The document outlines a 5-step process for learning and development (L&D) professionals to get key stakeholders like the C-suite on board with learning initiatives: 1) Act like a consultancy and focus on employee ROI, 2) Understand decision-making processes, 3) Assemble support teams, 4) Present metrics-driven business cases, and 5) Pilot targeted use cases. It then provides examples from Malwarebytes and Cylance that demonstrate applying these steps, showing how integrating learning delivered cost savings and accelerated goals. The webinar agenda includes a Q&A with speakers from Cylance, a consulting firm, and Udemy.

1. Udemy for Business
How to Sell Learning
to the C-Suite
August 29| 10:00am PST

2. Speakers
Paula Spears
Senior Director of Global
Talent Management &
Employee Development
Cylance
Brent Boeckman
CEO and Founder
Rising Strengths Consulting
formerly Head of L&D at
Malwarebytes
Shelley Osborne
Head of L&D
Udemy

3. Agenda
1 5-step process to get key stakeholders on board
2 Case example: Malwarebytes
3 Case example: Cylance
4 Q&A

4. 5-step process to get key
stakeholders on board

5. Challenge: proving the value of learning
• Traditionally challenging to
show ROI of learning in ways
C-Suite understands
• How can L&D pros drive this
statistic up and get more
business leaders on board
with learning?
Sales
Only 33% of business leaders
think the L&D function
impacts business outcomes
Source: CEB
33%

6. 5-step process
to get key
stakeholders
on board
1 Act like a consultancy: Your employees’
ROI is your ROI
2 Get crystal clear on your company’s
decision-making process
3 Assemble your dream team
4 Speak in numbers – build your business case
5 Pick good use cases and easy wins

7. • Don’t start with your bells &
whistles, start with their
concerns
• Understand the needs of the
team or company
• Be reactive rather than
prescriptive
Act like a consultancy: your employees ROI is your ROI
STEP
1

8. Act like a consultancy: your employees ROI is your ROI
STEP
1
Connect your training to your employees’ ROI
• Sales team: If goal is to increase sales deals by X%, that’s your ROI
• Customer service team: Soft skills training ROI is to increase customer
service satisfaction scores
• Software development team: Tech training ROI is to increase time to
productivity of new hires and bring products to market faster

9. Get crystal clear on your decision-making process
• Understand how major
decisions are made at
your company
• Align on priorities across
departments
• Know where your budget is
coming from
• Create a working timeline
STEP
2

10. Assemble your dream team
• Be a door-to-door salesperson
• Identify an active sponsor
• Find out who’s on your side
• Align priorities across finance,
legal, HR and IT departments
• Integrate L&D with all facets of
your business
STEP
3

11. Speak in numbers: Build your business case
STEP
4
Speak in a language that
resonates with execs
• Start the conversation
with metrics
• Weave numbers into a
bigger story
• Be concise and give
context
Do your groundwork
• Talk to referrals
• Benchmark
• Gain access to key data
• Create metrics where
you don’t have them

12. Speak in numbers: Build your business case
STEP
4
Put your numbers together
• Impact on the business: lost revenue, excess costs, lost productivity
• Budget, resources, timeframe
• Alternative cost scenarios
• Expected outcomes: improved revenue and efficiency
• Alignment with business goals: profit generation, business growth,
revenue increase, operational efficiencies, risk mitigation

13. Pick good use cases and easy wins
• Consider the point of need and time
• Pick the right pilot audience
• Be agile
• Manage realistic expectations
o Case example: Udemy Feedback
is Fuel program
STEP
5

14. Case example: Malwarebytes

15. • Make it about the individual department
• Your managers ROI is your ROI
• Don’t have separate goals, adopt the team’s
goals
• If team goal is to increase sales deals by
10%, that was my ROI
• Get to know the different processes of each
department
STEPS
1-2
Act like a consultancy & understand
your decision-making process

