eventually make L and D teams more efficient. Because what we're seeing is okay with the tutor. That really means that I can ask a question and I can get exactly what is relevant for my situation right now. So you would get a different experience because we're different, we come from different backgrounds and so on and so forth. So it's a very different hyperfoculation.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: Let's talk about that for a sec because this is very, very profound. So the tutor is, in a sense, an LLM. As I understand it, it crawls through all of the content in the system. Correct? Correct. So if you put in a new course on Tuesday and somebody doesn't even know that it exists, and somebody asks a question Tuesday afternoon, they will see the content from that course and their answer, even though they never registered or took that course.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: Correct. And they can take it even one step further, they can say, should I build a learning path just for you based on where you want to get? And that is really where, for me, I get a bit flabbergasted. Because it actually, this is the first time I'm seeing that content can come, sure, from the L and d people, from SMEs, but also from the AI practically and only for you. And I think that is really incredible. But yeah, that is a tutor in a nutshell. So very customizable and essentially it's really about performance, not content. Essentially, yeah.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: So what is your, what has been your experience? We've been through this obviously in our company and with a number of clients, but you've talked to a lot of companies. How quickly do the L and D people understand this new paradigm and what, what changes in the L and D operations?
[00:17:19] Speaker B: That's a really good question. And I think that that's my team. So we do that on a, on a daily basis. And I think that buying a system is buying a vision, I think. And I think buying something is a very emotional experience that you go through. Like you, hopefully you like what you see, but you also like the people as well. So I think the partnership element is really important. What we try to do is, look, we're giving you a Ferrari and sorry, I really like Formula one, so we're giving you a Ferrari, but we're going to help you to use that Ferrari as a Ferrari as it's meant to be used. But I do want to say that sometimes these visions, these change management projects, they can take six months because maybe the recipe is just there and the organization is in the right moment to do it. It has the right people, the content, everything. Sometimes it can take two years because maybe organizations are very decentralized. You need to go in a phased manner and really help.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: You have to find all the. Maybe there's five LMSs involved in this thing.
[00:18:19] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And then maybe lnd truth be told, is not known for being a business enabler. Right. So we also need to help them change the brand side of the organization too. So that's really what we try to do is like with these three agents, we know you're going to get more time, but what are you going to do with that time? We want them to be. I almost say when I was at Klarna, I would spend 50, even, even more percentage of my time really going into the heads of business to the cto. Because of course, Klarna is an IT company. Like we used to go a lot for the IT people.
So really ensuring that I know what is going on and I am enabling them to get where they want to be in 5 years time instead of saying, okay, we're going to release a feedback course. Let's go. And then, you know, have questionable engagement on.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: Yeah. I think you. I think your role is so valuable. I mean, you've been so valuable to us. Rita, I can't thank you enough for everything. And you're also so much fun to work with, but this is a new way of thinking about this profession. Really?
[00:19:22] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Let me take you in a little bit of a different direction. So one of the things I've been sort of frustrated with for the last maybe decade is this idea of skills. Everything has to be skills based. We're going to create a skills taxonomy. We're going to assess people's skills, we're going to hire people based on skills, we're going to pay people based on skills. And I've been a little bit negative on it from the beginning because it's a little bit of a limiting concept, but whatever. It's big. And a lot of companies have massive skill tagging systems. They have degreed or something else, or even workday skills cloud. Right.
Why don't you explain to everybody how skills are handled in Sana? Because it's quite interesting.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. And I think that's a great question because we can support the more traditional, let's call it static for the lack of a better word wide skill where you decide what exists and you get to provide content based on that. Because what we're seeing in organizations using the system is that it becomes so dynamic.
Sometimes rich organizations where they have 100, 150 subject matter experts who are excited to genuinely build their own legacy. We work a lot with dynamic tagging. So for example, we have this new experience. It will automatically get tagged into a specific skill. So that's very like not static anymore. But I think most importantly, and something that we've been playing a lot with too is where. And this is harder said than done, I will say that because skills sometimes in elements messes or these talent places like it's. You do these things so you get a skill. But we know that that's not really how how skills work. So we really want to have different elements to feed into you getting a skill or not. And that could be structured elements. But most importantly, the way that you interact with the tutor, the way that you. Are you building legacy again? And the legacy, I mean, are you using the system as an editor as well? Are you doing any experiential work as well? Are you inter with the AI to get more comfortable with your capabilities?
[00:21:28] Speaker A: So question for you. So as I understand it and you understand it way better than me. There's two things about that I've noticed about it. First of all, it can determine the skills in content through the technology itself, so you don't have to tag everything manually.
