CYPHER Learning Reviews

Since we came from a previous LMS provider, pre-pandemic, primarily the use case was just for compliant courses. Every year, we require employees to take these courses as we are an insurance company.

We're heavily regulated here in the Philippines. We need to comply with certain regulations, and courses like anti-money laundering, data privacy, et cetera. On an annual basis, we have almost ten compliance courses that all of our employees need to complete.

We were not happy with the previous providers, so we started looking and we found this. Pre-pandemic, the plan was really just for compliance courses. Then, the pandemic happened and it was good that we started with CYPHER LEARNING which we actually launched right in April, about a month after the lockdown here in the Philippines.

The moment that we launched it, we launched it with a few compliance courses. However, the moment that we launched it, my manager told me we now need to start looking at how we'd be able to maximize all of the features to offer self-learning-based courses or virtual classes. That's how we've been using it.

We house all of our training materials in what we call a Campus, and that's something that I have also loved. We're able to create our own brand. It's where we upload all of our training materials. About two-thirds of the population of the organization is composed of salespeople deployed all over the Philippines. If they need to review products or policies or anything like that, we just tell them, "Oh, it's all on Campus. Go and check it out."

The effect on our service delivery is good. Primarily we service the sales team. They would come knocking on our doors, asking for training, and lately, especially last year when we've put several courses that are not necessarily compliance courses into the platform, we've been getting fewer and fewer requests for training. Initially, we thought that they didn't need us anymore, and when we checked with the head of sales, we got a report that before they actually ask us, they were advised to go and check Campus first. If it's there, they don't need to bother the training team.

There are several things that I like about the product. Although this is not something that is held by the learner, from an administration perspective, the fact that you can brand it all to your liking and the fact that people actually do not know that it's provided by a different company, is important. They thought that it was developed internally due to the fact that it would also have our color schemes, the fonts, and the logo. Our URL would not have CYPHER LEARNING in the address.

We also like the groups. People are able to be assigned to a group, whether it be a learning group or an interest group, and they can just get in there and have an open discussion freely.

Something that we also started using, but have yet to fully leverage is gamification. We really want to maximize it in our organization. We divide all of our employees into four distinct groups. These are engagement groups. We wanted them to somehow have a way to collaborate, and compete. At the end of the year, we can assign points or badges to them, and then they can get as many badges as they can. At the end of the year, they can win something for the entire team.

Although it's not directly through the portal, on a weekly basis, especially if there are active compliance courses, I'm required by the executive committee to submit a weekly report that shows who has not accessed the portal. When I do that, I can send an email to those that haven’t and follow up with them.

The reports are also something that's very helpful from an administrative perspective.

It’s very important that we follow up with those who haven't accessed the correct courses or the portal in general as it's a regulatory requirement. We need to chase people to have them complete what they need to do in a certain period of time. It's primarily from a compliance perspective that we're doing on a weekly basis. It's something increasing with traffic so that people are able to learn by themselves using the portal. That's something that will be prioritized by the incoming learning management. During the pandemic, that's what we wanted to promote, that we don't want them to come to us. The course that they're looking for is actually already available on the platform.

Initially, we only focused on sales capabilities, including training them on products and on how to sell products. However, starting last year, we also migrated all of our leadership development and people development courses. That's something for the sales training team, as well as for HR corporate training. That's also where we saw some improvements as far as where traffic is concerned.

In terms of efficiencies directly impacting operations, it’s not so much of an effect due to the portal being used primarily for skill-building, whether it's sales or leadership skills-building.

We do have a solutions competency feature. That's actually part of my KPI this year and next week I have a meeting with HR to see how we'd be able to maximize the mastery feature and link the competencies with the mastery to each of the courses. That is something that will be done this year.

The solution allows us to enable monitoring and check students in a very efficient way. I don't experience any trouble generating reports. After I've downloaded the raw file, it takes me about an hour to fix it for the purpose of submitting it to the executive committee.

It helped reduce our administrative costs in delivering training materials. Without the LMS, without Campus, people would ask for our training materials, which we're really not comfortable sharing. However, we don't have a choice as we don't have a place where we put these materials. We now have Campus. It's neatly organized. They can always just go back to Campus and review the things that they've seen.

When looking at the time and costs associated with delivering the training material, we’ve seen some savings. However, I really can't put a value on that. What we're doing now is training through MS Teams. It’s coupled with Campus since that's what we use for blended learning. We no longer have to travel. All of our salespeople are scattered all over the Philippines. Before the pandemic and before the LMS, when we trained people in different cities in the Philippines, we needed to travel there. Now, since we're doing everything virtually through primarily MS teams and Campus, we’ve saved a lot, although I'm not necessarily sure exactly how much. It’s a lot, it's really huge.

At any given time, we had four trainers who would go around the Philippines and we had about 300 salespeople who also needed to travel to the focus city where the training was. We’ve saved on the travel costs of about 300 people.

I do wish that there could be some formatting option so that I don't have to do some manual work in terms of translating the data into, for example, a PowerPoint presentation. However, each company would have its own way of reporting. That's why CYPHER LEARNING settled with Excel, the CSV file. Although I do know that there is an HTML version for the report. When I looked at it, it was not something that would meet the requirements of the senior leaders. I simply settled for doing manual work. Again, it just takes me about an hour, so that's not really a problem.

