Overview​

Samsung Electronics is a global technology leader headquartered in South Korea, operating across consumer electronics, mobile, semiconductor, and enterprise solutions. The company serves customers worldwide through a large-scale partner ecosystem and operates integrated learning platforms to support both internal employees and external partners.

Samsung Business Academy (SBA), one of its primary learning platforms, supports approximately 170,000 active external users to train and become qualified in working with Samsung solutions.

Samsung follows a simple business philosophy: to devote its talent and technology to creating superior products and services that contribute to a better global society. To achieve this, Samsung sets a high value on its people and technologies. The provision of high-quality training opportunities that support people to be their best is therefore a fundamental strategic priority for Samsung.

Challenge​

Samsung sought to enhance and modernize its SBA, by introducing formal, verifiable digital credentials that recognize and incentivize training completions in any Samsung partner context, in any Samsung partner market.

Primary challenge

Samsung needed a scalable way to formally recognize and validate the skills of its global repair partner ecosystem. Although annual training and recertification is a mandatory requirement, it was challenging to track and enforce, creating quality and compliance risk for Samsung. Therefore, a pull strategy was required to encourage training completion. Digital credentialing was identified as an effective way to incentivize the partner ecosystem by providing a verifiable directory of qualified repair engineers and increasing the visibility of Samsung-trained professionals in the external market.

Another successful use case has been to gatekeep strategic partner tiers and benefits by mandating training completions, as evidenced by a Credly outcome. Completing courses directly upgrades the partner’s status in the local reseller marketplace, allowing the partner to access exclusive support and build closer commercially beneficial relationships with Samsung.

Before state

• Limited formal recognition of partner skills following training completion

• Low engagement and visibility of training outcomes, reducing ROI

• Fragmented systems and reliance on LMS-based completion data without portable proof of skills

• Difficulty linking training completion to partner tiering, incentives, or quality outcomes

• Significant administrative burden and duplication of effort across teams and markets

Why Credly?

We chose Credly because it had a strong global footprint – we operate a partner network of repair engineers in over 70 countries, so we needed a credentialing service that was global and high trust. In addition, many of our partners were receiving technology-related credentials from other vendors via Credly, and they explicitly wanted all their earned qualifications to be visible in one place.

Solution​

Samsung integrated Credly into their SBA training platform, automating the issuance of badges for training completions and helping them to recognize the skills of their partners, maintain a publicly verifiable audit of their authorized repair engineers, track where their most skilled partners are, all while raising awareness in every market on the availability of a skilled Samsung-verified workforce and partner ecosystem.

Implementation approach

Working with Pearson, Samsung created a tiered system for recognizing different levels of excellence based on learning paths and training completions. Alongside this, Pearson’s Customer Success team provided support in activating an integration with the SBA Learner Management System via Cornerstone. This allowed for frictionless, immediate credentialling of Samsung partners – wherever they are in the world.

Results

Samsung established a scalable digital credentialing framework that enhanced the value of its mandatory annual recertification programs and created a foundation for stronger partner engagement, skills validation, and ecosystem growth.

While full value realization is ongoing, the initiative has already:

• Enabled formal certification of skills at scale in Samsung’s global partner ecosystem
• Reduced administrative workload of issuing and tracking certification
• Strengthened the linkage between training, recognition, and partner performance
• Recognized and rewarded Samsung trained talent that function as brand ambassadors and business opportunity generators in their direct interaction with Samsung’s customers

Outcomes​

Informed by Credly, Samsung drove partner performance, brand visibility, and training demand through verifiable digital credentials​

• 12000+ badges issued

• 4500+ badge earners

• 100+ countries with badge earners

• >85% badge acceptance rate in largest markets