Learning & Development Is Much More Than A Support Function

I still remember the day. I was in the middle of an initial call planning cycle for our first multi-million dollar client, when my country head walked up to me. He asked, “Would you like to move out of the role of a delivery leader and take up our learning & development department?” With a masters in economics, 15 years of decent career in sales and marketing analytics, a series of successful transformations while outsourcing multi-year, multi-million dollar commercial operation deals and absolutely no experience or education in learning & development, I thought he must be kidding! He was serious. I said “okay”, more out of habit than anything else – besides being a fabulous manager, he has been an inspiring mentor and I find it hard to say no to him.

It’s been 4 years since and I have never looked back. Axtria Institute (AI) was born in the summers of 2013 with a very clear mission to “build careers” – both by providing the best trainings in the analytics industry and by providing the best platform for becoming an Analytics Guru by creating & delivering those trainings. Now best is easier said than done and when it comes to analytics, it gets even more complicated!

At Axtria, a good analyst by definition is an amalgamation of domain knowledge, analytical problem solving and technology skills – three seemingly distinct areas of specialization. Not to mention the several softer skills that come into play when dealing with clients across the globe. This is when I leveraged my delivery experience to chalk out varying career paths and associated programs that mixed and matched from these seemingly different areas to create meaningful learning experiences. This holistic experience provides for a ready pool of relevant profiles on all our business engagements, but more importantly it provides a rock solid foundation for building a career in analytics. A dotnet programmer working on applications within the Life Sciences vertical, for example, will not only be proficient in dotnet programming, design & algorithms, web technologies & best practices in application development, but s/he would be certified in several other areas – foundational concepts in the pharma domain including the industry’s glossary, typical business problems & trends, Axtria solution offerings etc so that s/he can have meaningful conversations with her / his clients; exposure to various functional areas such as response modeling, sales force strategy, sales deployment, field reporting, etc as well as commonly used datasets so that s/he can relate to the business applications that s/he is working on; soft skills such as storyboarding, project management, business communication etc in order to make it a delightful experience for the clients. Add to this the various knowledge sharing sessions that they go through during the course of the year to catch up on the latest in internet-of-things, data lakes, social listening, etc.

Likewise, at the trainers end, “a best platform” comprises of an opportunity to design and deliver programs that are a class apart from the usual uni-dimensional specializations. AI provides them a podium to – on one hand, dive deeper into their subject matter to carve out best practices, short cuts and advanced techniques and on the other, take a broader perspective to pen down the big picture& how each piece fits into the puzzle. Backed by the right policies, incentives & train-the-trainer workshops to take them through the ranks of AI Trainer, AI Mentor and finally an AI Guru, the end product is an expert with proven leadership and consulting abilities.

Whether it is in designing meaningful programs, or in crafting relevant trainer workshops, or the more recent “Client specific Schools” where for our strategic & multi-year engagements we have engagement specific programs to onboard trainees on client business (portfolio, mandates / imperatives, data sets, functions, systems, workflows & synergies) - I find myself applying my delivery experience in everything that I do! This is of course not to say that relevant education & experience does not matter. However, L&D for sure, is much more than a support function and more so, in analytics. It is extremely critical for the L&D function to understand & relate to the business to be able to institutionalize a culture that allows for holistic long term careers, stronger client relationships and scalable solution offerings. Today, we have clients who want us to help them build similar training schools for their organizations and we have potential hires who want to join Axtria for the opportunity it offers in building a world class career in analytics!