Elevating Learning and Driving Business Success with Meaningful Badges

Executive Summary 

• Overview: Since 2011, Celonis has helped thousands of the world’s largest and most esteemed companies yield immediate cash impact, radically improve customer experience, and reduce carbon emissions. Recognizing diverse user needs, Celonis expanded training via Celonis Academy, offering structured learning paths aligned with specific business objectives.
• Intent: Celonis implemented digital badges through Credly to modernize issuance of credentials and sharing of them. This initiative aimed to enhance credentialing efficiency and meet evolving user expectations for digital validation.
• Impact: Achieving a stable 90% acceptance rate, Celonis's digital badges by Credly streamline verification processes for their partners and customers during hiring. Conversion of badge engagement metrics on LinkedIn into financial insights further supports Celonis in effective budgeting and strategic planning.
  

Since 2011, Celonis has helped thousands of the world’s largest and most esteemed companies yield immediate cash impact, radically improve customer experience, and reduce carbon emissions. Its Process Intelligence platform uses industry-leading process mining technology and AI to present companies with a living digital twin of their end-to-end processes. For the first time, everyone in an organization has a common language for how the business runs, visibility into where value is hiding, and the ability to capture it. 

To empower its users and enhance the usability of its platform, Celonis began offering training and uses Credly to badge within its learning academy. In this case study, we delve into how Celonis establishes a robust foundation and exemplifies best practices in digital credentialing. It illustrates how they leverage Credly badges to drive encouraging business impact and foster a culture of continuous learning.

Driving Awareness with Verifiable Badges

Celonis Academy was established to enable users to harness the platform's full potential for process intelligence and uncover untapped value opportunities. Over time, Celonis expanded its training programs to cater to different personas within organizations, developing structured learning paths that align with specific business objectives. Today, thousands of companies rely on Celonis to gain insights into their dispersed processes across various transactional systems, ERPs, and CRMs.

Recognizing the demand for training, Celonis also understands that individuals like to showcase their accomplishments publicly, be it completing learning milestones or passing certification exams. With technology evolving rapidly, there is a need to modernize credentials issuance to meet these expectations.

Driven by this, Celonis implemented digital badges through Credly. These badges allow learners to easily share and demonstrate their up-to-date and completed accomplishments online, generating visibility and awareness for Celonis and its offerings.

For customers and partners, the instant verifiability aspect of digital credentials is particularly advantageous. Digital badges provide a reliable way to verify someone's credentials, adding value to the hiring process for companies with specific requirements or criteria. Moreover, certain badges issued by Celonis, such as certifications, have expiration dates. This ensures earners stay updated with evolving industry standards and technologies to maintain their active status and credibility.

The success of digital badging at Celonis is underscored by achieving a target acceptance rate of 90%, with slight variations depending on the time of year. As users increasingly expect digital badges instead of PDF certificates, especially among the younger demographic, Celonis’s digital badging program effectively meets this demand.

The digital badging program offers substantial benefits not only to the learners but also to the organization, including:

• Financial Metrics and Planning: Celonis leverages Credly's exclusive customer resources to translate badge shares and views on LinkedIn into actionable financial metrics. This data empowers Celonis to allocate credits effectively and plan for future needs.
• Enhanced Marketing Value: Badge shareability on LinkedIn enhances Celonis's marketing efforts, significantly boosting brand awareness and enhancing the company’s reputation.
• Compliance tracking: The team at Celonis is also able to take advantage of Credly’s “Restricted” badges for tracking compliance training (e.g. Anti-harassment training). They harness Credly’s APIs to develop robust internal tracking dashboards and automated email communications, ensuring employees stay compliant and informed about their training requirements.
• Strategic Badge Analytics: Celonis utilizes Credly's built-in analytics to track badge data, enabling precise communication with badge earners and leveraging insights for strategic engagement.

The Foundation of Celonis’s Digital Badging Success

The effectiveness of the digital badging program is not only attributed to Credly's contributions but also to Celonis' robust foundation work.

1. Defining Badge Value

To start, they have established a solid governance model that meticulously defines which achievements deserve a badge and the value they provide to learners. With internal definitions and guidelines, they can ensure that badge issuance aligns with criteria such as significant effort, users’ business goals, marketability of the knowledge and skills, and the program's longevity. This framework helps determine when to issue a badge and when to decline a request.

Furthermore, Celonis evaluates badges' market value and marketability, particularly those tied to one-time events. They focus on badges that hold value beyond the company and can be recognized and valued outside the organization.

1. Clear Designations

Celonis Academy distinguishes between digital badges, providing ongoing education to clarify that completing a learning path differs from earning a certification. They use clear badge designations (e.g., Learning, Qualification, Certification) alongside Credly’s standard badge types with metadata.

For example, certifications involve exams to validate skills, with badges awarded upon passing. Masterclasses for partners, following prerequisite paths, issue "validation" badges for advanced achievement. With the collection features on Credly, learners can also easily view what badges they have received in each category.

1. Structured Learning Paths

Once the foundation is finalized, they have also broken down enablement efforts into smaller, more focused chunks. They developed learning paths—groups of courses designed to help learners achieve specific business goals or tasks, such as "Implement Object-Centric Process Mining" or "Build Views."

This targeted approach allows learners to progress through material that is directly relevant to their objectives, enhancing the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the training.

Challenges and Continuous Education

Despite its success, Celonis remains focused on navigating the challenges of distinguishing between training, certification, and badges for learners. Continuous education is essential to ensure clarity among employees, particularly new hires from other companies who may have different interpretations, emphasizing the ongoing need for clear messaging and education.

To facilitate this education, Celonis introduced badges through videos embedded in various sections of the Academy. These videos explain the Celonis badge framework and the benefits of digital badges with top tips for managing badges through Credly. Additionally, there is a dedicated page on Celonis’s website promoting digital badges, complemented by various marketing collateral documents distributed to customers and partners.

Celonis's collaboration with Credly has seamlessly integrated digital badges into its training and certification programs, significantly amplifying user engagement, enhancing brand visibility, and elevating the overall value of Celonis credentials. By embracing digital badges, Celonis has revolutionized its approach to recognizing achievements, underscoring its commitment to lifelong learning and the meaningful acknowledgment of skills. This strategic initiative not only sets a new industry standard for effective digital credentialing but also highlights Celonis's dedication to fostering a culture where continuous learning drives business success and personal growth.

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