But the second thing is, I believe it figures out what skills it thinks you have from your interactions. Is that correct? Does it try to. So it could say you get rated. The way it seems to work in Galileo is you get rated for your skills automatically.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: You do. And it could say, okay, yeah, exactly. So, Rita, it seems to me you are intermediate in communication, for example. It will try to do that as well. But I will say, like, it works the best if you use the system more and more and more. It's all about the content that you put in as well.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: And then as a result of that, the L and D team can look at the trending skills up, down, sideways, whatever, or new skills that are being created and decide if they need more content in different areas.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: And usually that's the case because again, the LND team cannot see everything these days.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: Let me throw another. Another whole angle here that I think's really significant. Early in my days doing elearning way, way back, we had this issue that it was very hard for a subject matter expert to author content because you had to learn some fancy tool and take a course in instructional design and spend a year or just figuring out how to do it. And then there was this explosion of content when YouTube came out where everybody created their own videos and companies literally just took videos and stuck them online. And one, I remember the Cheesecake Factory had this innovative solution where they basically just created a portal. And anybody who worked in any restaurant who had some trick on how to serve a customer could just create a video on their phone and upload it. And they just made it available to everyone and it was great. People got a huge kick out of it. A little bit like YouTube, now we have the ability for a subject matter expert to literally just record an audio, I guess. And so what happens to L and D departments when the subject matter experts can author content so quickly?
How do you manage that? Tell people about that. Because this is a big new feature that most L and D people probably don't even think about enough.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: No, no, they don't. And I usually, even to the partners that I work with, you being one of them, is that, that sometimes we're making the assumption that because something is available to someone, they are going to use it. And I think this is where the L and D profession goes towards, is who is the best at what? Right. Are they willing to also share that as well? And how are we going to make these experiences delightful for the people that want to use them and also, like, do they want to consume them? So I think we are no longer, and I'm speaking as an L and D professional, we're no longer going to just create, or probably not create that much anymore. But what we're going to do is bring people together, is ensure that the best people out there are sharing. What they need, is to ensure that the people also get what they need when they need it. And that we are communicating in a way that ultimately is driving the organization forward. Because I think L and D for me is really enabling the business to go forward and also getting people to want to learn as well. And that's what we've seen.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Well, there's actually an interesting question that in my mind, if I think about Rolls Royce or some of the other big clients we've worked on together, how does an L and D person get a subject matter expert to tell the system what they know?
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm a subject matter expert. I could talk for basically a week and I would barely scratch the surface and I wouldn't even know where to start.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: Exactly. So. Well, the first, the first thing is to make that subject matter expert understand that the business needs their legacy, needs their knowledge, it needs their expertise. So I would say a company like Rolls Royce Pulsar, again, all the ones we talked about, they would probably start and say, this is what is available to you and this is how you can do it today. No longer they need to give them, you know, the principles of instructional design, because actually, like the edit mode, for example, already is primed to be able to do that. And I think that, I mean, really, we're going back to the princip of change management. It's around building ambassadors. It's around starting with one subject matter expert and saying, look at what Will did in this. In the IT department. You can also do that and then continuing to really enable that.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: But in the past, there have been tools that do this in the past in the more traditional manner. And what used to happen, I remember interviewing a lot of companies where they would turn the tool over to the subject matter experts and then they would generate a bunch of stuff that was just kind of no good.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: Right, right. And then they would have to edit it. Yeah. And no longer. I had to do that at Klarna because I deeply believed in this concept of decentralization of Content. We had a lot of SMEs. I had to do a lot of, you know, patchwork afterwards. Today, actually, you no longer need to do that in 70% of the cases, because what you get by uploading the documents, you have, the videos again, audios, whatever you have will already give you a pretty good experience from the get go. But then maybe what the L and D person can come and say is that, well, maybe we can have a simulation here. Maybe there's a better way to explain
[00:26:45] Speaker A: this so you can pretty much. I know this is true, but I want people to hear it. You can pretty much upload a subject matter expert's hard disk.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: Yes, yes.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: And all of a sudden you've got everything that this person has been doing and knows in a sense. Or you can do an interview or you can do a podcast with them or whatever, or you could just have a big meeting and just record it.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: Exactly. And then to your previous question, just to, you know, sort of close that as well, is that then what do we do? We want to ensure that the experience of launching that and making that available, that has to be delightful. People need to be aware that is available and what it is up for them. Like, what are the three things that it can help them with? And then of course, hopefully measure, like, measure the ROI of it. Which to be honest, like, we, we, we really didn't have time before to do that. We had a lot of data, but we couldn't really work with it.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: No, you made a very good point. It's funny, it's funny. You would think that when the system's really smart, people would know how to use it. They don't know what questions to ask. No, there is, there is a need to almost prompt people on how to prompt it. It sits there.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: I use Claude on a daily basis, and sometimes it's about me also being able to ask the right questions as well. So, so that is something that I don't think will go away for the time being at least.
