A Cloud Guru (ACG) was a cloud learning resource that offered access to updated courses, labs, and learning paths. In 2021 the company was acquired by Pluralsight, and its training is no longer available.
N/A
Skillsoft Coaching
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
The Skillsoft coaching platform consists of enhanced content, human and AI coaches, and technology. It includes the Skillsoft Leadership Development Program powered by MIT Sloan Management Review.
N/A
Skillsoft Percipio
Score 6.9 out of 10
N/A
Skillsoft Percipio is a skills intelligence platform for organizations, used to build and deploy capabilities across people and AI teams. Users can track skill growth, close gaps, and connect the right talent to the right opportunities.
We chose SkillSoft for the overall ease of use for both our users and our administrators and have a great value proposition. We have continued our contracts for the same reasons and the relationship we have built with our Learning Consultant and Account Representative.
If your organization is technical-based and offers its employees different online courses to enhance their knowledge, then A Cloud Guru will be perfect for you. There are multiple courses available from different cloud platforms. The platform is easy to use and navigate and does not require much knowledge. Even if you do not have basic technical knowledge, the courses available in A Cloud Guru are designed in such a manner that a non-technical person will understand the concept easily.
They have a large library - make sure you clearly study the library offerings and choose the courses that are best for you as you will never be able to use all of them. Make sure you survey your user base before purchasing the licensing of the library courses so the courses are 'marked' with an employee in mind to keep costs minimized. Only purchase the Books 24x7 if you have a large IT department - otherwise you might want to lease a smaller content portion. Their Leadership Development, Project Management, business series and critical thinking and technical products are exceptional.
For open source content it is excellent, over 16000 learning assets to work with. In this case, you allow learners to search and select what they need, when they need it, and how it supports their learning style. There are also uses cases where you need to curate a channel (compliance, DEI, etc.) where you can guide the learner and audiences to the content and track completion
Covers a wide-breadth of topics ranging from desktop / office skills to communications skills to leadership development
Offers knowledge portals (Knowledge Centers) around specific topic areas such as Management Development, Six Sigma, Professional Foundations, Sales, etc - that aggregate content from the large Skillsoft resources and present it in a way that is both meaningful and relevant to the learners. Plus, they have editors update the featured topic each month.
Include a wide variety of learning media such as eLearning courses, books, book summaries and videos.
The platform does have room to improve their response time for assistance. Depending on the issue an internal "help team may be required"
They removed what was called "knowledge centers" which could be summed up as an accumulation of books, courses, exams, practice exams, articles and basically any asset within the platform surrounded by a particular subject. This was a great benefit to some of our customer. It was a one-stop-shop but now you would need to search independently for all of those assets.
Because the platforms library can be customized its a bit of a struggle to have certain assets changed or modified within Skillsoft. You basically are on their time when it comes to updates or any major changes you as a customer would like to make.
I would recommend to renew as this is part of our employee development goals and we make a strong commitment to develop employees' people skills. I think SkillSoft has a very innovative approach to develop people's interpersonal skills other than traditional classroom learning.
Books 24x7 is a useful tool for growth, knowledge sharing, and overall intellectual health within the company. Our company has been very forward thinking in offering this to every employee. As a result, people have been able to grow in areas they may not have previously explored because of the free access to resources they may not have bothered with before they had free access to them.
There are things that could be easier. Having a more customizable carousel that can rotate relevant content in and out on a regular basis would be nice. They could also make some of the video content more engaging. Some of it is pretty dull and people can lose interest pretty fast.
Skillsoft Percipio (Skillport) is easy to understand. Students didn't need much of an effort to understand how to use it, where to find the content, how to pass each course. It was also great that Skillsoft Percipio (Skillport) has this direct link to LinkedIn so the user can post their acquired skills on their professional history.
The support team of A Cloud Guru is quite quick. There are scenarios where A Cloud Guru was not working in my organization. We reached out to their support team and they quickly resolved the issue. Also, if any individual is facing issues accessing A Cloud Guru, their support team is quick to resolve the issue.
Me and my other employees frequently reach out to support to address issues and they always help us in a timely manner. They are willing to work with you to solve and issue and are always available for help at any time. We haven't run into any instances where our problems didn't get solved.
Just that it takes a village. It cannot be done alone. Everyone needs to know what you are doing and what their role is in the implementation. Tightly managing the project management schedule and resources is important in ensuring that everything gets done on time, and with quality. Education is KEY
The main differentiator was the contents as we were interested in a cloud platform other similar platforms did not have the below: it is very good to establish cloud learning development plans and then track them and manage them for the team. The platform supports learning tracks, exams, and sandboxes with all major cloud providers guarantees that you don't get an accidental charge as a result of [the] testing and exploring the cloud
We chose SkillSoft for the overall ease of use for both our users and our administrators and have a great value proposition. We have continued our contracts for the same reasons and the relationship we have built with our Learning Consultant and Account Representative.
I haven't used any other online training system except for Skillport, and I wasn't the person who selected it. However, our organization usually uses pretty decent technology when it comes to training, and I trust that they felt this was the best choice for our organization versus the alternative options