B2B businesses should build their commercial strategies around meaningful relationships with buyers through insight and content, Victoria Mellor of Kademy tells Piet van Niekerk.
- At Mx3 Barcelona, Victoria Mellor will share how Kademy challenges traditional training business models by offering renewable annual contracts, fostering long-term client relationships.
- AI’s impact on communication jobs and skills will necessitate continuous learning and training to adapt to evolving workflows.
- Kademy’s success lies in its deepened client relationships through data tools to identify and address skills and competency gaps.
Challenging traditional training business models, Victoria Mellor, co-founder of Kademy, UK, wants to ride the wave of AI disruption to change training methodologies in the digital space.
“When we started Kademy just as the (Covid) pandemic started to impact our lives in 2020, we set out to prove that training could be sold through a renewable annual contract. Traditionally, training products were cross-sold as one-off products. Still, we were determined to change this and make our business more sustainable,” reflects Victoria, who set up Kademy with her husband, Robin Crumby and a former colleague, Alex Hentschel.
They realised they needed to radically deepen their relationship with their clients by optimising data tools to improve skills and eliminate competency gaps.
The practical journey they embarked on is one that Victoria will share in an interview session with John Barnes, chief digital officer at William Reed, UK, during next month’s Mx3 Innovation in Media conference in Barcelona.
Victoria is one of our speakers at Mx3 Barcelona on 12-13 March. Meet her and others there. View the agenda, speakers and partners, and purchase your tickets here: https://www.mx3hub.com/barcelona.
Departing from the doom and gloom that many media companies have experienced, Victoria says the power of data and analytics can help businesses deliver their services to large global teams. AI will radically change these processes and workflows, not only for training businesses but for media in general, warns Victoria.
AI will disrupt every workflow and process
“We’re currently focused on AI in writing and content creation, mostly because they are the most accessible tools and have received the most publicity. But AI is going to hugely disrupt every workflow and process that exists today. This presents a huge education gap and a massive opportunity for learning and training. We are now riding on a wave of huge disruption, which is AI-driven, in jobs and skill sets needed in communication, which is fuelling our growth.”
During her interview session at Mx3 Barcelona, titled Earning from learning: Dive into the business of learning, Victoria will pay special attention to how B2B businesses should build their commercial strategies around meaningful relationships with buyers through insight and content.
Driven by a passion for training and development cultivated during her early career teaching English to business students in Madrid, Victoria’s entrepreneurial journey is marked by her pursuit of innovating the subscriptions and memberships business model. As a co-founder of Melcrum, an advisory and training firm catering to global communication leaders, she provided thought leadership and services to top-tier organisations.
After the successful sale of Melcrum to CEB (now Gartner) in 2015, she co-founded Kademy, a virtual training platform based on a membership model, changing the way global communication teams access development opportunities.
Her vast knowledge of membership models aided her in the successful launch and nurturing of Kademy. “I’ve always worked with functional leaders in large corporations, in our case VPs of communication. They like memberships that allow them to keep up with trends and best practices and network with people like them.”
Account management and service quality are very important aspects of the value proposition posed by membership models. “All the content, data tools, and training IP should be designed to be used by all members. Expect the type of thinking that you’d get from a top consulting firm, but at a fraction of the price, because members share development costs equally.”
