Superside cuts design time by 80% and leads an AI revolution using Sana

Challenge

Superside is the global leader in the AI-powered creative services industry, which is transforming by the minute as new AI technologies are introduced. These new tools not only facilitate and speed up the design process, but can generate creative assets in ways that were impossible before. To take advantage of AI, Superside needed an easy-to-use and visually engaging learning platform where they could quickly train creative talent on the best ways to use AI tools in their day-to-day work.

Outcome

Superside redesigned its creative workflows and leveraged Sana to quickly upskill its creatives on new AI tools, and more efficient ways of working. In just nine short months, more than 80% of Superside’s creators have completed AI training using Sana. And the process has inspired an internal movement—creatives are proactively using Sana to develop and share their own ideas, form interest groups, and deepen their learning journey.

Quickly upskilling creative talent to use AI tools

Over the last few years, the advent of generative AI tools has fundamentally changed the work of creatives—like designers, copywriters, and motion-graphics creators. It has dramatically shifted how we create our work, what we’re able to create, and our workflows.

As a creative subscription service, Superside prides itself on being forward-thinking with tremendous talent inside the company. Early on, we saw the significant opportunity we had to apply these new generative AI tools to our creative work, and how we operate as a company.

We collaborated with internal experts from our innovation team to redo our design processes, and develop new workflows for our designers, copywriters, and motion creatives. Our ambition was to improve our creative processes to be more efficient, and make sure the work had a higher degree of creativity.

Having a clear understanding of how these processes would look was one thing. But upskilling more than 250 creators in this new way of working was a whole different challenge. I knew we needed to find a way to quickly create learning journeys, and efficiently train our staff in how to use these AI tools. And more importantly, do so in an engaging way that would inspire them to essentially transform their entire creative process.

Superside is a fully remote company and we have no physical offices, so we had three criteria for our new learning management system (LMS): content creation needed to be quick and easy; the learning journey had to be automated and customizable for different groups; and it had to be easy to integrate with other creative tools we already use.

In my first demo with Sana, I knew I’d found what I was looking for. Sana had all of the tools and functionality I needed to efficiently design and evaluate the learning experience. And the platform had a user interface and design that was so engaging and beautiful, it was easy for me to choose Sana as our partner.

The single space for upskilling creative talent

Generative AI tools have completely disrupted our industry, and adapting to this new reality was our highest priority. We needed to enable our staff quickly to not just evolve as a company, but to stay competitive. For us, the alignment of business goals and learning objectives were crystal clear. And in my experience, this alignment results in a more efficient and impactful learning process.

With that insight, we designed and launched an internal training program called AI Enhanced. It’s a six-week foundational journey, where our creatives learn how to use generative AI tools in their client work. Through Sana, we are able to offer different courses based on the skill level of each creative when they begin their training, and based on whether they’re a copywriter or designer.

The program has three main sections. They first learn the basics—things like how to write prompts for content creation, images, and motion graphics. The second section is called a “mini mission” and it’s popular. We have the creatives practice generating images on Midjourney, using the tool to insert an AI-generated image of themselves into a scene from their favorite movie. They could be sitting in the classroom in Harry Potter for example. Then they share their creations on a Slack channel, where they get valuable feedback (and encouragement) from colleagues.

Lastly, they combine everything they’ve learned and use the AI tools to create assets for three practice projects, with briefs that resemble real customer projects.

Even though creatives use other design and content creation tools for the project, Sana is the hub. It’s where we host the course materials, briefs, and informational videos. Using the Exercise feature, they upload videos and their final assignments onto the platform. It is automatically assigned to an internal AI coach, who can then review the final submission, grades it and share feedback.

Creatives can also self-enroll on Sana for weekly coaching sessions using the live feature to get personalized feedback and guidance. The AI-generated summaries are particularly helpful, allowing them to come back to and reference key points in a session.

We’ve had more than 200 designers go through the training in just nine short months, and managed to create real traction around adoption of a new technology, which is hard to do sustainably.

The results have been astonishing for us. Since we’re a creative subscription service, it’s important that we create great work efficiently and scalably in order to serve more customers. Our creatives are doing their work much faster and more efficiently. There’s been an up to 80% reduction in the time it takes to create designs. If you think about replacing a photoshoot with great photorealistic AI-generated photography, that results in huge time savings. And we give that value back to our customers; they don’t have to pay for as many creative hours anymore. We’re making our efficiency gains their efficiency gains, and it’s allowing us to build stronger client relationships.

Lightning-fast creation and time-saving admin

Superside has 740 employees, but our learning and development department has just three people. We need to be mindful of how we spend our time, and that we spend it on the highest-value priorities.

When I started at Superside, we were using a different LMS system, which was extremely clunky. It had a complicated authoring tool few people knew how to use, and that made it impossible for anyone outside my team to create learning material without extensive training or experience.

