EnkiCamp: how to up-skill your team with a 100X ROI

TL;DR: Enki is excited to announce its product for teams — EnkiCamp. In this post we’ll share how our “human experts empowered by software” approach works, and how smart companies are leveraging it to save time, grow faster, and improve culture, with insane ROI.

We’ve started with the ultimate team data training experience, which is remote, lasts 4 weeks, and takes no time out of work.

Our clients say that EnkiCamp gives a 10-100X ROI, not least because it frees up so much data analyst and developer time. We invite all marketing, operations, product teams or companies in general that want to leverage their data as effectively as possible to get in touch!

My story

When I started my first full-time job, the first thing I was asked to do by my manager was to learn SQL. I was working on product for Slide, a fast-growing startup (which was later acquired by Google). SQL would help me generate reports and access data by myself, without having to wait for a developer to help me with this.

I was given a book to learn from (these days it would be an online course), and told to get going. After 3 months I learnt enough SQL to generate basic reports. But with hindsight, so much was missing. I didn’t get enough practice. I didn’t get the -right- explanations, or ways I could leverage the concepts best. Nothing made sure I made progress as quickly as possible.

With a streamlined process, and with the right guidance from someone who isn’t annoyed or distracted by my endless questions — I could’ve achieved the same, but with a deeper understanding, in a quarter of the time.

EnkiCamp is the learning experience that I wish I had back then.

Save time. Execute faster.

So why did my manager care so much about everyone on our team learning SQL? Ultimately, it comes down to saving time — both in terms of getting access to data, and also developer and data scientist time saved for more complex tasks.

And since SQL is a great initial step into understanding code in general, another benefit is that the quality of conversations between developers and non-developers goes up. This leads to not only faster, but better decisions as well.

Red pill or blue pill?

Most companies “avoid” this problem by allocating all data tasks to data scientists or developers. Which is expensive both in terms of time and money. For smaller companies who can’t afford several data scientists, EnkiCamp is a simple way to access the benefit of data skills for their whole team.

For companies with large marketing, operations or analysis teams, this is a smart and cost-effective solution to up-skill their whole departments in a way that reduces costs and drives faster execution.

What the ultimate team course looks like

So if our goal is to build the ultimate course for teams — what would it look like?

At Enki, we know a thing or two about online and offline courses. Over a million people have used our app, and we’ve trained over 7,000 people in person.

From this experience we’ll share a little secret: an effective team solution can’t choose between online and offline; it needs both. It needs the benefit of convenience and cost, but ALSO the benefits of personalized guidance from a human expert. Someone who understands what the whole team needs, is on hand to resolve issues, and to guide proactively towards results.

Here’s what this team experience needs to have:

• Immediate impact. A focus on getting learners from “0 to productive” as quickly as possible — with practical projects that they’re applying to their work and adding value with straightaway.
• Customized guidance. Instructors and mentors on hand to motivate, guide and resolve problems. This is essential to making efficient progress, and to avoid learners distracting their colleagues unnecessarily as they learn.
• Your time is money. Remote and with a time investment from the learner of 2–3 hours per week max, to avoid disrupting the usual work week.
• Group-based. All learners makes progress together, and content and exercises make the most of learning with others.
• Team-based. The course leverages others in your company to ensure that the most impact is driven internally from the course.
• Super fun! The user experience must be fun and intuitive, and gamified in places where appropriate.
• Less than a steak dinner at Ruth’s Chris. It needs to be much more cost-efficient than any other option, including internal training.

From a learner’s perspective

Here’s the process broken out, from the point of view of Megumi, a product manager at Material World:

• I received a welcome email from the instructor, asking me to fill out a kick-off form to customize the course for me, and join the Slack workspace everyone would be part of.
• After a brief kick-off call, I received interactive exercises every weekday at the time I set, which I completed on Enki’s web platform. They all involved learning by doing.

• As I completed the exercises, the instructor saw my submissions, what confused me, and sent me a review of my work with customized feedback. I could also see questions others in the cohort asked related to the exercises, which sometimes resulted in interesting discussions.

• My instructor invited me to a weekly video call, where we talked about the exercises I was confused by. We also discussed and started to spec my practical project which I would work on later.

• Since my project focused on using SQL to be able to generate reports on Periscope, our discussions of the content focused on ensuring I could do this as quickly as possible. (Note: Periscope is a business intelligence tool, like Mode, Tableau and Looker, where you need to know SQL to generate reports.)
• In the last week I worked on the queries that would generate the reports I needed going forward with Periscope. I was super happy that I could now do this work myself, instead of relying on the devs in my team!

• The cost of the course was $400. Our company had a budget for this, and I think it was paid back in less than a couple weeks because I stopped distracting my devs for half of every Tuesday about the reports I needed!

Check out a more visual guide for how EnkiCamp works from a learner perspective here.

Tech + humans >> humans

The technology we’ve built over the last 2 years is what makes the process both seamless, and despite costing a fraction of a full-time instructor you’d hire, delivers the same or better results than that.

The tools we’ve built for our instructors enable them to see who is working on what, and flags who needs what kind of attention instantly. It also suggests discussion topics for each learner in real-time based on areas they should practice.

The slackbot we’ve developed automates a lot of things usually done by a “teaching assistant” — collecting surveys of needs, distributing exercises and collecting responses, and reminding learners to complete any outstanding exercises.

As a result, we’re able to provide an experience that feels like everyone in the team is getting 1:1, customized training. But at a fraction of the cost.

Learning that just works. With team-wide impact.

Online-only course completion is less than 10% for a good reason: the right motivation, problem-resolution, and application to work which you need from a real person that’s guiding you is missing. Because we’ve combined this in an effective way, by comparison, EnkiCamp course completion is over 90%.

But what’s more important is not just completing exercises, but the fundamental impact on the learner and their team in terms of practical application — which is a core part of the experience.

Join us!

Get in touch to discuss if EnkiCamp could be a fit for your team! Or forward this story to the right person at your company.

Our goal long-term at Enki is to build the continuous, technology-enabled learning coach of the future. Having an ultimate skills training experience for teams is an important part of this.

We‘re excited about getting this experience into the hands of every single team that wants to grow faster, and more effectively.