[00:27:56] Speaker A: Let me ask you a bigger workday and market question. I have a hypothesis. I've never tried to do the math yet, but to some degree, I have a pretty good sense of it. If you think about, I think Workday has 15 or 16 or 17,000 customers, and then there's obviously thousands of other companies and they all have to do training. I mean, every company in the world of any size has to do training. They either do it well or they don't, but they have to do it. And when, when Sana was acquired by workday, I noticed that most of the communic from workday ignored learning. It was all about agents. I have a feeling that the learning revenue opportunity for you guys is bigger than the agent opportunity. What's your reaction to that as the learning person?
[00:28:40] Speaker B: I, you know, I'm biased, so I will agree. No, this is a tough.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: And I don't mean to be negative on the other side. No, I know, but, but I think people miss, I think people underestimate how big this is.
[00:28:52] Speaker B: Yes, that, that is true. I think I see a world and I'm being very visionary right now. And you actually with Galileo, you are already leaving that today with the partnership with us. And that is a world that you probably need both. Right? You probably need to access company knowledge and we know that's usually a mess. You probably need to automate some repetitive work. Even as an L and D professional, it doesn't matter which professional you are and you need agents to do that. I think that the learning aspect, we're trying to go into the agentic world as well with the three agents that we have right now. So I think that you probably need that unstructured element of the agent with the other platform, but you probably will need the structured one as well. So I don't think it's necessarily a zero sum sum game actually. I think that we will grow because the UI of Word is changing.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: It is. And you know, obviously there's a new paradigm here on how you use it and how you build the content and all that, but there's a huge legacy of existing training. I mean, it's billions and billions and probably trillions if you add it all up of stuff, PowerPoints, videos, whatever, and,
[00:30:04] Speaker B: and we're assuming that organizations will immediately make that shift. They won't. I mean, let's talk about the scorm technology. We all say it's very old and all, but actually a lot of companies I work with, they still build scorms every day. So it's not like things are moving that quick as we think they are. So you will have that transition period. But I, I do see a world where you have many agents in the same way that in the 2000s you had apps. I think agents will be the new apps and you will have agents for different things. So I think really that is the, the future where you're maximizing for the productivity in very different realms. So I don't think they're competing, I think they're actually complementing each other.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: I make a comment that I'd Love your thoughts on the ability to take your legacy content and move it into Sana is way easier than you think it is. I mean you took, it took us five months to move everything.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: We had 700 plus courses.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: And you know, we're a very small company. So for those people listening, even if you have a big mess in your company now and you decide you might want to do this over a multi year period, it's probably going to go a lot faster than you realize. Is that correct?
[00:31:14] Speaker B: That is correct. And that's what we're seeing. Right. And that's why I love the art of managing change so much. Because the first time you put a course in people's in their inboxes or whatever, they are like, oh my God, like this is possible. I can do things in a different way. So actually even like to your point, like if you have a lot of scorms, you can even upload a scorm and that will create a different type of course actually. So you can even bring the old
[00:31:39] Speaker A: into the sort of unlocks the scorm chains. The chains of scorm.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Just because we know the reality is not as visionary as sometimes we have to really cater for, for the whole world.
[00:31:50] Speaker A: Okay, Rita, well, this is. I could talk to you for hours. Let me just give you a little close here. What would you say to people that are exploring this stuff and unsure about it and want to get started other than buy Sana? What are the things that you really think they need to think about to go off in the right direction here?
[00:32:08] Speaker B: Yeah, so I've been on the other side and when I was making a decision on a system, I made a lot of mistakes. I remember even I went to Google and I downloaded an RFP template and I sent that to many, many companies out there. And then I realized that the one department I should have talked to, I didn't. And that was the IT department and they were the people who actually were going to be my biggest clients in the organization. So I would say like let it go. Let go the big, big, big list. What do you actually want and what is the vision that you want to have for your department and the company in two years time? And based on that, make a bet for that because sure, I am now in a vendor, but being an L and D professional, a tool can only help you, it's an enabler, but it's not everything.
So ultimately, what is the culture that you want? What is the vision? What are the things that you actually want to see happening given that AI is kind of here to stay.
We cannot go around the bush anymore around that and then make a decision for the future.
Because genuinely, and this will sound a bit cliche, but I think the only constant will be change. And you will probably need something that is willing to move with that change as well. That will be my advice, I suppose.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: Fantastic. That's. That's excellent advice. In this world of reinvention, you better think about where you want to go, because you're going to get there a lot faster than you realized. Thank you, Rita, for everything you do, for being such a wonderful person to work with, with, and I think Sana and Workday are just so lucky to have you. So thank you for participating in the podcast.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: Thank you. This was great.
