CYPHER Learning Reviews

We use it in a few ways. When we started 18 months ago, we had a website that offered short, continuous education courses in things like sales development. We moved that website into CYPHER Learning. We also gradually migrated our RTO courses into CYPHER Learning, starting about a year ago.

We also develop LMS portals for our business partners as sub-organizations within our LMS. We have a handful of those running at the moment.

The system we initially used for RTO did not provide the best look and feel. It was like a huge ship with very complicated and sophisticated features. "Moving" it was a task. CYPHER Learning, by comparison, is a super-yacht. It's very agile, modern, very quick to respond, and it looks great.

Although we rarely use it for our internal staff's education, our partners use it for their own team members. Our team members, who are admins or instructors in the platform, have an additional account to use when they're doing their personal continuous development. In that way, it's like there are two separate systems from the viewpoint of the end-user, and it works well for us.

Another benefit is that some of the automations and syncing features have reduced admin hours by a lot for us. It has been a great help. It saves us a couple of hours per week.

Initially, I was very excited about the automations. But when we started using the actual courses, I found that the ability to sync content and settings from parent courses to child courses is what I value the most. But both the automations and syncing are at the top of the list.

Also, the automation for triggering actions for completed tasks, such as awarding badges and points to students, works very well. We use Credly badges, and when we first moved the continuous improvement side of the business to CYPHER Learning we had more than 50 courses, which meant we had more than 50 badges. However, we found there was a limit on the number of badges. We reached out to CYPHER Learning and they fixed it quickly for us. We were then able to add more than 50 badges.

One thing I find annoying is that the system is quite limited when it comes to roles. I was used to our old system where I could create custom roles to cater to specific users and that's not available in CYPHER Learning.

Another issue is the customization of the gradebook. I'm used to a highly customizable gradebook, but that's also not available in CYPHER Learning.

I have been using CYPHER Learning for around 18 months.

It is a stable product and that's one of the features that was on my list. It's also very fast, so we don't have any worries about access.

There has rarely been any downtime and, when it has happened once or twice, it has happened during late hours, so we haven't had to worry about it.

It's scalable. We have deployed a few portals for our partners, and that was super easy. It just worked.

We have about 100 internal users of the platform.

They're really good, very responsive, and knowledgeable. They respond within an hour, maximum.

Positive

The previous system we used for our continuous education courses was clunky and old. We had moved to it from an even older system, being the most reliable product that we could move to quickly. It was WordPress-based and it had a very limited LMS called LearnDash. We needed something bigger, more expandable, and that looked more modern, and that's what we found in CYPHER Learning.

The setup was very easy. They helped a lot in setting up the look and feel, from the beginning, using our branding colors. But I set up the portals for our partners and it was very easy to do. Things like setting up the roles that we wanted and selecting what roles to add in were very straightforward.

Our strategy was determined by our need to move our continuous improvement website, and that was the major portion of it. We needed to move completion data and courses, and migrate our live students as well, and that had to be carefully planned.

Once it's set up, it's good to go. In terms of maintenance, there are updates and improvements that need to be communicated to staff.

We have seen ROI because we have a lot of courses that require a lot of storage space, and we don't have to worry about that with CYPHER Learning. With the other LMSs that we used, storage was a big issue, especially because we have to keep records for 30 years due to government requirements. It is worth our while to use CYPHER Learning.

The pricing is somewhere in the middle. It's not too expensive and, for what it is, it's very reasonable.

I wasn't involved in evaluating other solutions. Someone else did that for us and they looked at multiple systems. We had a spreadsheet with our requirements and CYPHER Learning ticked most of the boxes. That's why we went with it.

There are a lot of learning management systems out there and they are oranges and apples. You have to choose what meets your targets. All the systems are good for the end-users. If you want something where you don't have to worry much about maintenance or uptime, a system that is very modern looking and easy to use, and something you can get up and running fairly quickly, CYPHER Learning is a good choice.

Overall, I rate the solution at eight out of 10. I wouldn't rate it higher because of the rigidity of the roles and gradebooks. Also, there are simpler things like quiz-question types that are not as varied as in other LMSs. But the overall experience is just fantastic.

Our organization has multiple divisions. We started with the iQ Retail division, which develops Retail ERP software solutions. Each division within our organization offers different software solutions. We train people on how to use our software through CYPHER Learning, which is available internally and externally.

CYPHER Learning is a SaaS solution.

We used to offer classroom-based courses only, but we found that travel costs and time restraints were becoming too much for our students. We were looking for a more affordable / accessible way to reach more students, and CYPHER Learning helped us do that.

