Frontline employee training provider Axonify has announced the acquisition of Atlanta-based MLevel, a digital learning platform with clients in food service, contact centres, retail and financial services.
“From a not-so-far distance, both Axonify and MLevel have watched each other grow in our respective learning niches and have admired each other’s strengths,” said Axonify CEO and co-founder Carol Leaman. “As our businesses further aligned, we believe this is the perfect time to bring MLevel’s customers, employees and its product prowess into the Axonify family.”
In an interview, Leaman said the deal strengthens Axonify “on just about all fronts.” It provides the Waterloo-based company with a number of major customers, additional product features and experienced talent from MLevel.
“From a consolidation perspective, it makes us stronger together to compete against others.”
Financial terms were not released.
The acquisition adds 10 employees to the Axonify workforce, bringing the company’s total number of employees to more than 200. Most are located in Waterloo, with some in Toronto and a few in Europe and the United States. Axonify plans to hire an additional 25 employees over the coming year, Leaman said.
Founded in 2011 and initially based in the Communitech Hub, Axonify now has more than 160 customers in more than 150 countries. Big-name clients include Walmart, Levi's and Merck, among others.
Axonify’s online learning technology is designed to get “frontline employees ready for anything with a training and communications solution that actually works… because the experience is fun, fast, personalized and designed to make critical information stick.”
Training is delivered in “bite-sized bursts” embedded in the flow of work, for just a few minutes a day, which helps employees retain the learnings, the company said.
Looking back over the past year, Leaman said the COVID-19 crisis dried up the pipeline for new business during the first five months as potential clients tried to figure out a path through the pandemic. However, existing customers made full use of Axonify’s employee communications and learning technology, and new business began to pick up later in the year.
“All things considered, we had a great year and hopefully this year will be even better,” said Leaman, who also spoke to the pandemic’s impact on Axonify during an episode of Communitech’s True North TV last November.
Looking forward, Leaman said the pandemic has “woken the world up to the fact that being able to communicate and train people online quickly is a very viable and effective way to get knowledge and information across.”
