Contentstack empowers users with its multimodal Academy powered by Headless CMS

Contentstack was looking to break away from the rigid structure of a traditional Learning Management System (LMS). Educational resources were heavily reliant on an LMS that was focused on rigid internal enablement courses rather than offering broader external education for customers, prospects, and partners. 

“Thought leadership and external education has never been more important,” John Kelly, Director of Product, Contentstack, said. “Any time an organization is looking to make a technology purchase, change management and getting teams up to speed is an important consideration. We wanted to immediately provide that value in a flexible way, offering a self-serve Academy that shortens time-to-value.”

The team had a vision for an open platform where anyone could search and find the content they were looking for, without the need to log in or enroll in a multi-stage course or certification. When researching what was available in the market, there wasn’t a good fit, and many LMS options required workarounds to meet the team’s vision, or had too much additional functionality that wasn’t needed. 

“We wanted to offer both types of learning, traditional courses and learning journeys — but also a library experience where learners could search and find what they needed quickly and easily,” Matthew Pizzi, Director of Product Academy, Contentstack, said. “I realized it was a good opportunity to build something on Contentstack that could serve the purpose for our Academy, and also showcase our capabilities and share what customers can achieve with the platform.”

Using its own headless CMS, Contentstack has launched the Contentstack Academy, creating easier access to learning, streamlining the learning journey for all users, and enabling and empowering customers to be more successful with Contentstack and composable technology. 

While learning content built on their previous LMS was often text-heavy, the Contentstack Academy provides users with multimodal content including video, augmented by text or images where it’s helpful for the learner, delivering learning in the format that will have the greatest impact. By creating the content using a headless CMS, the content is portable and can be used elsewhere, such as in-app or on the Contentstack blog. “Without it feeling disconnected, it lives outside of the Academy and can be used however it’s needed,” Pizzi said. 

The process of building new learning content has also been optimized at the back end. “All courses have a similar scaffolding behind them,” Kelly said. “Individual lessons often have the same structure repeated over and over, so an LMS is the perfect use case for composable technology. Content is repeatable and replicable and shareable, so it’s simple for those who are not technical to spin up, modify or manage new content or existing content.” Previously teams needed to submit a ticket to request new content or content changes. Now roles and access permissions can allow stakeholders to take responsibility for a learning track or even a specific element of a course, and make those changes autonomously. 

An LMS has become a competitive edge for Contentstack, with the bonus of being an ongoing project that showcases what composable technology can achieve for other organizations. “As competition rises, and your innovative technologies become table stakes, being a source of truth in your industry is a key differentiator,” Kelly said. “Companies that educate and teach to provide business benefits like shortening time-to-value, and demonstrate on the ability to deliver those needs — those are the ones who will retain the eyeballs and retain the business.”

Next steps for the Contentstack Academy is leveraging additional features of the platform to improve the learner experience, including adding transcripts, and experimenting with personalization and learning paths to group together relevant content. The Academy team will also be providing more information into search results, supporting learners in understanding what kind of learning journey they are entering — from a quick answer to a more extensive course. 

Key wins from the new Contentstack Academy include:

• A multimodal learning experience: The Academy leverages blended learning capabilities to optimize learner experience, providing education and thought leadership in the format that suits the need. 
• Education as a lead magnet: As content does not exist within a gated LMS structure, prospects and learners find the Academy through organic search, opening a new lead generation tool for Contentstack.
• Simplified content management: Content authors can now atomically and scalably create, structure and manage content and the relationships between them with fewer resources and greater autonomy.