Now many teams are quickly creating and uploading learning content into Sana because the interface is so simple to navigate. My team has created a basic design layout to follow, and these teams simply log on and start creating content. It’s intuitive for them to create and add slides; you don’t need to be a designer to create material that’s engaging—the platform does that for you.

Plus Sana integrates easily with other creative tools we use, like Figma, which allows people to incorporate existing material from other platforms into new course material. For example, we have subject-matter experts who are creating courses and training material by themselves on topics related to their area of expertise. A good example is our Creative Excellence team, which has created a course on scoping and quoting customer projects by themselves. Or one of our creative directors building “micro-learnings for web services.”

We’ve gotten such positive early engagement on the platform when it comes to content creation because of how great the user experience is—the design, the feeling of using it, how easy it is to build courses from existing material. I believe this is why there’s been such a quick uptake of Sana among my colleagues. People just feel lucky working with it.

One feature my team appreciates is how quick and easy it is to make changes to the layout or content. We’re constantly iterating and improving on the content we’ve produced because this space changes so quickly. We could create a course and within weeks we need to make updates because the generative AI tools we’re teaching everyone to use have changed or been updated. We need to stay nimble, and Sana allows us to do that.

It’s also making our admin duties easier. I can easily create dashboards, so I can follow the progress of individuals and groups. It allows me to see who is where in their learning journey, how many people have completed the training, and the overall progress we’re making toward our overall goals. I also need to send progress reports to key stakeholders at Superside, and the platform allows me to share dashboard access with one click, saving me a lot of time.

Cost efficiency is also a bonus. We’ve been able to discontinue our subscription with a separate authoring tool because Sana has built-in authoring that’s much easier to use.

Using Sana has changed the job of my team. Instead of creating the content ourselves, we can simply focus on effectively implementing learning journeys and bringing them to life.

Streamlining onboarding for new sales hires

We’re not just using Sana to train our creatives; we’re also using it to streamline our onboarding process for new members of the sales team.

Before, we hosted group onboarding sessions for new sales hires, during which sales-enablement managers would train them on our processes and how to use our sales tools. It was a manual process they would repeat over and over with each new group. And if a new hire missed the group session, a manager would have to onboard them one-to-one. It took a lot of time and was inefficient.

Now, instead of purchasing a separate sales-enablement tool, they’re using Sana to streamline and scale the onboarding, and create a more structured approach. New hires are going through an asynchronous onboarding session to learn about how to use and set up our sales tools in Sana. And all of the material is there to revisit if they need it. We also use Sana for our general onboarding for all new hires, and for those who miss the live sessions, we can assign them the relevant content for them to catch up and complete.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how helpful Sana has been to so many other parts of the business. Finding the right tool that would help us implement the AI enablement program was our top priority. But now we’re finding so many use cases for Sana—customer success, onboarding, sales enablement—beyond what we initially imagined when we chose them as our partner.

Building a culture of AI learning

One of the most surprising developments with Sana is that in just nine short months, we’ve created a cultural shift around learning and inspired a movement within our company. Our teams are now proactively using Sana to develop and share their own courses and learning journeys.

We're proud of the meaningful strides we’ve made in changing how our people approach their work using AI. Change is never easy, and large-scale initiatives often meet resistance. But it’s amazing to see that after hundreds of creatives completed the learning journey facilitated through Sana, we’re now seeing internal communities that are organically being formed to share their knowledge with each other. Like creative teams that are sharing useful AI workflows with one another. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of on this journey.

It goes to show that we’ve successfully cultivated a vibrant culture around AI, fostering a genuine curiosity about how to use these tools effectively within the company. I believe that without Sana's highly engaging learning experience, we would not have achieved this transformation in such a short time.

I've always been skeptical of LMSs. While they can provide ideas and guidance, true learning doesn’t occur within an LMS. Knowledge only becomes valuable when it’s translated into practical skills. The focus should always be on applying knowledge to develop real-world capabilities. Sana achieves this goal because it’s so much more than an LMS.

Its simplicity encourages users to immediately apply new knowledge, and provides opportunities to review, practice, and refine their skills. I’ve witnessed the magic firsthand: employees going through courses in Sana, recording themselves applying what they’ve learned, and sharing their progress with coaches in Figma. This process clearly demonstrates that the learning journeys are leading to tangible, practical skills. Exactly what we’re aiming for.

I’m eager to expand the use of Sana to more departments, and encourage a wider range of employees to share their expertise. This will make our internal knowledge more accessible across the company. And we’ve even had internal discussions about making our AI Enhanced journey, or a version of it, available to our clients. This could open new revenue streams, and position us as leaders in helping other companies harness the power of generative AI tools.

We are just beginning our journey with Sana, and I see immense opportunities. My experience so far has been incredibly rewarding. There’s nothing quite like seeing a clear connection between the efforts we make to educate our people and achieving our business goals. I’m excited about enabling even more team members to share their knowledge and leverage AI as a true learning partner.