Digital Boost - The Learning Management System that Benefits Thousands

Problem

How could the New Zealand Ministry of Business (MBIE) , Innovation and Employment (MBIE) help small and medium businesses to embrace digitalisation, digital tools and new online business models building greater business resilience?

Solution

MBIE contracted academyEX as a key partner for the design and build of a full service education offering , including licensing our learning management system, the creation of learning content and a support team of digital experts to answer customer enquiries.

We licensed and made some tailored modifications  to our existing learning management system (LMS) to enable tens of thousands of business owners to log on to a dedicated learning website and instantly learn via hundreds of  online videos supported by a robust learning and collaboration platform. The simple user design and intuitive user experience enabled  business owners to access and learn new knowledge any time, any place and as needed.

Our solution included many hundreds of how-to, and expert advice videos, and real world case studies created and developed specifically for the small and medium business audience. From the initial subject research, to the script writing for the how-to videos, from the user experience to the video editing, language captions and data management, we provided MBIE with a full wraparound solution to meet all their needs.

Through licensing our learning management system, MBIE was able to reduce risk and cost of building a new learning platform, while being able to contract a single partner to also develop all the content and learning modules needed to support business owners to adopt digital.

Digital Boost provides a full wraparound learning experience for over 58,000+ small business users, many hundreds of educational videos and learning resources, bi-weekly live online workshops, online conferences and a support team who are able to answer any digital question 11 hours a day. Digital Boost is an example of how the New Zealand government was able to leverage existing knowledge and an off-the-shelf technical build to launch a successful product into the market within 8 weeks of signing an agreement.

Here is what the independent evaluation research found 18 months from go live: 

• 89% of users intend to continue using the platform 

• 23% of all businesses report improved revenue after using Digital Boost, for those who engage weekly with the platform this lifts to 39%

• Impact metric: 55% of Digital Boost users felt optimism and hope many times or all the time in the past two weeks. This is 17% higher than the national average in June 2022.