CYPHER Learning's features effectively boosted our efficiency. We are now able to offer a wider range of services at a competitive cost. Being a Global company with  13 branches, being able to reach global initiatives, is a great advantage.

The timing for rolling out CYPHER Learning was very beneficial, as we relaunched one of our divisions with a new type of learning just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. This allowed our instructors to train and teach remotely.

As a corporate university, we use CYPHER Learning to provide internal training for our employees and external training for our clients / partners. This hybrid training model is vital to our ever evolving organization.

The hybrid training platform helps us attract top talent by showcasing our capabilities and providing support and knowledge to our clients in an interactive and engaging experience.

The solution can be used to assist in pre-certifying resellers online before they enter the market. 

CYPHER Learning helped us expand our training efforts. Before CYPHER Learning, we only offered classroom training, which required learners to travel to one of our training facilities. We can now offer online training, which eliminates the need for travel. This has substantially decreased the cost of training, making it more accessible to more learners.

CYPHER Learning saved us around 30 percent of our administrative work through the app that easily adapts to different markets. 

CYPHER Learning is a user-friendly platform that makes it easy for me to manage my instructors and track my learners. My instructors can provide feedback to learners on the same day. We work with a variety of clients, and we can provide them with an analysis of how their learners are performing. As an administrator, I have an overview of what our clients think of our platform.

The reporting has room for improvement. I would like more reporting options.

Screen sorting can be improved by providing more filtering options. 

I have been using CYPHER Learning for almost seven years.

CYPHER Learning is stable and we are notified well in advance of any planned downtime for upgrades or maintenance.

CYPHER Learning is scalable. We current have about 550 people signed up to use the solution.

The technical support is good and responds to our issues within two hours.

Positive

The setup is straightforward. The deployment took around two weeks and required me and two others to complete.

The implementation was completed in-house.

We have seen a return on investment through administrative time-saving and global reach.

CYPHER Learning's price is slightly higher than other solutions.

I give CYPHER Learning an eight out of ten.

We have multiple organizations. Our iQ Retail division uses CYPHER Learning extensively. A few other divisions use the solution on a much smaller scale. In total, five or six divisions use the solution.

For someone looking to grow in a growing environment, CYPHER Learning is worth checking out. CYPHER Learning provides the flexibility to grow with us, whether we have multiple platforms or need to migrate to a new system.

CYPHER Learning offers a variety of learning approaches.

Our company is a training boutique dedicated to courses for adults. We are a team that varies between two to ten trainers and offers courses for 15 to 80 participants.

We use CYPHER Learning to deliver asynchronous remote online courses. The courses we offer are for adult training in the professional field or personal development.

The courses offered are based on a specific calendar or are courses that can be taken at your own pace.

We also use CYPHER Learning to generate the web page (portal) where we have the product catalog and through which we sell our online courses.

We were able to build a whole learning ecosystem. 

The lessons we offer in each course can be both in written format and in audio or video format. This dramatically helps participants to choose their best way of learning.

In addition to the lessons provided, I developed various assignments. We also built a valuable relationship between trainers and participants through various features of the platform: rubrics, feedback, notes, mastery, and skills.

The platform allowed us several integrations with other systems. Also, translating menus into different languages helps our participants a lot.

There are many facilities offered by CYPHER Learning. 

For us, the biggest feature of the platform is that we can build competency systems. Thus, through the courses, we can certify the different skills of our participants. Within the platform, these competencies are linked to each learning module and each assurance. This allows us very good control over the competencies demonstrated by the participants.

We use the grading system a lot, and that's why the platform's rubrics and automatic scoring systems are very useful. Together with the ability to customize each notification and set rules applicable to each assignment, we can provide immediate and consistent feedback to participants.

We also use gamification to generate motivation for learning through play.

There needs to be greater granularity of user packages. We don't always have 100 users per month. However, we pay for 100.

We need a better solution for controlling inactive users. For example, any active user who connects to the platform generates costs for us, even if he is no longer an active participant. This means that we cannot be in control of the monthly costs unless we deactivate the user. Except if we do it this way, he loses contact with us.

The platform proposes a report-building system; however, this system is cumbersome and not intuitive.

We've been using the solution since 2013.

I used an alternative solution previously. I abandoned that solution since the platform had become a closed one that can no longer be used publicly.

I recommend a good calculation of costs per user. They will need a different solution (CRM type) to maintain the relationship with the old users, otherwise, they will be charged every time the old users connect to the platform again.

I have evaluated other platforms as well. At the moment, I don't remember them. It was nine years ago. That said, since then, I have not looked for another solution.

CYPHER Learning is a solution that understands the needs of a trainer and those of a participant in different courses. These needs are covered by a wide and almost complete range of facilities and solutions.

