How Addepar Built an Engaging Culture of Learning With Continu

While undergoing exponential growth, Addepar, a wealth management platform, discovered a need to build an engaging culture of learning. At the time, Addepar was using a less intuitive legacy learning platform that required a lot of redundant administrative work.

“Our goal was to bring a learning culture to Addepar and make learning available to all of our employees,” Amanda Strohl, People Systems Analyst at Addepar. 

As a result, Addepar began its search for a new learning platform that would foster learner engagement, improve automation, and provide in-depth training.

The Challenge

Building a culture of learning was essential to Addepar. But it was more important to build an engaging culture of learning. This came with needing core functionality that would allow Addepar to improve and optimize learning continuously.

In-Depth Reporting

“One of our biggest challenges was reporting. Understanding how we report on learner engagement, workshop attendance, or attendance tracking was crucial,” Amanda stated.

Addepar wanted to increase their attendance rate, so in-depth reporting on engagement and attendance was critical to overcome this. The ability to visualize the total number of sign-ups to workshops and the total number of attendees would help Addepar optimize learning better.

Integrations

Tackling low engagement rates, Addepar also sought ways to take learning to its learners. Hence, instead of using email as the primary method to notify users, it was essential to have a way for Addepar to send messages in real time via Slack. This made Continu’s Slack integration a powerful tool for Addepar. 

“A bonus point for Continu was its integration with Slack so we could send messages to users, and they could view it in real-time instead of sorting through emails.” Amanda added.

‍Solution: Building a Learning Culture

Today, Addepar has 850 people on the team, and overall growth is at the forefront of decision-making. 

When choosing Continu, Addepar sought a learning platform that was easy to use and scalable, helping the company enhance learner engagement. 

“When researching LMS platforms, we noticed many were complex. It would require training to use other learning platforms and learn how everything connects on the backend.” Amanda Strohl, People Systems Analyst at Addepar.

Amanda added, “With another competing LMS, there were too many steps, and I wanted something I could simply go into and know what I was doing. Instead of doing 12 steps, I wanted 2.”

This led Addepar to Continu.

Two-Way Google Calendar Syncs

Continu’s GCal integration with a two-way sync was appealing for Addepar. Getting workshops on the team’s calendar helped Addepar ensure high engagement rates and build a thriving learning culture. Learners can simply mark ‘YES,’ and it connects seamlessly with Continu. This meant that Addepar admins in Continu would not have to manually keep attendance or lose track of the total number of attendees. 

Global Times in Workshops

Moreover, with a global workforce in different time zones, it was also essential for Addepar not to have their team guessing the accurate time for a workshop. Instead, show team members' times automatically adjusting to their timezone like Continu did. 

Continu quickly became Addepar’s pick as its next learning platform as it best fit their needs to scale, engage learners, and foster a growing learning culture.

Using Continu: Features That Matter

Today, Addepar uses Continu to train its entire team globally, whether using the powerful Workshops functionality or onboarding new hires to reduce ramp times. 

Addepar has also recently started using Continu for most of its manager resources. 

“Continu has become our one-stop shop.” - Amanda Strohl

One of the most prominent features for Addepar’s team within Continu is Workflows. Workflows have allowed Addepar admins to save several hours in administrative tasks, helping admins engage learners in pre and post-workshop activities. 

Besides Continu Workshops, Addepar has also leveraged Continu Surveys to gather learner feedback. 

“We also use Surveys to take assessments after our Workshops to see if there is anything we need to tweak for our facilitators to learn how to improve and update learning moving forward. We rely heavily on it.” - Amanda Strohl

“The rating function has allowed us to identify what is working and what is not. We can quickly identify things we need to deactivate in the system or advertise more internally. Our previous systems did not have enough reporting capabilities.” - Amanda added. 

As Addepar continues to use Continu for various use cases to achieve its long-term goals, recent initiatives also include Certification Programs. 

“Certification program is one of our KPIs for this year – so having the team certified (using Continu) on internal product training is a top priority.” - Lindsey Hunter, Sr. Manager Learning and Organization Development

Favorite Features

Though Addepar has found Continu to be a leading learning platform overall, a few features that stand out for the team include GCal integration and Journeys.

“The GCal integration would be my favorite feature from a user and admin perspective. I love how when someone declines an invite on their Google Calendar, it automatically updates in Continu.” - Lindsey Hunter, Sr. Manager Learning and Organization Development

Addepar uses Journeys in Continu to build a tailored learning path for its learners. Each learner goes through a Continu Journey, completing learning tracks, attending Workshops, and integrating with other tools. 

“I love Journeys because you can integrate it with LinkedIn Learning, which we use often,” - Amanda elaborated.

Results with Continu: An Engaging Culture of Learning

With the primary goal of building an engaging learning culture, Addepar ensured their team had all the resources they needed in the last year. In the last 12 months, Addepar has created 361 pieces of content, up by 40%.

Addepar admins also saved 112.5 hours in administrative time with Continu. A number 75% higher than before.

Regarding learner engagement, Addepar has seen a drastic increase in its numbers as the total content views increased by 200%. 

Looking ahead, Addepar seeks to continue engaging its learners, using it for product training and certifications, employee development, and upskilling.