The organization rebranded from PLATO Learning to Edmentum literally overnight in November of 2012. To welcome the onset of Edmentum, senior management also revamped the sales organization structure to now include BDM’s, TM’s, AM’s, and a Sales Support staff. Their new model also removed RVP development in the field, and replaced continued field development with “Sales Coaches” that have not actually worked in a BDM role for Edmentum. This new structure virtually eliminates continued territory understanding, as senior management is no longer actively involved in field sales day-to-day client and territory challenges.
The company is now experiencing a serious loss in revenue as a direct result of an overnight rebranding and corporate restructure. Typically an organization such as Edmentum might want to consider soft-launches in separate regions of the US in an effort to gradually roll out new company awareness, branding, marketing etc. This was not the case with Edmentum. Competitors like K12 Aventa, Apex, Edgenuity, and Pearson Novanet seem to now be capitalizing on Edmentum’s mistakes, and Edmentum has struggle to regain recent clients that have been lost to competition. Now only 5 months into the new company model, significant client loss has caused the organization to take extreme measures by placing several employee’s on performance improvement plans (PIP’s), and the most disheartening part of the recent wave of PIP’s is that several of Edmentum’s employees actually went to “President’s Club” as recently as this past Fiscal year. To add insult to injury, the PIP’s were designed to end prior to the education industries buying season primarily so Edmentum can recuperate some losses by not having to pay commissions throughout the influx of Q3 earnings. The recent wave of PIP’s spells out “zero” employee loyalty, even for previous top performers.
Edmentum is now officially considered a “burn-and-churn” corporation with little to no regard for employee morale and overall company happiness. As investment organization Thoma Brava continues to pull all of the strings from the top down, unfortunately CEO Vin Riera has lost his way, and consequently is experience revenue and talent loss. Additionally, the education space is smaller that Edmentum might think, which translates to “stay the heck away” from such education companies like Edmentum.
Rome was once a strong city, but eventually crumbled, and Edmentum seems to be following suite at a rapid pace.
