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Category: Client Success Stories

Organisations
2 min read

Academy Xi and Victorian Government Digital Jobs Program

Find out how Academy Xi and the Victorian Government are boosting business digital capability with Product Management.
Discover talented people with skills to grow your Product Management capability.

Since 2019, Academy Xi has been a Digital Jobs training provider, working with the Victorian Government. We are currently delivering the Product Management course for their Digital Jobs participants.

Digital Jobs connects businesses with talented, mid-career workers with up-to-date skills to build your business’s digital capability.

Through this $63.8 million Victorian Government program, businesses can select from this unique talent pool and receive a $5,000 wage subsidy for each 12-week work placement or entry level job offered to program participants.

Most participants are over 30 years of age, and more than half are women. They come from diverse backgrounds and bring experience from a wide range of sectors – and they’re ready to help your business thrive.

With the Product Management course, participants complete a 12-week industry recognised course delivered by Academy Xi.

Anthea Corrigan and Digital Jobs graduate John Austin at carsales.com Ltd.

“The people we’ve had through the program so far have brought their maturity, life skills, previous work experiences and a real passion to learn and to grow their career in a digital space. They’ve also been able to contribute to our business in ways we didn’t expect. It means they’re able to jump into a project and be a part of the team from day one.”
– Anthea Corrigan, General Manager of People Partnering at carsales.com Ltd.

Learn how your business can benefit from the Victorian Government’s Digital Jobs program at the next business information session on Wednesday, 8 February, 10-11am.

Participants of Academy Xi’s Product Management course benefit from:

  • Premium material built in-house, with inputs from industry experts working at MYOB, PwC and Deloitte
  • Practical experience that they can immediately use in their job
  • 60-80 hours of course content and activities over 12 weeks
  • Complete hands-on activities in each module
  • Build product backlog in Jira, create user stories and complete a simulated Agile sprint challenge
  • Understand what customers really want, and ship better designed and higher performing products
  • Dual focus on both product strategy and day-to-day product management skills
  • Gain the leadership and persuasion skills expected of today’s Product Managers
  • Hear real battle stories, case studies and tips from practising Product Managers

Learn more about our Product Management for Organisations training programs.

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Human-Centered Design
2 min read

Delivering fresh solutions through student projects

How Endeavour Group worked with Academy Xi's UX/UI students to support two design challenges within their business.

The Business: Endeavour Group is one of the biggest hospitality and retail brands in Australia – but it’s likely you’ve never heard of them. They’re an ASX 50 company, own Australia’s largest retail drinks network and operate more than 1,640 stores under flagship brands such as Dan Murphy’s and BWS.

The Challenge: Endeavour Group engaged Academy Xi UX UI learners to support two projects drawn directly from the business.

  1. The People & Culture team wanted to better understand how the Endeavour X talent brand is perceived in market.
  2. The Product team wanted to identify opportunities for improving the Dan Murphy’s chatbot.

The Outcome: The learning groups presented their ideas back to their clients within Endeavour Group. Both projects were received very positively. Not only did both internal teams find useful ways to integrate uncovered learnings, but the learning groups were also invited to present to the leadership team.

The projects were received brilliantly within the organisation. We were so impressed that we invited the groups to present to the leadership team. Their work had high visibility.”
– Vida Asrina, Design Practice Lead at Endeavour X, Endeavour Group.

Results – The Product Team:

  • Validation of existing ideas
  • Generation of new ideas for product for roadmap
  • Helped to see beyond current work and “blue sky” ideation, which is not always possible in agile delivery environment
  • Realisation of the power of diversity. Appreciating that people who are not as familiar with the Endeavour Group brands, products and services can bring a fresh perspective
  • Identification of fresh ‘problems to be solved’

Results – The People & Culture Team:

  • Improved understanding of the pain points Endeavour Group candidates experience when applying for a role
  • Enhanced knowledge of friction points Endeavour Group teams feel when acquiring talent
  • Found ‘quick wins’ available before the end of financial year and not currently on roadmap
  • Provided real life examples to connect the People and Talent teams to the users of their services
  • Access to emerging digital and design talent outside of traditional recruitment pathways

“What was really surprising was how aligned [the learner work] was with the future strategies of the business. Most of the concepts that the group came up with were already in our roadmap. It was superb validation from the perspective of fresh eyes”
– Renee Tilyard, UX Chapter Lead, Endeavour Group

Senior leaders within Endeavour Group also understand how challenging it is to build and retain a strong pool of digital talent. Talent pipelines require fuelling – particularly in digital and design given the current compacted labour market. Working with the learners directly gave hiring leaders the opportunity to see emerging talent in action and find opportunities to bring them on board formally.