Something that was put on the back burner due to the cost was the ability to also access external learning portals, memberships, and subscriptions through CYPHER LEARNING. For example, if you have LinkedIn Learning or Udemy, you can already do that. When I told management about that, they said that's a nice feature, however, we would need to first provide subscriptions to all of the employees so that we would have that connection between Campus, the LMS, and the external learning provider. We haven't really used that, however, if we did, that would have been really great as we don't need to rely on internally produced materials since there is a lot of wealth of resources already out there. For now, we're developing our own materials, due to cost implications.

It wasn't made clear to us how to properly set it up. That's why we ended up with one organization for the entire company. Later on, a year into using Campus, we realized that "organization" can actually represent the different departments inside the company. Right now, I’m coordinating with the tech team on how to smoothly transition to that as there are also reporting and administrative access features. It would be great if the position of the department head would be able to directly monitor the completion of his teams and his own people. We can only do that if the organization is divided into different departments.

Adding packages would be an improvement. They should offer something like bronze, silver, and different packages, and could already include automatic subscriptions to these external learning platforms as well so that it's just a one-time payment to just one company instead of getting a subscription externally and linking it to CYPHER LEARNING.

There's one thing that I've been trying to see if it is doable. We're looking at individual development plans for each employee, something that would be easy to align with what we want to do. Right now, we have a separate way of doing individual development plans for each employee. What we would really love for Campus to be able to do is help us in that area. If we feel that this person is lacking in an area, there should be an employee development feature on the portal which could be set up as a way for managers to actively manage that on behalf of the employee.

I've been using the solution since early 2020, right before the pandemic.

The stability is great. We haven't had any downtime. The only issue that we've had so far is not necessarily related to the system or the platform. It's mainly the internet connection. The internet connection here in the Philippines is rather unstable. When people do complain about them not being able to continue with the course, that it's not budging or it's just buffering, we tell them, "I tested the course on my end and if it works, then automatically that means it's the internet problem." So far, the internet connection is the only problem we've had. We've never had any downtimes or any major issues with it.

Our business is expanding. Since the business is expanding, we are potentially growing two or threefold and we're hiring people that are not necessarily employees, they're third-party vendors or partners. Salespeople are also franchisees. Just yesterday I told my manager that maybe we can look into eCommerce to give access to the third-party sellers to access Campus, and also somehow learn in the process so that we can manage the headcount as I think we're only paying for five hundred people as part of our plan. We don't have any plans of extending it to the entire population of about one thousand who will come in. We're looking into also doing the eCommerce option.

Customer service is really great. When I ask a question, it would not take a day before I get an answer. Sometimes I get an answer about 30 minutes or an hour after I post the question.

My favorite part is that they assist you very well. DPOs are huge here in the Philippines. I came from a customer service environment and I’ve learned how I would want to be served as a customer. Not only do they answer the question professionally, but they also educate you as to where you can find the information or learn more about the process and anticipate what else you need. Unlike other people who would just answer your question directly and that's it, they really go the extra mile.

We switched from a different platform.

It was cumbersome and not intuitive. Although we could also brand it, we couldn't do so much with it. It didn't look like it was from the Twenty-first century. CYPHER Learning is very modern-looking, on the other hand. You have the left panel and it's easy to navigate. 

The initial setup was straightforward. In fact, part of the package was a learning session. We did go through that, however, it's focused mainly on creating courses, creating reports, involving people, et cetera. We missed that part about the organization being chopped into different departments.

We signed the contract in December 2019, and we immediately started working with the team here in Manila. We launched it in April 2020 and that's only due to the fact that we had to develop the materials for about a month, however, I'd say that in about three months, we would've been already ready if we already had the material. It took us about three months to get used to the entire system.

We did look at other options. As a requirement in the organization, we needed to look at at least three options and we need to convince the senior leaders as to why we're recommending CYPHER LEARNING. We were looking at two other providers, however, I'm not privy to the other two as I came on board when the contract was already signed.

The solution is cloud-based. We access it through the browser, and it is my understanding that it's in the cloud.

I handle a team, and part of that team is one person who is the administrator and the content developer for LMS. Unfortunately, she left last year. Looking into the solutions rule engine was part of something that I told her to do. Therefore, we haven't fully maximized the rules engine. I'm currently hiring an e-learning manager, so that's something that will be on top of her task list.

I'd advise potential users not to be afraid to test out all the features. There are things that we never thought we would be able to do. Things that we were told were there were not exciting for us in the first place, however, the moment I tried to test it out during my free time, I would tell my manager and he would just tell me, "Okay. Go and try it out and see how the learners would react and if they liked it. Let's make it BAU as part of the process." That's why, this year, we're already looking at all these other features. My suggestion is don't be afraid to play around with it, especially the ability to sell the training program.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. The only feature missing that I've heard of is not lacking in the LMS. There's a Learning Experience, LXP. By default, the plans that they provide already include subscriptions to external learning platforms. That means a company does not have to create its own materials. They can trust that learners or employees would be really hungry to learn. Since it's linked to external learning providers, it's easy to provide all the resources to them without even creating your own. The only thing that you need to create in an LXP platform would be compliance courses, which are unique to every company.

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.

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.