Success story

iAM Learning

Industry:

Education

Headquarters:

Chester, UK

Growing fast, iAM Learning delivers e-learning content at scale with Canto

iAM Learning provides engaging, off-the-shelf training materials to a wide range of businesses and institutions. They use character-driven storytelling to convey information, steering e-learning away from dry slide decks in favor of high-quality animations that bring training materials to life.

Business is growing fast — iAM Learning now serves five times as many customers as they did just a few years ago. COO Tom Moore is at the center of that evolution, establishing processes and systems to ensure that iAM Learning scales successfully. That includes finding the right platform to manage and share iAM Learning’s rapidly growing collection of digital content.

The goal

Scale fast to meet rising demand, with a digital asset management platform that can keep up.

The result

With Canto, iAM Learning can easily get digital content to freelance creators and finished courses to satisfied customers.

The goal: Manage content at scale and deliver finished courses in a polished package

All businesses rely on digital content, but iAM Learning’s business is digital content. With demand for e-learning skyrocketing in the wake of the pandemic, the team soon realized they needed a scalable system to deliver course materials to customers and manage the flow of digital assets during the creation process.

Initially, they managed their content manually using tools like Dropbox. “That’s fine when you’re a small team and you can just turn to the person next to you,” Tom explains. “But as our business scaled, there were more and more people — including customers and partners — who needed to access that same content. We needed to manage it in a much better fashion.”

The team also had another motivation for switching to a dedicated digital asset management (DAM) platform. They wanted to deliver finished e-learning content to customers in a more polished package. “We were looking for something that would give customers a nice user experience, and scale with us as we grow,” says Tom.

Having spoken with other DAM providers in the past, Tom was expecting a hefty price tag. In Canto, he was pleasantly surprised to find a powerful DAM solution with simple, straightforward pricing. “Canto has given us everything we need and more, at a price that’s in line with our budget,” Tom explains. “If we’d found Canto when we were just getting started, we would have used it from day one.”

Landscape depicting iAM Learning characters in various work situations.

Enter Canto, getting iAM Learning’s content to freelancers and customers around the world

With Canto up and running, iAM Learning has automated tedious content management processes, boosting efficiency across the organization.

“We used to have a dedicated, full-time person whose job it was to manage content flowing to customers and partners, making sure we always had the right versions in the right places,” Tom explains. “With Canto, that’s much easier. Now, that person can redirect most of their time to other strategically important work. That alone is probably saving us £25,000 a year.”

And that’s just the start of the cost savings, as Canto helps people work more efficiently at every stage of iAM Learning’s creation and delivery process.

Paper with drawn storyboard for iAM Learning course.

An invaluable resource for external contributors, Canto cuts down on duplicate work

Creating truly engaging training materials takes a lot of creativity, and the iAM Learning team relies on in-house experts and an army of creative freelancers around the world — including animators, graphic designers, storyboard artists, voiceover artists, and script writers.

With a library of content at everyone’s fingertips in Canto, it’s easier than ever to help external contributors collaborate efficiently. Script writing teams can reference existing content in Canto — say, an office scene from a previous course. Referencing content in Canto lets animators know exactly what the writers have in mind, and gives them access to existing materials they can adapt instead of starting from scratch.

“Before we had Canto, we were recreating the same scenes over and over again, and that’s just not cost-effective,” says Tom. “Once you create these beautiful graphics and animations, you want to be able to really use them. The animators have a much better starting point if they know it’s not just an office scene, it’s this office scene and here’s the Canto link.”

iAM Learning animations in Canto.

A polished, effortless customer experience

Once the creative team has put the finishing touches on a new course, it’s ready to deliver to customers. Canto makes it easy to get the finished content where it needs to go — in a user-friendly package.

“We wanted to present the content in a way that’s really simple,” says Tom. “When we send customers a Canto link, they get a really nice interface with a search function and thumbnails for the collections. But they can also dive deeper and access all the files they need.”

In addition to course content, customers also have direct access to a library of graphics, banners, and trailer videos they might need for communications surrounding them.

“Customers just log in, self-serve, and grab the content they need,” says Tom. “Delivering content to customers could have been a real pain point as we’ve scaled. But because we’re using Canto, it’s not been a problem at all.”

Tom Moore, iAM Learning

We used to have a dedicated, full-time person whose job it was to manage content flowing to customers and partners. With Canto, that’s much easier. Now, that person can redirect most of their time to other strategically important work. That alone is probably saving us £25,000 a year.

Tom MooreChief Operating Officer

A hub for iAM Learning’s digital content supply chain

Canto plays a role in every stage of iAM Learning’s content cycle, including conception, production, and delivery. “It’s intrinsic to what we do,” says Tom.

By establishing the right workflows with Canto, iAM Learning created the content hub they needed to keep growing fast while maintaining quality, cohesion, and brand integrity in every piece of learning content they produce.

“With such strong growth, we need a tool we can rely on,” says Tom. “It’s just been painless with Canto. It’s always there in the background, keeping things moving and removing a lot of the day-to-day administrative headaches we would have faced without it.”

iAM Learning's Canto library.