On 7th July, we had the pleasure of welcoming L&D and commercial leaders who had helped shape Helix, our new AI skills intelligence solution, from concept to first release at the W Hotel in London’s Leicester Square. It was our opportunity to say thank you and mark the milestone in true cinematic style!
Now that I've had some time to reflect on the day (and the conversations I’ve had with our 5app insiders since the event), I wanted to share some of my thoughts on the launch so far.
If you missed the launch event, don’t fret! You’ll find all the details to join our early access programme at the end of this post, or you can get up to speed with my on-demand webinar here:
The main thing I’ve learned from conversations with 100+ L&D leaders, both in person at our launch event and online over the past couple of months, is that this is the perfect time to be launching Helix. In fact, it turns out that learning teams have been crying out for something like Helix for a long time, with one leader saying “I needed this three years ago”!
There’s no better feeling as a CEO than knowing you’ve hit upon a product that the market needs right now, and it’s clear that that’s what we’ve achieved with Helix. It’s not just another learning tool – it’s a real solution to a real problem, and it’s available right now.
The messiness of data has been a common theme of my recent conversations. Most L&D and talent leaders aren’t ‘data people’, and can’t be expected to become data analysts overnight (and let’s face it – most of us don’t want to!).
But data is important, and Helix is a great way for L&D teams to build confidence in the way they access data. There’s no need to dig through the numbers or spot the patterns yourself – Helix does it all for you, behind the scenes, fuss free. It surfaces skill trends for those notoriously hard-to-spot soft skills, and quantifies talents that can often feel intangible, giving businesses access to more actionable data insights.
One of the Core 9 skills is coachability, which is all about being receptive to feedback and open to guidance from others, and I’ve certainly put that into action since launching Helix! It’s been immensely valuable hearing the questions, ideas and suggestions of each and every person who’s taken the time to share them with us, from the very first mockups and concepts to a lively Q&A session in London to the living, breathing tool you see today.
Rest assured that we’re taking note of all feedback, and looking for ways to build your excellent ideas into future releases of the product. So many times, the team has said ‘That’s a great idea!’ about feedback from our 5app insiders, and your suggestions are genuinely helping us build a better product that meets your needs. You’re making our jobs a lot easier, and in turn, hopefully we’re doing the same for you!
There will always be a sense of trepidation around new AI solutions, but what’s clear to me is that Helix isn’t just a gimmick, or AI for the sake of AI. It’s not going to replace any human jobs – mostly because humans simply can’t do what Helix does, making AI a brilliant sidekick to any future-focused L&D team.
Bringing Helix into your learning tech stack will help make you better learning professionals, and will help make your people better at their jobs. You perform better, they perform better and your senior leaders finally recognise the value of the L&D department. Everyone wins!
It’s no secret that the learning platform market is extremely competitive. There are hundreds of solutions on the market of all shapes and sizes, and let’s face it: most LMS vendors talk about the same things in the same way.
With Helix, we’re doing something completely different. It’s a bold move, it’s a brave move, and we’re confident that the time is right to bring AI skills intelligence to the market. It may not be familiar, and maybe you need some time to get to know Helix and how it might help you. That’s no problem at all – we’re in it for the long haul, and we’re always open to questions and showing you what Helix can do to celebrate our new era. And on that note…
Want to see what all the fuss is about? I’d love to invite you to join our Helix early access programme, with a one-month free trial (no card details needed), preferential pricing and the opportunity to share your feedback on the live product.
Just fill in your details below and we’ll get back to you shortly to get you up and running.