Therefore, it is important to expect constant changes in features and interface. CYPHER Learning is constantly working on updates, and the change is done automatically, suddenly, and without much notice.

Customer service (if you don't have a dedicated one) is forum-based only, and responses can take anywhere from one hour to two days, depending on the time zone.

We are using it for our technical training and onboarding.

Before the pandemic, almost all our training interventions occurred in physical spaces and simulation areas. Our trainees were mostly asked to report to the head office for a minimum of five days up to months (for some critical positions). Since we started to use the CYPHER Learning, we have been able to see a drastic improvement the length of our learning duration to about half of the previous number of days that we conducted these training interventions.

CYPHER Learning is instrumental in enabling Potato Corner to be at the forefront of remote learning engagement practices in the Philippines. In fact, Potato Corner is an active case study for some local companies, in terms of bringing value and cost savings - locally and abroad. 

The ability of the system to be used by our international support and store network is an advantage. For example, CYPHER Learning has the capacity to translate dialects or languages which helped us conduct a learning experience similar to how an actual hands on session is done. Just recently we had pilot runs using the translation capability of the system for new store openings in China and the Middle East China using Mandarin and Arabic as medium of discussions.

In terms of the platform availability, there is access to 24 hours, so we don't need to determine a specific time for training. We just give them a link, password, and period for them to complete, e.g., 5 days, then it is up to them. What's important is they pass the minimum requirements to pass the training like periodic exams and the certification process.

The solution has helped us not just survive, but get through the challenges of the pandemic with flying colors. Before, we were quite adamant on remote training practices, since for close to 28 years, our company did not venture into remote training practices. Only two years ago, that we took a major step to prove that remote training can actually be a part of the company's core programs to ensure an engaged and competent workforce. 

We use almost all the functionalities of the platform especially for product training videos, lectures, onboarding, assessment, and exams. We also use the gamification function to engage our employees and effectively reward them. In terms of portal usage. With these developments, we are able to automate almost all the onboarding and training requirements for both our new and existing workforce.  

The rules engine has helped us personalize content based on users’ goals and performance. For example, we are now working on further improving the training process for China, Middle East, and soon India markets. 

There is also a wide range of analytics in the platform that show level of engagement and interest - logged in hours, percentage of trainees / attendees taking exams and those actively using the platform. Since we have drastically lessened onsite training to almost none, we rely heavily on trainees' consistent use of the platform.

CYPHER Learning's competency-based learning feature is very important for helping ensure content is compliant with the goals of the course.

A case in point would be our crews that are assigned to stores. They go through the program and thereby complete and pass the required exams and related "certification processes". Getting them "certified" to man stations and shifts are enough proof of competence to be deployed. For those who do not pass the certification, we have them go through retraining until they eventually get certified. 

There is further work to be done on the translation accuracy of international languages. It is really a challenge to have a system for perfect translation, especially as there are unique dialects embedded in different languages. In the future, the platform can have an integrated application that can "precisely" translate languages. 

We have been using CYPHER Learning for around two years.

So far, we haven't had any major issues affecting business continuity. In the two years that we have been working with the solution, we have been able to maintain the continuity of the business, and this is the most important measure of success for us. 

There have been no problems with scalability even if Potato Corner has close to 700 Franchisees in the network. Before, we started to have LMS in 40 stores, then we went to a 100 stores in a matter of weeks. To date, we are now at almost 500 stores using CYPHER Learning for training and onboarding purposes. The plan for this year is to start involving more of our new international territories as we are on track to opening in more locations like India and other counties in the middle east.

Like Potato Corner, the World's Best Flavored French Fries Brand, Organizations and decision makers should seriously look at CYPHER Learning as a strategic partner in growing the business.

Overall, I would rate the solution including its customer service and support extension a 9 of 10. 

Positive

The entire platform has helped us automate all our company's learning and development practices. When we didn't have CYPHER Learning, we did everything onsite, e.g., we had physical and classroom training. All of that has been removed since we started using the CYPHER Learning platform. 

The deployment process was very straightforward. 

During the first six months of the implementation, we were deeply involved, as we worked on getting the system used by different stakeholders. The plan was to get everyone on the same page and be accustomed to using the solution and see it as a regular way to train and develop competencies. After that, the following months were more stable, as we continued to make notable improvements along the way.

To support this major change, we did a series of Town halls which we call a NetMeet! In these town halls, we communicated the need to invest in a platform that will be used for the long-term. 

After our Town halls, we conducted mini-virtual meetings where we met with key groups in operations, international, finance, human resources, and franchising and told them about the new Learning Management System. We had open dialogues on how the LMS will beneficial to the users of the system. 

