Meet the uQualio Founders! 

Knowing uQualio through the Lens of its Cofounders

The Background

The United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #4 is to “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” And we all know why it is important. It is because “quality” education is necessary to reduce poverty, increase income, ensure good health, and reduce inequality and injustice. Plus, it is what drives sustainable growth.

Given the importance of these topics in today’s world, uQualio was created. uQualio is a software as a service (SaaS)-based eLearning platform that can take any video, turn it into learning, and distribute it at the click of a button. Simply put, as long as the recipients (the learners) have access to the Internet and a browser, they can see the videos and learn from them. This makes the uQualio online training platform simple, effective, and very affordable for all companies around the world.

The Values of uQualio

uQualio is “a profit with a purpose,” so, we sell the online video training platform to companies that pay for it, offer it to startups at a reduced price, and donate the platform to NGOs. This is because we firmly believe that we need to make training accessible for everyone out there.

We need to ensure that people know what to do, so we can get more happy people and employees with more confidence, so that they achieve more each day, and go home smiling to their wives (or husbands) and kids, enabling them also to start smiling to other people, as we need more happiness right now.

Closing the Gap in Online Training

Highlighting the importance of an online video training platform, Christian says that uQualio is actually the platform that he wished he would have access to when he was working as a Development Manager. This is because with the uQualio digital training platform, instead of traveling around the world meeting people at the different Development Centers, he could have created videos with instructions that would be shown to everybody starting out on projects, getting the right message directly from the Development Manager – and not something handed down from the newest guy who just joined the Development Team to the next one.

This facilitates quality improvement and ensures communication as everyone knows that the guy on the video is just a click (on the feedback button) away from their questions or wishes. This is what the uQualio cofounders believe is important in training, i.e., closing the loop between the learner and the user/person who created the training.

Companies around the world have an increasing need to be able to train their own employees, the employees of partners, and end-users of their products (the extended enterprise). This has to happen in a digital environment, so that you distribute it to a large group of people instantly, making it easily accessible from anywhere in the world at the click of a mouse – and without the need to travel around to do face-to-face training.

Fulfilling the Need for a Video-Based eLearning Platform

There are some solid reasons why the uQualio cofounders chose to keep the online learning platform primarily video-based.

The Stats Say It All!

• More than 80% of learners prefer watching a video to accessing information or instructional content via text and audio.
• Employees are 75% more likely to watch a video than read a text.
• 75% of today’s employees are more likely to watch a video than to read emails, documents, or web articles.
• A minute of video content is equivalent to around 1.8 million written words for training retention.

Moreover, uQualio was tested by the Manufacturing Academy of Denmark (MADE) – the Danish national innovation and research platform for the manufacturing industry in Denmark. MADE compared different learning solutions for industry 4.0 training and they found that “video” is by far the easiest way to learn today.

With the HoloLens, people often get nauseous – and with virtual reality, they don’t actually see what they need to do – making things even tougher for them. Plus, we humans have evolved over millions of years by actually seeing somebody else do it and then we do it. So that’s why uQualio is video based as this enables digital peer-to-peer training.

There’s an increasing need for training. The world is becoming more complex, and you need to be able to act very agilely to train employees based in different regions and to do new jobs when the demand changes. Video eLearning is just perfect for that.

The Ease and Benefits of Video Learning Software

With the uQualio online learning platform, the idea is actually to make it very attractive for both companies and learners to use. A system that has also been built for compliance reasons, where it must be fun, and users must be motivated as learners to take training. This is why uQualio has added elements of gamification and interaction in eLearning – as we do on the uQualio platform.

uQualio is so simple that anyone with a video can be up and running in a matter of minutes. Just upload the video, add some text and a few questions, check the preview, and you are all set to publish to whoever needs to see your content.

The uQualio digital training platform uses widely accepted and known technologies, which makes it possible for anyone, from anywhere, to create their own learning and get it out there. Simultaneously, it makes it possible for any user with a smart device or a computer screen to see it on the go.

Any uQualio course or topic (video with quiz questions) also comes with the feature of a scannable QR Code, making it easier for you to direct people to the course or help video they need. This way, uQualio makes video e-learning even simpler.

Another great thing about uQualio is that there is no need to download from the App Store or Play Store. You simply need to follow a course link as long as you have an active internet connection. As a course creator, you can share your video, and uQualio will give you information about whether or not your audience saw your video, who watched what and when, etc. – basically, all the things you need to determine if you have created something that actually adds value and makes people’s lives easier.

uQualio as an Organization

With uQualio, the eLearning platform’s cofounders dream of creating a large training platform with worldwide accessibility in a distributed organization. The uQualio organization doesn’t have a huge workforce and that’s on purpose! This is because uQualio’s cofounders found that in the organizations they worked at previously, there was a lot of pseudo-work. Many people were not contributing positively to the company’s purpose.

The problem with such people is that they unnecessarily add to the overhead costs and that too significantly. So, to keep the platform at a really low cost, the founders have distributed the organization, with the Marketing Team sitting in India and the Development Team in Denmark. Moreover, the cofounders themselves manage the Danish office and the Sales Support. Besides, everything else is recorded on video.

uQualio makes use of its own system to guide users on how to set up a free trial, how the video eLearning platform works, or how you can brand it by adding your logos, videos, etc. And once you’re done and you like the result, you can either get a freemium version where you keep the platform until you really need it, or you can just sign up with a credit card. That’s how easy training and eLearning should ideally be.

uQualio uses its own platform to publish product news and webinars. So once a month, the online training platform invites all of its customers to meet up with its cofounders in order to learn about the platform’s new features and functionalities. uQualio has an amazing forum for its existing customers as well as the other people joining from uQualio to do questions and answers directly with the cofounders, who then distribute the recording on the uQualio video training platform.

The uQualio cofounders think that it is a highly effective way to listen to the customers, which allows for their voice to be part of the daily work, ultimately influencing what is prioritized in the next version and what features people would need in the longer run.

Both Hatla and Christian believe in interacting with customers because they think that the platform should be good enough to be used every day by them and the customers as it will solve their requirements in terms of training the users on how to best use the platform.

The Founders Academic and Professional Background

Hatla Færch Johnsen

Hatla is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and co-founder of uQualio. She holds a Master of Social Science with majors in Business and Psychology from Roskilde University. She has 20 years of experience working at large multinational corporations like IBM and Novo Nordisk. Her experience encompassed Internal Communications. Strategy & Management and she has been responsible for getting messages across from leadership to employees.

Hatla is a member of the Danish ICT Industry Association’s Policy Board for Female Tech Leaders.

At uQualio, Hatla oversees sales, marketing, and general operations. She is responsible for strategy, communication, sales, and daily communication with existing and potential clients.

Christian Bjerre Nielsen

Christian is the Chief Product Officer (CPO) and co-founder of uQualio. He holds a Master of Science degree in Electronic Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). He has over 30 years of experience working on both custom software and ERP software in large multinational organizations. Besides, he has experience in management, leadership & quality in the EdTech & FinTech sectors, which makes him extremely comfortable with most of the things happening in the software world today.

He is the chairman of the IT University of Denmark’s Employers’ Panel for Software Development and is also a member of the Danish ICT Industry Association’s policy board for Digital Competencies.

At uQualio, Christian mainly works with the Development and Support of the uQualio online learning platform. Besides, he also assists in presales and onboarding.