To sustain in the competitive world with cut-throat competition one needs to keep learning continuously to avail the advantage over others. Traditional methods of skills development no longer meet the needs of the ever-changing work environment. This leads to the learning decline in the workplace. Recognizing this, Geneviève Desautels decided to find a technological solution to this learning decline in the workplace. That’s where illuxi, an interactive e-learning platform, came in. As a CEO, Geneviève is steering the ship of illuxi.
Geneviève worked in human resources for over 15 years before starting her professional coaching company. Through her journey coaching executives and managers in 300+ companies, she noticed that companies had less money and less time for learning and development efforts. An urge to bridge this gap led her to incept illuxi.
Promoting Lifelong Learning Opportunities for All
At illuxi, its team members focus on promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all, as they noticed a learning decline in the workplace, mainly because organizations do not see the direct benefits of investing in their workforce development. illuxi’s AI-based learning solution will change that, by providing the data needed for organizations to further invest in their workforce education.
The main reason Geneviève went about building a tech business is to offer inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, as stated in the United Nations 2030 agenda. She believes that technology can give power back to the people through education.
On top of that, there’s a little part of Geneviève that fights to instigate change and allow daughters to grow up in an entrepreneurial ecosystem focused on equality that includes female entrepreneurs in technology.
Competing With MajorPlayers in e-Learning
Geneviève joined Women in Cloud in 2020 because the opportunity for community appealed to her personal goals. She wanted to meet and learn new things from fellow women entrepreneurs. Joining the Women in Cloud community helped her come up with creative ideas to improve illuxi’s business model and lead illuxi to success.
Since graduating from the Women in Cloud Microsoft Cloud Accelerator, illuxi has been able to more effectively target large companies with many employees to train. To offer training programs to companies with 1000 employees or more, one needs to have as many optimization processes already in place as possible, which Women in Cloud helped her to achieve. Women in Cloud allowed illuxi to compete with major players in e- learning, especially with the opening of a new office in Europe in September 2020.
In addition, Women in Cloud allowed illuxi to stand out among the official Microsoft partners in the United States and solidify its partnership with Microsoft by obtaining the “cosell” badge, which means that Microsoft invests directly in the sales efforts of illuxi’s technology solution.
Moreover, illuxi gained more than 10,000 new users and increased its sales by 50% in Quebec. In addition, it made its very first major sales in Europe (Luxembourg) in early 2021. It is targeting three $100,000 projects in Europe by the end of the year. To this end, illuxi is already in discussions with major partners in Europe (including the global giant Decathlon) who are interested in its Cloud technology.
Tackling Strategic and Tactical Challenges
Women in Cloud made it possible for Geneviève, as a CEO, to reflect within a group and tackle strategic and tactical challenges that directly affect her company and, more broadly, female entrepreneurs in technology throughout the world. It was the desire to meet people (men and women alike) who understand her reality as a female entrepreneur in technology that brought her to Women in Cloud—and that’s exactly what led illuxi into becoming an international company.
Reaching Out to Women Entrepreneurs
One of Geneviève’s main goals with Women in Cloud was to reach out to women entrepreneurs from around the world to share and learn about industry challenges and about the positive role women can have in enabling women’s economic inclusion. Geneviève wants to contribute to increasing the participation of women in the tech sector because she believes that including more women in tech is proven to boost the economy with creativity and new ways of doing business.
Promoting Women’s Economic and Tech Inclusion
As the CEO of illuxi, Geneviève feels that Fortune 1000 companies play a major role in creating networks and determining the conditions for access to capital. They come up with potential solutions for women in technology to grow their companies while contributing their diverse talent to the global tech community.
Keeping a company up and running and profitable is a huge task, especially for women in the tech sector. In the context of economic inclusion, Geneviève believes that Fortune 1000 companies can create fluidity and quality of communication, allowing everyone to learn from each other. Collective power is the ability to combine talents, ideas, and forces to solve complex challenges or crises and to fulfil new goals. Women entrepreneurs can make it possible to reach economic inclusion by collaborating with each other, and Fortune 1000 can make this happen quickly. The collective power of people to create change, even as a virtual community, has never felt more meaningful and necessary than today.
Geneviève is of the opinion that women entrepreneurs should be able to fulfil the desire of female CEOs at Fortune 1000 companies to meet female entrepreneurs who are both mothers and entrepreneurs in technology and are aged 45 years or older. Fortune 1000 companies have to share the thoughts and experiences of women who were able to find investors and acquirers for women entrepreneurs to understand how they were able to keep the bigger part of their companies ‘shares.
Geneviève Desautels, CEO, illuxi