16. Assemble your dream team
Be a door-to-door salesperson:
• Sell vision of what is possible: share
course collection—what would your
team take?
• Questions to ask: What does training
mean to you? How do you envision
developing your people?
• I spent 5-6 months talking to managers,
leaders, and execs about their issues and
goals
STEP
3

17. Assemble your dream team
Use a change management process
• Identify who’s on your team and who’s not
o Find an active sponsor to help win over C-
level stakeholders
o Focus on naysayers who you need to
educate more on the initiative
• Recruit learning champions at team-level
o Identify team who has an ROI objective
that L&D could help achieve
STEP
3

18. Assemble your dream team
Integrate L&D with all facets of the business
• When rolling out Udemy for Business,
success based on integrating learning into
performance reviews:
o In quarterly goals, one goal related to
personal development
o Allocated 20 hours per quarter for
employees to invest in learning
STEP
3

19. STEPS
4-5
Build the business case for learning &
pick a good use case
CHALLENGE
Sending the QA team to
on-site Python training
would incur high travel
and training costs.
SOLUTION
QA team to take on-
demand Python courses
through Udemy for
Business.
RESULTS
Entire team trained in 30 days
vs. 6 month goal.
Substantial savings in travel,
training, and labor costs.
Entire production calendar
moved up which resulted in
shipping product releases and
updates ahead of schedule.

20. STEPS
4-5
Build the business case for learning &
pick a good use case
ROI of learning for Malwarebytes
$2,340
Savings per employee
11
QA Engineers
$25,740
Total savings

21. Case example: Cylance

22. • Identified the training needs of business
leaders & managers
• Constituency needs: More just-in-learning,
less classroom instruction
• Understand who the key decision makers
are in the process
• Key lesson learned: align priorities early on
with Finance, Legal, HR and IT departments
STEPS
1-2
Act like a consultancy & understand
your decision-making process

23. Assemble your dream team
Identify an active sponsor and have them test it:
• Our CEO took a course on Udemy for Business
and became an instant champion
Find people who are already engaged in learning:
• Asked employees taking courses on Udemy on
their own to share why they loved it
STEP
3

24. Assemble your dream team
Align with your finance, legal, and IT
departments early on:
• Biggest takeaway: Didn’t spend enough
time educating them early in process
• Should have done product demo for
them
• Finance looked at overall cost, not cost
per person
• Legal contract language also a hold up
in process (e.g. privacy, liability issues)
STEP
3

25. Assemble your dream team
Integrate L&D with all facets of the business:
• At Cylance, we build learning into onboarding
from Day 1
• Employees sign on to Udemy for Business and
start taking courses during onboarding
• Creates a stronger alliance with L&D and HR
• Demonstrates how much company cares about
employee development
STEP
3

26. Build your business case for learning
Demonstrated cost savings to win over my CEO:
• Calculated ROI using cost per employee
• Compared cost of individual employees already
reimbursing Udemy courses vs. subscription for entire
company
• Graphed break even point: amount we previously
spent reimbursing employees vs. annual subscription
• Showed would spend 4x less using subscription
STEP
4

27. Build your business case for learning
Once purchased, continued to show CEO
monthly metrics:
• Adoption metrics
• New users and popular courses
• Our tagline: “We don’t care what you’re
learning—just learn”
• People were learning more and it cost less
• Added benefit: people could learn without
others knowing they didn’t know something
STEP
4

28. Pick good uses cases and easy wins
Cylance Management Essentials Program:
• Blended learning: gave them more
direction & structure
• CEO & Executives co-facilitate
• 5 management competencies tied to
Udemy for Business courses
• 15 online courses
• Monthly discussions on each topic
• Capstone project
• Certification at end of 6 months
STEP
5

29. Q&A
Paula Spears
Senior Director of Global
Talent Management &
Employee Development
Cylance
Brent Boeckman
CEO and Founder
Rising Strengths Consulting
formerly Head of L&D at
Malwarebytes
Shelley Osborne
Head of L&D
Udemy

30. Thank you