Canopy Growth

Life before Elucidat

Keeping people up-to-date has not always been easy. Before they chose to work with Elucidat, Alex and his team used a learning management platform where courses were hard-coded using HTML and CSS. It tied them into one LMS and the content was often not SCORM compliant or fully responsive. This meant learning was frequently hard for their audience to access and didn’t provide the best experience. 

Additionally, alterations would need to be completed through a developer, creating backlogs and delays.

“A developer would have to make the change… we’d have a meeting… they didn’t like that change… have another meeting… It was horrendous. Time-consuming, inefficient and horribly expensive,” describes Alex.

So, Alex sought another solution that better fit Canopy Growth’s needs.

What they looked for in a solution

The L&D team at Canopy Growth has around 10 employees, but they “… have trainers in each department; they’re Subject Matter Experts, they know their content,” says Alex. This meant that, although there was a lot of knowledge in the company, if they had wanted to install a desktop tool on each person’s computer it would be prohibitively expensive. 

On top of everything, the L&D team needed visibility – or the ability to provide feedback – on the courses SMEs produced, a feature desktop tools couldn’t offer. The solution they chose would need to be online, collaborative, and easy to use. The team didn’t want software they would need to educate their trainers on how to use, so that time could be better spent producing the valuable content core to the company’s vision. 

They wanted a solution that would allow them to release learning quickly and that would allow them to collaborate across teams and even countries, while still maintaining a view of what is being produced.

By choosing Elucidat, Alex’s team found just that – and more. 

Implementing Elucidat

Initially, the focus was on rebuilding the 10 pieces of existing content that had been built in HTML and CSS to make them SCORM compliant.

The team at Canopy Growth achieved this in approximately 2 weeks.

This ease of use opened their eyes to even more possibilities achievable with Elucidat and they began to bring their trainers in.

“We’re finding that the onboarding rate for these new authors is extremely fast, so our learning and development department can focus more on our certified and accredited courses and these users can work on their individual, unique courses for their department and their demographic,” says Alex. 

Being able to onboard users quickly and create content collaboratively has meant that although the learning and development team is made up of 10 people, Canopy Growth now has over 50 users in the Elucidat platform. 

Collaborating made easy

Alex describes how the ability to create departments has been “extremely useful” in managing this cross-team collaboration. He can provide a real-time review of that course and make a change on that page that they can see in real-time. “I think that’s an extremely powerful, collaborative part of Elucidat that can’t be underestimated,” Alex shared.

Because of the multiple brands under Canopy Growth’s umbrella, another feature Alex and his team couldn’t live without is being able to create – and edit – a branded theme. These themes push any changes made across every course using that theme, no matter where it’s located.

“We’ve had courses that were developed for the Canadian medical market and we deployed them in Australia, on a different learning management platform… we did that in less than a week!”

The implementation of Elucidat has had multiple other benefits for the broader business, too. 

Business impact

Canopy Growth not only uses its content for internal education purposes, but for external compliance too.

“The ability to release courses and hold on to our proprietary content through Elucidat has saved us lots of money in the face of relationship or contractual changes.” 

Alex goes on to say how “external partners, budtenders, retail partners are all taking this education. It allows them to understand the product better, provide additional resources and knowledge to consumers, which does drive sales. With Health Care Providers, the more they know the more comfortable they are to prescribe medical cannabis, the better the entire industry is. We definitely have seen increases in revenue because of that.”

The real-time update capabilities of Elucidat have also had an effect on the company’s position as a knowledge leader within the industry, allowing them to quickly adapt: “The industry changes really quickly and if we’re delayed in updating those courses it becomes noticeable. The ability to update in realtime is important and ensures that our learners know they can rely on our resources.”

For those considering Elucidat

When asked if he had any advice for others considering Elucidat, Alex shared his thoughts:

“Elucidat allows us to adapt to the changing times of our industry without being constrained by locally saving things onto our computers, or needing to have multiple meetings over the final wording of a page or chapter of a course. 

Elucidat allows us to be more efficient and has provided us with functionality that the other platforms couldn’t – and at a competitive price-point. I can’t think of any other way that another program could do it as well… it can’t be understated how important that is in our environment now.”

About Canopy Growth

Canopy Growth has a presence in over a dozen countries across four continents. They have over 3,500 employees, plus a network of suppliers, vendors, and healthcare practitioners. Canopy Growth Corporation works tirelessly to advance the acceptance of cannabis by focusing on research, education, product development, and innovative production capabilities – presented through brands that adult consumers trust.

Alexander Brown’s team of 10 spearhead a key part of that mission. Learning & Development at Canopy Growth is central to everything about their vision. From international regulatory compliance, to destigmatizing the perceptions of cannabis – the content they produce helps internal and external stakeholders operate and function with the most up-to-date information they need in this dynamic industry.