Academy
Free tracks and quick reads for people who design queues, close, hire, and ship — paired with live CEDX apps.
Topics
Each track has multi-module depth. Quick reads sit alongside for one-sitting lessons.
Ledgers, close, cash - checklists you can run in a pilot.
Campaigns and journeys sales will still open on Friday.
Catalog to cart to cash to the warehouse.
Hiring, leave, and performance people trust.
Projects, inventory, and field without spreadsheet tax.
Coffee-length essays between meetings.
About Academy
Software fails when the work design is wrong. Academy covers the work - close, campaigns, field jobs, hiring - so the product has somewhere real to land.
Core tracks are free. Partner-only labs live under the partner program after approval.
Pedagogy
Software fails when the work design is wrong. Academy covers close, campaigns, field jobs, hiring, and inventory truth so the product has somewhere real to land.
Each track is multi-module. Modules end in a checklist you can run in a workshop, then a link into the live CEDX product where it exists. Quick reads sit beside tracks for one-sitting lessons between meetings.
Core tracks and quick reads are free. Partner labs and certification-shaped sessions live under the partner program after approval. Customers can request facilitated workshops through sales or a delivery partner.
How pilots use Academy
Strong pilots assign Academy modules before config sprints. The estate map names three metrics; Academy modules teach how those metrics are measured in the work.
Partners often run the same modules as internal enablement before the first customer demo. That keeps demos honest: practitioners who live in the product, not only slide decks.
Why Academy
Software fails when work design is wrong: close fails when finance and sales disagree on the customer; field fails when jobs lack parts and skills; campaigns fail when sales never opens the brief. Academy teaches that work so the product has somewhere real to land on week one of a pilot.
Tracks are multi-module with workshop checklists; quick reads are coffee-length; partner labs after approval are hands-on in demo tenants. Core public content stays free so evaluation is not gated behind certification theatre.
Strong pilots assign Academy before config sprints so metrics on the estate map match how work is actually measured. Partners enable internally with the same modules before first customer demos so practitioners live in the product.
Sequences map to common pilots: revenue via marketing and CRM; service via operations and Desk or Field; finance via accounting and Books or Revenue with Meridian-shaped long form. Steal the sequence and replace industry detail with yours rather than inventing a curriculum from zero.
Workshop pattern
Frame the pain and name three pilot metrics in the first fifteen minutes with sponsor and operators present. Work the module checklist next so debate happens on paper before anyone clicks admin settings.
Open the live product in the middle block and capture config decisions in the pilot doc while context is fresh. Close with owners, retire-list items, and next wave criteria so the workshop does not end as inspiration theatre.
Topic pages include outcomes, product pairing links, and role cards so facilitators are not inventing agendas weekly. Customers request facilitation via sales; partners via partner success after approval.
When a quick read is not enough, escalate to the full track; when the track is not enough, open a customer scenario; when delivery muscle is missing, use partner find. Do not skip to config because the software looks friendly in a demo — friendly software still fails on bad queue design.
Audience and access
Ops and revops design queues and pilot metrics; finance leads work close and rev-rec with shared customer truth; service managers design desk and field without paper jobs. Partners use public basics then labs; builders pair Academy work design with developer surfaces when extensions are in scope.
Reading needs no account; live product steps need trial, customer, or partner demo access. Internal training is allowed with attribution; reselling Academy as your courseware is not.
Not a paid certification mill; partner certifications when offered are separate and practical. Curriculum refreshes when flagship motions change; material rewrites may appear in News.
Print modules for workshops and keep product links current; outdated screenshots are how enablement debt returns. If a module and a product page disagree, trust the live product and report the drift.
Pairing to software
Accounting track pairs with Books, Revenue, Tax, and Meridian scenario pages for multi-entity close narratives. Marketing track pairs with Campaigns, Journeys, CRM, and Cedar-shaped wholesale stories.
Ecommerce track pairs with Catalog, Orders, Checkout, and Keystone marketplace narratives. People-ops track pairs with People, recruiting, leave, and performance products on one identity plane.
Operations track pairs with Field, Inventory, Projects, and Atlas cold-chain service stories. Quick reads sit beside tracks for single-habit changes that do not need a six-module path.
After each module, capture decisions in the pilot doc and update the retire list when a spreadsheet or tool is no longer allowed. Hypercare ends when the Friday number is trusted in the live system without a side export ritual.
