
Coursera Enterprise Plan
UNDP Future Skills Academy: Scaling Access to Future-Ready Skills with Coursera
The platform allows us to provide learners with relevant courses across areas such as AI, digital skills, leadership, entrepreneurship, and career readiness, while tracking engagement and learning outcomes effectively.
Most importantly, I highly value our strong partnership with the Coursera team, particularly our Customer Success Manager, Khaled Kokhon, and Partnership Manager, Pedro Moura. Their responsiveness, collaboration, and understanding of our specific needs have been instrumental in supporting our regional programmes and resolving challenges efficiently.
Overall, Coursera feels less like a platform and more like a strategic learning partner.
There are also occasional technical issues, such as platform lag, slow loading, or temporary difficulties accessing certain features. While these issues are generally resolved, they can affect the adminexperience.
It would also be helpful to have more advance notice and clearer guidance around major platform changes, along with improved administrator controls and reporting flexibility.
The recent platform updates and improved functionality also provide more flexibility in managing learning journeys and supporting learners. The Coursera platform helps us respond to operational challenges more efficiently and continuously improve the learner experience.
Targeted online training has improved workforce skills but still needs better access and support
What is our primary use case?
Coursera for Business is our preferred platform and pathway for improving the skills held by our employees as it provides us with access to thousands of courses from world-renowned universities where our employees are able to further upskill their knowledge and pursue new areas of expertise, making them well-educated in implementing our workflow and working in our organization.
One specific example of how our team used Coursera for Business to upskill and improve workflow involved recent training where our employees were trained on emerging fields required for a modern workforce, including cloud computing and artificial intelligence. These new emerging technological trends affect our business significantly, and our workforce requires proper training on those fields. We cannot have them enroll into universities or other learning institutions, but Coursera for Business offers them a pathway to train and understand these new emerging technological fields while continuing to work in our organization.
Another use case involves the onboarding of new employees or during transitions, where staff are merged from one department to another, such as from customer service to sales or to data analytics. These employees need to be retooled and have their skills in their new department incorporated into them. We turn to Coursera for Business to fine-tune their abilities and give them an edge, providing them with an outlook on the new expectations and roles they have been assigned and will be pursuing in their new departments.
What is most valuable?
Coursera for Business offers numerous features, with one being that the content found on the platform is of very high quality, as Coursera combines with renowned universities across the world such as Stanford, ensuring that the training for our employees is of high quality. The training they acquire comes from world-class institutions and enables them to become a workforce that can work anywhere in the globe. Additionally, the course catalog found in Coursera for Business is very wide, allowing employees to find topics ranging from customer service, sales, artificial intelligence, and any technological new update. All of our employees in any area where they want to train will still find somewhere they can fit in and upskill their talents and develop their ability to work in our organization.
The learning experience is another valuable aspect because we obtain feedback from our employees who are pursuing courses there. They find the learning schedule and the experience to be flexible since they are able to do it on their own time while also working, so it does not hinder executing workflow and pursuing other organizational goals. The feature that has made the biggest difference is the quality of learning because as much as we invest in our employees, we want them to acquire the highest quality of learning. With Coursera for Business, we are assured that they will obtain that because the learning quality there is very high and courses are from accredited institutions, therefore ensuring a good and smooth learning experience.
Coursera for Business has brought a huge positive impact on our organization. We use it to retool and make our employees acquire that extra edge. One positive impact is on the proper customer service delivery. When our employees become knowledgeable, they are able to engage with our clients confidently and with assurance in what they do, making the service delivery process efficient, smooth, and robust. Furthermore, streamlined customer service delivery has the direct impact of bringing in more clients. When services are good and clients are happy, we have more business, and in the end, it contributes to the growth of our portfolio and revenue base, which continues to rise as we continue having employees who are knowledgeable and know what they are doing.
I can share specific outcomes that show how Coursera for Business has impacted our organization, particularly in employee performance. We usually recommend Coursera for Business to employees based on internal analysis, and sometimes clients report that some of our employees are not engaging well and not offering the right answers. Instead of firing the employees, we find that we just need to upskill their talents or skills, and a change comes in. That is where Coursera for Business comes in. Before and after the training, we have seen an improvement in the performance of an employee, where someone who was not able to confidently engage with clients or offer the required feedback now becomes knowledgeable and is able to give our clients what they need.
What needs improvement?
Coursera for Business usually has some hindrances. The first one is that it is internet-reliant, meaning that to access everything, you must do the learning online and require a stable internet connection. When you do not have a stable internet connection, accessing the learning materials of the different courses becomes a problem. If this problem persists for a long time, one lags behind, and the employee's set graduation date or completion date becomes delayed, showing that the expected outcomes in learning are not achieved. Furthermore, the issue of supervision arises because the learning in Coursera for Business is self-paced and done based on the learner's motivation. When they are demotivated or do not feel motivated to learn, nobody is there to pressure or motivate them to do so. If the learner becomes unmotivated, it means that they lag behind in the curriculum and the intended purpose is never achieved.
Another improvement needed is regarding the subscription cost. Coursera for Business is not available for use free of charge; you have to subscribe to their packages, and some of those packages are quite costly, leading small users or businesses to find it not worthy of the investment and shy away from using the platform.
For how long have I used the solution?
We did not use a different solution before Coursera for Business; this is our first solution in career progression and development of our employees.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Coursera for Business's scalability is adequate and provides a smooth experience, as it depends on the organization continuing to rise and reap the benefits of the platform while enrolling more employees. All that is required is to renew subscriptions and increase the number of users, and as an organization, we have found it to be easily scalable and a positive experience.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support is easily reachable, and although they take time to respond, I am always guaranteed a positive response that meets the standards based on the issue at hand, so their customer support is quite elaborate and one that you can trust.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did not evaluate another solution before choosing Coursera for Business.
What other advice do I have?
The advice I would give to others looking into using Coursera for Business is that this platform is quite robust due to its self-paced learning, which brings flexibility in usage. You do not have to shut down the company or give the employee study leave to pursue learning outside. They can continue working while improving their skills and attaining quality education and knowledge from Coursera for Business, just as they could have done if they were enrolling directly into a university. It offers a smooth way of learning and upskilling talents and skills while also being affordable.
Coursera for Business is easy to govern and also secure. When you acquire your preferred version, it does not pose much of a problem in using it. It is also secure in that whatever you are doing, only the organization is cognizant of that, so I find it secure and easy to govern.
The output from Coursera for Business is adequate, and since I have interacted with it and undertaken a course there, I find it reliable. Whatever course you are undertaking or whatever information you are gaining from the platform is accurate and reliable, resulting in a very smooth learning experience; therefore, it is accurate and reliable as far as I am concerned. I rate this platform a 7 out of 10.