Learning drives product proficiency and profit at Jack Henry & Associates

Headquartered in Monett, Missouri, Jack Henry & Associates provides technology solutions and payment processing services for over 9,000 customers nationwide in the financial services industry.

Jack Henry & Associates has three corporate divisions and over 100 products to meet the needs of its financial services customers. Its complex product offerings make training a vital part of its business.

Before turning to Cornerstone, Jack Henry’s training materials weren’t standardized across products or divisions, leading to inconsistencies in the learning experience. To centralize training, they implemented Cornerstone Learning for employees and Cornerstone Extended Education for customers.

Security was also a key requisite for Jack Henry’s LMS. Their original system didn’t ensure compliance with financial services industry standards or provide their needed level of organization. With Cornerstone, however, Jack Henry’s training is standardized and secure.

With over 100 products across three divisions, Jack Henry & Associates has no shortage of training materials — enough to overwhelm customers and employees. Jack Henry decided to implement Cornerstone as a way to improve both the customer and employee experience.

And, because Jack Henry uses Cornerstone internally and externally, they’re able to test new features among employees before rolling them out to customers.

The impact of introducing Cornerstone was far-reaching, according to Vicki Ferdig, education services director at Jack Henry. It not only improved the learning experience for employees through better organization of assets but also transformed the customer experience and drove massive financial growth.

According to Ferdig, “Prior to Cornerstone, we didn’t like our customers receiving inconsistent training. For one product, they learned about it one way. For another product, there was a whole other process. This is one of the biggest challenges that we’ve overcome with Cornerstone Extended Enterprise.”

Jack Henry also expanded its business model to include a new revenue stream. Now, in addition to a training subscription and individual training units, they offer a training program via Cornerstone Extended Enterprise, which they call Jack Henry University. Thanks to this avenue for reselling its learning content, their training-for-profit business has grown from $500,000 to $3 million since 2010.

“Our customers can choose what learning content they want. They control it — they’re the admins of their own piece of Cornerstone. This has become a recurring revenue offering for us that we’ve been able to deliver through Cornerstone,” Ferdig says.

In addition to supporting training materials associated with Jack Henry’s products, Cornerstone Extended Enterprise also allowed the company to offer its customers timely content during the COVID-19 crisis.

When the pandemic hit and remote work became a reality, Cornerstone introduced Cornerstone Cares, a platform with free, timely courses, such as how to stay productive at home. By making these courses available to its customers, Jack Henry provided a valuable resource at an unprecedented time. “We were already creating pandemic-related content for our customers, with information on PPP loans, for example. We were able to add even more to those playlists with Cornerstone Cares so users could adapt,” Ferdig explains.

As Jack Henry continues to iterate its training offerings, Ferdig says the company plans to make them more personalized for users. Before Cornerstone, when Jack Henry customers logged into Jack Henry University, they saw all available training across products, even if they were only using one. But now, the company uses the platform to create user profiles so customers can access training that applies to them based on the products they use, further streamlining content that was once disorganized and tough to navigate.

“We’ve had some big accomplishments that we wouldn’t have without Cornerstone,” Ferdig says.