“We want to make sure that we identify talent early – and that they know of us early”
– Vida Asrina

We believe in a collaborative culture. Our live pro-bono projects with learners can help you to ideate, test and ultimately solve your digital and design challenges. Contact us below to learn more.

Got any questions or feedback? We’d love to hear from you. Just fill in the form below or call us on 1300 098 165

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Human-Centered Design
2 min read

Unlocking user insights to deliver value

Academy Xi conducted market and user research to help understand FitFun’s true product and market fit.

The Business: Yifei Wang is the Founder and CTO of FitFun, an app that connects individuals and groups with a community of like-minded sports-lovers. Born out of the pandemic’s realisation that fitness doesn’t need to mean a gym, their goal is to help people to have fun and get in shape, one small step at a time.

The Challenge: Yifei and his team were struggling to understand whether FitFun was on the right track. They needed to better understand their target user including their needs, goals and pain points.

“We suspected we had a substantial potential user pool but, due to lack of proper research, we lacked the right insights.”

Without this deeper level of insight, they were having trouble moving confidently forward in refining their platform. They were keen to deliver value to their potential users but didn’t know how.

The Outcome: Academy Xi conducted market research to help understand FitFun’s true product/market fit. Through the collection of over 100 surveys, they were able to distill key insights around key components of their app. They could never have collected and synthesised this volume of data alone.

“Academy Xi helped us to synthesise the large volume of user research so that it properly informed our next phase of product optimisation. We now believe we are on the right path for high user growth.”

The Output:

  • Strong research and appraisal of product/market fit
  • Mined market data for clear, actionable insights
  • Created a strategy to strengthen user acquisition and avoid user churn
  • Analysed the user behaviour and conducted user testing
  • Conducted app feature analysis
  • Provided recommendations for UX UI optimisation

Reframe your business for long-term success. Academy Xi can help your business move into its next growth phase with actionable training and customised support. Learn more.

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Tech & Data
2 min read

Addressing the web-developer shortage

Developing an "education-to-employment" pathway for Junior Web Developers with Generation Australia.

The Business: Founded by McKinsey in 2014, Generation Australia is reimagining the education to employment pathway. They develop educational programs to prepare, place, and support people into life-changing careers that would otherwise be inaccessible to them. Malcolm Kinns (CEO) and his team support adults of all ages—whether unemployed, underemployed, or needing to learn new skills—can connect to the training, support, and jobs to change their path. On the other side of the equation are businesses who are experiencing a wide range of employer challenges – skilled talent shortages, lacklustre on-the-job performance, reskilling needs, and higher turnover in important roles. The Generation model seeks to spark lasting change not only in the lives of their graduates but in the employment system as a whole.

The Challenge: Generation Australia had identified web development as a huge growth area in terms of future employment prospects. Although keen to see a program in the software engineering space brought to life, the team were looking for the right partner to help them achieve this.

“We were looking for a partner who had expertise in the domain itself but who was also very values aligned. We needed them to be able to deliver a quality program but also understand deeply the purpose behind it – and Academy Xi fitted both of those bills”

The Outcome: A co-designed technical training program for Junior Web Developers. The program allowed for the hallmarks of an Academy Xi learning experience to shine through – hands-on projects, access to mentorship and employability skills development – whilst being made accessible to a new audience. The program also crucially includes support in securing and training for interviews to ensure that all graduates gain meaningful employment after they complete the course.

“All of our programs with Academy XI are 70+ on net promoter score (NPS) scores which isn’t just industry-leading but a long way ahead of benchmarks”

The Results:

  • The number of people who have been supported into tech careers has increased has increased year on year.
    • 2020: 150 people completed the program
    • 2021: 400 people completed the program
    • 2022: 800+ people expected to complete the program
  • Consistent 70+ NPS scores which is well above benchmarks for the education industry
  • The earning capacity of graduates in some cases increased x5 as a result of completing the program and entering a growth employment area

“We are incredibly proud of how we have ensured a supportive environment for our participants. The program has been life-changing. This is something we can be genuinely proud of because the impact, not only on the individual but also on their family and community, is massive.”

Work with a partner who can support your upskill or reskilling plans at scale. Contact us to learn more.

Got any questions or feedback? We’d love to hear from you. Just fill in the form below or call us on 1300 098 165

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