For a period of 3 weeks thereafter, we chose certain pilot groups where we gave access to use and navigate the system. When there was immense buy in on the solution, we started to launch the LMS for all company-owned stores in the Philippines. Then we picked locations outside Metro Manila, such as Visayas and Mindanao. Eventually, we started implementing the LMS in Southeast Asia, Middle East, and just recently, the Asia Pacific region.

Before, the company tried to do learning and development via in-house We found this a little difficult as we had to regularly change certain functions which took time to accomplish, eventually resulting to a great deal of time spent on communicating such changes. When we came across the CYPHER Learning, it was more of a plug and play solution where there was very little customization so we started to implement changes / improvements faster. In terms of level of expertise, the vendor side showed competence and excellence. 

Over the past couple of years, we have opened several stores in new territories. Aside from the local operations, we have used CYPHER Learning in China, the Middle East, and Canada. 

Conservatively, CYPHER Learning has brought our costs down by 50% overall, which includes headcount. In the department where the LMS is currently managed, the workforce is down by 50% as well. From 4 individuals, there are only 2 people managing the entire learning and development process for our company. Aside from these, the cost of logistics and travel have been greatly reduced (by 70%). We no longer need to be in the different regions in the Philippines and our international territories for our expansions, as we can now conduct training 24/7 virtually. In terms of cost savings, we have reduced our annual costs by roughly 5 million pesos or 100,000 USD, with projected savings to be higher in the years to come. 

Because our cost went down by 50%, I would say that the pricing is competitive.

Before (and even during the pandemic), the company tried to create our own Learning Management System which we found to be quite difficult especially since there were a lot of changes affecting certain functions which had to be done quickly. It took the team a great deal of effort and time to communicate with all stakeholders and get the changes done. At the time we were looking for an outsourced solution, we came across CYPHER Learning, which we found to be more of a plug and play solution for us. There was a little customization and we could start to implement quickly. Eventually we ended up evaluating the platform's capabilities and ended up launching it for Potato Corner's domestic and international operations in barely 3-6 months of pilot testing.

We have started using CYPHER Learning's competency-based learning feature starting with a pilot batch in the Philippines and will encourage our global partners to do the same.

Businesses, whether big or small, should take a good look at CYPHER Learning in terms as it can really help improve remote training for companies. Teams should be open to exploring the functions of the product and what the solution can offer in terms of long-term plans. In our company, we wanted to ensure a good balance of physical training and remote training. I encourage decision makers to carefully assess is if a virtual / remote training environment suit their businesses. In general, before investing in any solution, decision makers should carefully weigh strategic goals, impact to operating costs / bottom line, and performance management.   

For Potato Corner, the solution came at a very opportune time, as we were able to proactively manage the ill effects of the global pandemic. 

I would rate the solution as a 9 out of 10.

We use it to provide online courses for distance learning students.

We have both teachers and admin staff who work with the platform. Teachers can see student submissions and our admin staff can manage our course content and eCommerce.

We can customize our ordering system so we can have the data that we need to communicate with our students, their families, and our staff. 

We can collect surveys, using the LMS platform, from our students on how their courses are going. 

The ordering process is automated. When students register for a course, their course is set up automatically. We can manually register them when needed, as needed.

CYPHER Learning has helped by providing a variety of activities to help students get engaged, developing their independence and higher-order thinking skills. The quizzes and tests help keep our students engaged in developing their skills. I would rate the importance of this as 10 out of 10 for our organization.

CYPHER Learning has helped us save time on intervention strategies for students, especially those who need guidance. 

We provide a great program and having a top LMS system is essential. Our students love the platform, from what we hear. One of the things that they love about our courses is the LMS system's ease and use.

The navigation is easy to use. 

It is very easy for educators to communicate with students using the CYPHER Learning messaging system, which is imperative for our organization.

There are many applications available as add-ons. There are so many that we have not used all of them, but are happy to know we have more than we currently need.

It can maintain an infinite database of our students.

The solution is top-notch for tagging classes and assignments. The tagging is great for ensuring that the content is compliant with standards.

I have been using it for nine years. Our company started delivering programs in 2010, and we started using CYPHER Learning in 2013.

CYPHER Learning is definitely a stable solution. We have experienced less than 1% downtime.

The platform is set up so there are no capacity limits. Our program can grow as much as we want it to grow. We don't have any constraints around how many more courses we can offer or how many students we can add. There are no constraints around that.

The scalability is infinite. There aren't any limitations on what we can or can't do.

