Founder's Story
ProfitU™ Elearning Corporation is a 100% Woman Owned Business, founded in 2000 by an experienced corporate leader, Anne C. Graham. When Anne combined her expertise and drive to transform the status quo of stubbornly poor profits with her knowledge of adult learning practices and learning management systems, the result was a technology-driven solution that delivers proven, rapid results and sustainable improvements both to the corporate culture and the client experience.
The Inspiration
Anne began her career in sales, benefiting from the corporate universities of NCR and Digital Equipment, and saw firsthand how powerful an entire organization focused around a set of common languages and practices can be. That insight became a key foundation of ProfitU™.
Unfortunately for Digital Equipment, at the time the world’s 2nd largest computer company with almost $1B in revenue in the 1980s, the strong culture focused on revenue did not have a corresponding emphasis on sustainable profit. The revenues were not enough to offset the costly business practices designed to drive growth at all costs.
Anne had a front row seat as that once-great company downsized 120,000 people worldwide in less than four years and vanished in the early 1990s, its bare bones bought by a competitor that the company had never taken seriously.
As a new manager, Anne had returned her division to profitability for the first time in five years… but it wasn’t enough to even make a dent in the oncoming train wreck. The company wanted to grow sales even when they were losing money on almost every deal. The company found itself without the cash flow or financial strength to pay the bills or invest in growth. Instead, it tried to cut its way to growth by offering ever-deeper discounts as it repeatedly downsized the brilliant people who were its source of innovation, operations, and client care.
More than 30 years later, many business leaders are STILL stuck in those outdated, ineffective strategies.
"You can't shrink your way to growth"
Anne’s singular mission since then has been to eliminate the downsizings, rightsizings and layoffs that are the inevitable and damaging result of not being profitable, by showing companies how to profit NOT at the expense of their customers and employees, but by creating value for them.
Following the demise of Digital, she undertook successful turnaround opportunities in firms as diverse as pharmaceuticals, financial services, telecommunications, adult education, high tech and more, spotting several replicable patterns of success and honing them into tested and proven strategies, tactics, and tools.
Along the way Anne was inspired by the book Good to Great, especially the exponential growth of the organizations that were featured. Years later when she developed and started tracking the Return on People metric that has become one of the key motivational benchmarks of ProfitU™, she was appalled to find that many of those “Great” companies had fallen by the wayside, and strengthened her commitment to share with others the proprietary and highly successful methods and processes that she had developed.
“Only customers create cash flow, only employees earn it”
Shortly after hanging out her own shingle in 2000, she was invited to teach extensively at an award-winning MBA program as well as serve as Assistant Dean of the University’s Executive Programs division. As Anne saw students starting the explore the world of online learning, she undertook advanced studies in adult learning techniques, and was invited to deliver the "How to Teach” program to PhD students.
Yet, at the same time, she observed that the Executive Programs curriculum remained stuck in the classic world three-day seminars and bulky binders. It was clear that there was an opportunity to provide corporate learning in new and better ways, but the software to support online course delivery outside of major learning institutions was not sufficiently developed for commercial ease-of-use nor financially viable.
From 2007 to 2013, Anne wrote the #1 Best Seller, Profit in Plain Sight, which provided a step by step roadmap that included all the proven profitability strategies from her successful turnarounds. The early genesis of ProfitU™ was embedded in the comprehensive free training videos at the end of each chapter.
Feedback Anne received from readers made it clear that a more effective way of driving real results was still needed, as executives confessed that they were still having trouble engaging their teams and keeping them accountable to implement.
As Founder of ProfitU™, Anne has created a way to share her deep subject matter expertise and experiences to drive profitable customer and employee engagement in an adult-learning-friendly, online eLearning format that delivers transformational results.
Inspiration... Realized
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In 2016, ProfitU™ was moved to a world-class Learning Management System (LMS) so that every user can see exactly where they are at all times and work ahead or catch up as needed to accommodate vacations and business realities. This LMS has a built-in Q&A support function to provide more timely support.
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In 2017 an accountability tracking tool was introduced so that each individual could identify their “next steps” with deadlines, and be held to that performance standard with a simple visual management tool. ProfitU™ has been structured so that ANY accountability tool that the team is accustomed to using can be utilized, or participants can use the industry-standard option that is included with ProfitU™.
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In 2018, the full Take it to the Bank system and tools for tracking profit gains was added, to close the profit leaks identified by users who knew they were succeeding with ProfitU™, yet admitted they couldn’t track their gains because profit was being redeployed right back into operational expenses. Creating a better structure to crystallize the gains from ProfitU™ provided users with the ability to strategically deploy funds to finance growth opportunities for business, fund rewards for owners and employees, improve cash flow to strengthen the Income Statement, and/or to retire loans to strengthen the Balance Sheet. Owners seeking a high valuation for a liquidity event will benefit from ProfitU™.
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In 2020 and 2021, enhancements continue to be added to improve the user experience, ease of use, financial impact, and to provide useful analytics.
When you decide that its time for your firm to benefit from the transformational impact of ProfitU™, simply contact ProfitU™ ELearning Corporation and speak with one of our representatives to get your questions answered or to get started.
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In 2015, the Beta version of ProfitU™ was launched and early results spoke for themselves, with engaged employees learning new ways to deliver value to customers, eliminate costs, and ethically and sustainably drive profits to world-class levels. The early Beta version highlighted some important challenges to successful implementation, which have been addressed by subsequent versions.