Module design contract
Each module ends with a checklist operators can run without the author in the room, a decision log prompt for the pilot doc, and a link into the live product where the motion lands. Modules that only inspire without artifacts are incomplete and should be rewritten.
Language stays operator-first: queues, cutoffs, stages, jobs, stock promises — not abstract transformation vocabulary that cannot be measured on Friday. If a sentence cannot turn into an owner and a date, cut it or make it concrete.
Timeboxes are honest: ten to twenty minutes of reading plus workshop time with the team, not a promise of mastery without practice. Deep product certification for partners lives in labs after approval, not in public tracks pretending to be exams.
Versioning matters when product UI changes; modules that reference live apps should be checked when flagship motions change. Report drift between module text and product UI the same way you would report a product bug.
Facilitators may compress modules for executive audiences but must not drop the checklist or the retire-list prompt. Executives still need to know what dies for the pilot to count.
Track-to-pilot mapping
Revenue pilots: Marketing track and forecast quick reads, then CRM and pipeline product pages, then a Harbor or Northline-shaped scenario for narrative depth. Success metrics often include stage hygiene, forecast defendability, and handoff SLA between marketing and sales.
Service pilots: Operations track, Desk and Field live apps, Support model pages, Atlas-shaped narrative for field-heavy orgs. Success metrics often include time-to-first-response with context, job bounce rate, and SLA breach visibility before the customer calls again.
Finance pilots: Accounting track, Books and Revenue live apps, Meridian-shaped multi-entity narrative. Success metrics often include close duration for a standard entity set, reconciliation exceptions, and single export for the board pack.
Commerce pilots: Ecommerce track, Catalog Orders Checkout, Keystone-shaped marketplace narrative when multi-seller is in scope. Success metrics often include promise accuracy, returns path completeness, and shared order state across support and ops.
People pilots: People-ops track with People, recruiting, leave, and performance products when HR trust is the blocker. Success metrics often include time-to-offer with scorecards, leave balance disputes, and week-one access readiness.
For partners using Academy
Public tracks are free for partner practitioners and should be completed before customer demos on that motion. Demo certification labs after approval test whether practitioners can run the live motion, not whether they can recite slides.
Do not resell Academy as your courseware; facilitate with attribution and add your industry SOW depth as the partner layer. Customers can tell when a partner merely renames vendor content.
Partner success can help map Academy sequences into a customer pilot plan when the deal is registered and multi-product complexity is real. That help is enablement, not free delivery staffing.
Track completion notes and lab attendance become progression evidence at Advanced and Premier reviews. Keep records; memory is not evidence.
When Academy and a customer scenario disagree in emphasis, use both: Academy for work design, scenario for industry-shaped storytelling with product embeds. Neither replaces the live product test on one user across three apps.
Measuring Academy impact
Before and after a pilot kickoff workshop, check whether the team has three metrics, a retire list, and named owners. If not, the workshop failed regardless of how much content was covered.
During hypercare, check whether operators still use the live system on Friday without rebuilding a spreadsheet side channel. Spreadsheet return is a curriculum and governance failure as much as a product failure.
After wave one, capture which modules should be required for wave two audiences who did not attend the first workshop. Knowledge concentration in a project team is how BAU collapses.
Partner firms should track which practitioners completed which tracks before they are staffed on customer work. Unprepared staffing is how delivery quality fails Friday and shows up in tier review.
CEDX will keep Academy sparse and useful rather than flooding it with calendar filler; request topics when operator demand is clear. Quality over volume is the same editorial contract as the blog.
Curriculum design
Read → checklist → open live product → capture decisions in the pilot doc.
Ops leads, revops, controllers, service managers, and partner practitioners.
A paid certification mill or a replacement for hands-on product labs.
Deeper enablement after program approval - see partner events.
Tracks
Design queues and pilot metrics before config.
Close and rev-rec with shared customer truth.
Desk and field motions without paper jobs.
Basics public; labs after program approval.
FAQ
No paid exam theatre. Tracks teach the work. Partner certifications, when offered, are separate and practical.
Not for reading. Product labs that open /app/* need a trial or partner demo tenant.
Yes with attribution. Do not resell Academy content as your own courseware.
Most tracks are six modules at 10-20 minutes each plus checklist time with your team.
Yes via sales for customers, or partner success after program approval.
We pair modules with pilot plans for customers and partners.