Their tech support is top-notch. When there is an issue, we are always able to find a workaround that meets our specific needs. The tech support team help us with that. An example is using the reporting feature. If there is something that we need in a report and we can't get all the data in the default template of the report, then we can work with the tech support team who will show us how to customize it.

I would rate the technical support as 9.9 out of 10. It is almost perfect.

Positive

Before we moved to the CYPHER Learning platform, we tried another vendor and it didn't work.

We used another vendor in the beginning, which was low cost. We were a brand new company then, so we used what we could afford at the time. We switched because CYPHER Learning has everything. We were going to have to keep adding to what we had with the previous solution, so it was going to become cost-prohibitive.

I had an IT specialist, who was looking at our current system, recommend CYPHER Learning. He did a little research, and said, "This is the one you need." When we started using them, he was more than right.

The initial setup is easy. 

It took just one day to get it up and running. We were up the day that we started using it.

It is so user-friendly. You can create a course, and have that course up the same day. Though, it does depend on how much content is in your course.

One admin was initially needed for the deployment, which does depend on the size of the deployment. Now, we have four admins working on it. There are also teachers who upload content.

When I first started, I wanted the enterprise package. We had to build up our student base to get up to the number of students that we needed to be in that enterprise package. Then, we had a 100% return on investment within the first year of using the program.

Our time saving increased by 70%, going from manual to automated.

The solution has definitely helped us reduce our administrative work. It gives us the ability to provide distance learning for students who are not all in the same area, which is valuable. 

The amount of time that we need to use the LMS system to quantify things is minimal.

CYPHER Learning has 100% helped us save on costs related to printing materials, textbook acquisitions, and license fees. It is instant for our students when we update or come up with a new version of our programs because we use this platform. If we need to modify a quiz, update a course, or add new material, all our students receive that instantly. There is no reprinting. There are no out-of-pocket costs for us. Also, there isn't a time delay for students.

CYPHER Learning has helped reduce the number of staff needed to manage our learning management system (LMS). It would likely triple our staff and admin if we weren't using it.

We do a monthly subscription.

It is priced competitively. Their pricing is one of the best in the industry. They are not the cheapest solution, but they are not the most expensive. The value that they provide, for what we pay, is invaluable. There are no add-on costs.

We have been using it for so long, and we wouldn't use a different platform. It is the best platform out there. It has become part of our daily environment, where we use it all day long.

The solution's ability to bridge our student's learning gap is at the top of the industry.

I talk with other schools who discuss their platforms. They always want our platform.

Don't waste a lot of time evaluating other programs. This is the best one out there.

We have plans to increase our usage of CYPHER Learning.

I would rate this solution as 10 out of 10.

As a reseller, our use case is for a primary school in Egypt. They use it for uploading material for the students and organizing the content throughout the year. They also use it for adding their grades in the grade book and for communication. They have also tried using the gamification and the certificates and rewarding systems in CYPHER Learning, and it has been a pretty good experience for them so far.

The school we sold the system to is pretty happy with the organization of the content and the communication with the parents that the solution provides. They were also very happy with the gamification, the automation that happens within the system when a student finishes a specific part of the content or gets a specific score.

CYPHER Learning was also an additional value for that school, something they needed as they were advertising themselves as using the latest technology in education. The system helped with that, thanks to the stability and the strong features it furnishes.

And because it's pretty organized, it helps students keep track of their standing, both in terms of the materials being covered and within the assessments that they get.

It has also helped our client school reduce administrative work. From the feedback that I have gotten, it is saving them a lot of time.

CYPHER Learning has also reduced costs related to printing materials and textbook acquisitions a lot. This is one of the reasons people are going to software. It's not because they find it is much easier. Sometimes they go for the solution because it saves on costs. That's not just true of CYPHER Learning but of many other solutions.

What I like most is the usability of the system and the many options that it has. I can make a regular course or I can have the course organized remotely. I can turn off and on any feature that I like. That's what I find most interesting. Most LMSs have a fixed template for all the courses and the whole school uses it. When it comes to younger ages, they need fewer features so there won't be a lot of hassle for the teachers and parents. That's what we can do using CYPHER Learning: Just turn off anything that we don't need in a specific course.

I can also engage with the parents or students on different levels, either via groups, within the course or the forum.

The gamification is a good feature because not all LMSs have a gaming or reward system. The leaderboard makes for competition among the students, especially from ages 10 to 15, and makes them interested in moving forward in the educational process, throughout the game. It's good because students need to be engaged more in the educational process.

I find the gamification process easy, especially if I have something in mind for the game. Many teachers also found it pretty easy, while some didn't, but they weren't familiar with using technology in general. The ones who used it regularly with the students were very satisfied with it. In the end, students using it gain points and certificates or badges, and it depends on what the teacher has in mind for the students to compete on.

