About & Reflections

Author Introduction

Richard is a learning specialist working in the BC provincial health care sector. Previously working in higher education and collectively working in education for more than 8 years, the inspiration for this report stemmed from a needs analysis gap in how to impact substantive change on topics such as DEI in the workplace. The curiosity about Crescendo arose from their emphasis on AI-powered solutions and how they used microlearning as part of their approach to implement that change.

Final Reflections

After conducting this report, Crescendo has positioned themselves to be in a viable position moving forward. I believe their “agile” team that is supplemented with AI solutions gives them more flexibility to partner with organizations at the small and medium scale level, with some exceptions at the large organization level provided they do not have a robust internal solution. In the Canadian market they likely would have an advantage being a Canadian based company, impacting the terminology and how topics such as DEI are covered when comparing to their competitors with a more global perspective.

As an educator, Crescendo’s array of products is appealing in every facet of how they are promoted. The values of the company align with the services they offer and use data-driven solutions to make decisions at the micro and macro level. The personalization of their content fills a pre-assessment component that I personally have often found as a gap in DEI training, as most begin with a generic starting point, and a dashboard at the management level to measure learning outcomes is appealing. The largest selling point in my opinion is the ability to integrate into existing workflows such as Microsoft Teams and Slack, eliminating the need for organizations and more specifically learners to learn a new application.

I would only recommend investing in this company provided they are able to address questions about name recognition. Crescendo is a generic name used, in variation, by several companies that are not related to L&D and are already publicly traded companies. It was difficult to fully analyze a private company where it is standard practice for a SaaS company to not disclose pricing information publicly. Nevertheless, the next time Crescendo accepts investment from venture capitalists, angel investors or other areas, or should they decide to go public, there should be questions about how to generate instant name recognition for their market.