It's not hard for students to use gamification because, in the end, they just have to finish the material and upload it to get a specific score on a test. They get a badge, and they can see their progress on the leaderboard. It's very rewarding.

Gamification would be much better if there were integrations with LTI tools, or if there were some built-in questions for gamification. For example, if a student achieves a specific score on a test, it would be much better if they were interactive questions added to the assignment itself from within CYPHER Learning. It would be nice if they enhanced this part of the solution. There are many platforms for gamified tests and interactive assignments and worksheets but if these features were within the system, especially the gamification part, it would be great.

For international schools in Egypt, there are certification requirements. They have to have an LMS. But for other schools, it is a value proposition. We have 100 percent face-to-face learning in Egypt, now that COVID is over. There is competition when it comes to having schools use the system and sometimes we face difficulties getting schools, in general, to support this kind of educational process. Having something like gamification helps because students are more engaged with it and are more eager to use the system. That's especially true because they are fully attending classes in the school, nothing is online anymore, other than the materials and assignments in the system. It's good to have something to catch their attention.

Also, customization of report cards is hard to handle, with the grading criteria that specific schools use. It can be done for each course, but in the end, students receive report cards or certificates for their progress throughout the term and the year and it's hard to customize these report cards. They don't have a grading scheme for the Egyptian curriculum.

In addition, if the system had some graphing abilities and not just exporting of data to Excel sheets, that would be nice. I would like to be able to run a report on something and get graphs with insightful data. In an Excel sheet, I just have to reanalyze the data.

For example, if I want to run a report on students' attendance, it doesn't have to be a number for the whole school or a sheet of numbers. It could give me some graphs on different stages or different courses. If I am analyzing a student's time spent within a course, I would like to see how many hours he spent compared to other students. It would help if there were an analytical part to the data obtained from the system.

Also, I have to do a lot of clicking to reach something. When I go back, it just closes all that I did. It collapses everything. It doesn't make it hard to use, but it's disturbing to have to do all those clicks.

We studied the product before we finally started introducing it into the Egyptian market in 2021. There is a school contracted with us for it right now so I have almost one year of user experience. We provide training on the system and technical support for the school.

We are a reseller of educational solutions, both hardware and software. They can be learning management systems, school management systems, and interactive, live panels. Sometimes we sell full solutions to a school, and we provide training and follow-up throughout the year. The Egyptian market is a bit hard to compete in, but not many companies resell these products here.

Solutions like these have gone viral with COVID-19 and schools need support and onsite training for the teachers, and this is what we've been providing for the past 12 years.

It's a pretty good product. In our company, we only resell three products, and CYPHER Learning is one of them. It's pretty reliable and it has a lot of features.

It could be used on many sites, and it will be even better once we have more schools interested in deploying LMSs in their schools. From what I have seen of the system, it could even be used in colleges and universities.

We are involved in implementing CYPHER Learning. First, we open the account and then pay for the license. Then, we start putting the data of the school on the system. We give them the courses, the users, the links for parents and students, and we start helping them with uploading the material. Sometimes, we help them with the grading process, if needed.

I find the initial setup is pretty easy, but schools here have many things inside things, inside things. It becomes a complicated hierarchy. That's what makes it hard. It's easy to get it done on the system, once we figure out what we want things to look like in the end.

We did the setup ourselves. During the first term, we started getting support from CYPHER LEARNING, and it was pretty good. We learned a few points and they gave us good support.

We have evaluated many LMSs before. Some are produced locally in Egypt, some are from the greater Middle East, and some are solutions like Blackboard, Classe365, and others. I'm familiar with using different LMSs and have done comparisons between them.

We provide many products to the Egyptian market. Our customers are the ones who choose. We find that CYPHER Learning is a pretty interesting system, full of features, and it's pretty stable. I can see that the product is developing very well and covers a lot of the needs of the Egyptian market. It's also pretty easy to use, especially if you are provided the right training from the company. We feel that there are many selling points to the product.

My advice would be to organize all the work and the output so that you can see how it would be deployed in the system, and not just look for a single output. Using technology, you can have a million outputs with the same value. You can be flexible with the system, and it will give you the results that you need.

I run an e-learning business providing training to accounting firms, and I use it as a platform for managing the learner experience for all of the learning courses. They're all self-paced courses.

We've been doing training for about 15 years, and the transition to a self-paced platform has been fantastic. It's actually given us better results with our learners than the live sessions that we were previously running. It has also allowed us to leverage and scale our business effectively and has been critically important for the growth of our business.

There are so many valuable features: The

• structure of the platform is fantastic 
• learner experience is very good
• process for the assessment of tasks works very well and that is an important part of what we do, to make sure learners get good feedback and that they can act on that feedback.
• feedback process is good as well. I get feedback from all my learners on how they're doing and they generally find the platform pretty easy to work through.

I use rules for a particular action when a particular task is completed. Gamification is a good example within that part of the platform. When learners reach a certain stage, or there's a certain outcome, they either get a certificate or a badge or the like. And when learners haven't accessed their course for a period of time, they get an automatic email asking them how things are going. Those are some basic actions or reactions around particular things that learners might do.

I am able to see who has not accessed the portal, using CYPHER Learning, and follow up with those people. This ability is very important and I have a person working full-time on it. It's our goal to make sure that learners complete their courses and we use the reporting and the platform to keep an eye on all of our learners. It doesn't lead directly to new registrations, but the learner experience is the most important thing for me. I'm keen to ensure that we give our learners all the support they can get to complete their courses.

Overall, for monitoring and checking student progress it's fantastic. It has everything that I need. I can print out reports showing me where learners are at, what their scores are, and how long it has been since they last accessed the platform. All that information is available.

The platform is fine. Most of the room for improvement is around my course design, the video content, and the structure of my courses so that they're more engaging and interactive. Whether the platform can help me deliver those outcomes, I'm not sure, but that will probably be my core focus over the next 12 months.

I have been using CYPHER Learning for three or four years.

There has been no problem with the stability. I have never had any issues.

The scalability is up to me. The intention of getting a platform like this was to scale up my business, and that's something I'm working on at the moment. I can keep doing that, it's highly leverageable.

I have 1,500 learners, of which 500 would be engaged over the course of a month. Sometimes people go off a course for a period of time and come back to it.

The responsiveness of their help desk is absolutely fantastic. If I have a question, I'll usually get a response within five minutes. That's very important to me because I've probably got over 500 learners at any one time and there are always little things that need to be addressed. They respond very quickly. 

And I'm continually improving our system with feedback from the people at CYPHER LEARNING.

Positive

CYPHER Learning was my first experience with an online e-learning platform. I did spend six months starting to develop my own platform and then stopped very quickly when I realized that there were platforms available.

I can't tell you how I came across the solution, probably just through an online search. They were very easy to engage with and that's probably why I'm with them.

The implementation was very easy. It was easy to convert some of my live content into self-paced online courses. The initial deployment was done within a month, to have it set up properly, make sure it was all working, and understand how the platform worked.

My implementation strategy involved making sure that the live content I had was transferable to a self-paced learning environment, and getting some learner feedback on how the course was operating.

Deployment of a new course, getting it set up on CYPHER Learning, takes about a day. There is very little maintenance. Once it's set up, there are only little fine-tuning things to do. I've got about 25 to 30 courses online now and I know how to set up new courses. Most of the effort is the background work, creating the content.

I only used the CYPHER LEARNING people to help with the training. In the very early days, I even had the international CEO, Graham Glass, speak to me for an hour and give me some feedback. He went through it all with me. That was quite incredible actually.

The revenue that I generate is about 50 times the cost at the moment.

For each course, it has helped to significantly reduce administrative work, but now that we've been able to scale up, obviously, we spend more time on admin in general. But we don't spend so much time on the things that we were doing in the past to manage the learner experience. Our administrative time has gone into other things that add more value.

It has also absolutely saved us money on training facilities and travel, costs that used to be involved in training. It's all online now. We have learners throughout Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, and the UK. It's scalable and people can access content anywhere.

The pricing is good. It's scalable, meaning you can start off at a cost level that is easy for a startup and then build on it from there. I've built up from nothing to a Platinum subscription. You can scale up as you need. It's pretty flexible and it works well.

If consultants or training are required, in the contract they have the ability to charge for a scope of work, but they've never charged me for anything that they've done. And they have spent significant time on some of my stuff.

I had a quick look around, but back then there weren't too many options available. 

Find out how other organizations are using it. Get as much feedback on best practices as you can. And that's not just for this platform, but for other e-learning platforms. Get feedback on how to get the most value from them. Training and understanding of e-learning platforms, and the psychology of e-learning, are particularly important so that the courses are set up correctly. Ask as many questions as you have. They're pretty responsive.

I'm just working at the moment on gamification and getting that up and running, so I can't give a lot of feedback about that, but that's developing. I'm also putting another key element of the platform into place, mastery, which is developing core competencies around course content. Similarly, I have been implementing competency-based learning over the last month or so. CYPHER Learning have given me a fair amount of detail, training, and follow-up on that. Again, I can't give a lot of feedback, but it all works fairly well.

We're also in the process of implementing two-factor authentication for security. That has been up and running over the last month and we are getting our learners through that process at the moment, so that data and information are secure. That is a key project that we're working on, apart from gamification and competencies.

I don't have any complaints about the platform. At this stage, it's meeting my needs. My challenge is more in making sure that I'm using it to its full capabilities. For that reason, I'm in pretty regular contact with the people at CYPHER Learning to review where I'm at and identify what I could be doing better. I'm focusing on continual improvement.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using the platform is the need to keep refining and developing. There are always things that you don't know. There are always features of a platform like this that you're not aware of. It's important to always be looking for ways to improve and asking whether the platform can deliver those outcomes. The platform has a pretty healthy pipeline, and they'll generally listen to any suggestions.

We use it for three different programs of varying sizes. For example, one of our programs currently has 2,500 students. Another has about 1,200. So, we use it for varying programs that vary from anywhere from nine months to two years.

It brings students together in one place with teaching materials. Also, it has a social capability to it by way of forums and groups. That is definitely important for our programs. There has been a lot of engagement in our programs.

It is extremely important that dates and times are exact when we follow up with students, as it keeps our students on track.

For as long as I have been working with MATRIX (for a few years now), they have the social aspect with groups. The thing that they did not have for years, until earlier this year, was a reply-all feature. I had been asking for that for years and they finally added it this year. That has been helpful because now our students are less frustrated.

We can see who has accessed the portal, but it is not very intuitive. There is an issue with MATRIX user reporting. It is not that useful a lot of the time because we see conflicting dates in the activity and login. I have tried to work with their engineers, and asked, "Well, what's the real deal here," and there is no clarity around it. However, we can tell when people have last logged in.

The user reporting is a mess. It is unclear what I will get from this report. You need to keep tweaking and trying different options in the reports, then you don't know what you will get until you run the report. That is time-consuming and unclear to the user.

The calendar system could be greatly improved. I understand MATRIX is progressing in many ways by way of focusing on integrations with other apps and the whole API world. However, it would be nice if they could revisit their basics, e.g., the calendar system and user reporting, and get those basic things that people use every day to be accurate. 

I have been using it since December 2019, which has been pretty much two years now.

On the whole, it is pretty stable, but there have been issues that keep creeping up. I have been reporting them for years, getting temporary solutions. I don't know if they are running updates on their end, but the previous solution will then fall apart. I have to report it again and they have to fix it again. This all has to do with their basics, as far as reporting and calendars.

The technical support is 50-50. You don't know what you are going to get. Sometimes they will resolve it or help you resolve it, then other times you get an answer from someone who says, "It is not capable of doing that." Then, the next day, you might get a response from another technician who says, "Oh, I am sorry. Our system actually does this quite often."

They are hands-off by way of saying, "Oh, we are unable to replicate this." This is even when I am showing them video and screenshot proof of what is happening. Quite often, they say, "Oh, we are not able to replicate this." Then, that is it. They don't really help beyond that.

I would rate the technical support as six out of 10.

Neutral

We didn't previously use another solution.

We do cycles with our programs, but I am involved in every setup.

The initial setup is straightforward in some ways. I have a background in LMS development so it is easy to set up and straightforward in that way. Some of it is not straightforward because some of the options are by way of setting up your site. They are not very clear about what they do. Or, some options are just thrown here and there in the settings. It seems not completely organized. It is like, "Well, where should we put this? Let's just put this here." Even though it doesn't quite make sense there, there isn't a lot of flexibility in terms of customizing things in MATRIX. 

Deployment time varies per program. We try to allow a lot of space for QA testing and other things. It takes about a month to deploy, but that is not necessarily eight hours a day, five days a week. I am saying a month for internal user testing. Since our programs are very extensive with a lot of materials, it does take time to set them up.

We just purchased this solution from the vendor, then it was built in-house.

There is a team for deployment and maintenance because we have so many students across a few programs. There are at least 10 people. That varies from people getting into the weeds of building the courses, working on the back-end, or just administering it.

We extensively use it since we use it to deploy our biggest selling courses or programs. It is used year-round and daily by students, and by us as well. We actually want to look at other systems or develop our own system because the cost point of MATRIX is so high. It doesn't feel like we get any value for it.

Take your time and test it out. Forecast how many users you will have. Are they going to be able to keep up with the high cost per user? I would definitely tell them to really dive in and forecast growth. See if you can keep up with this budgetary-wise.

I really want to work with our VP of technology and see about developing our own system so we can move away from MATRIX and save on profit.

I would rate this solution as seven out of 10.