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Case Study
Americo Scales Learning Operations Without Growing Headcount

A Small Team Transforms Onboarding and Compliance with Cognota

LearnOps Pillars Impacted:
Align | Plan | Execute | Measure | Optimize

Scale

Background

Americo is one of the largest privately held life insurance companies in the U.S. With just 400 employees and a two-person Talent Development team, they needed to modernize onboarding and compliance training—fast.

Maddy Poletis, Talent Development Specialist, saw a critical opportunity to bring structure, visibility, and efficiency to a fragmented learning process.

The Challenge

maddy poletis americo

“We were stuck in the past—manual, fragmented, and not scalable.”

— Maddy Poletis, Talent Development Specialist

Before Cognota, the learning function at Americo was buried in outdated tools and disjointed workflows:

  • Intake was managed through emails, spreadsheets, and guesswork
  • Training content lived in PowerPoint, Word docs, and PDFs
  • Compliance updates were time-consuming and difficult to track
  • Legal reviews slowed everything down
  • Payroll onboarding was handled by a single overwhelmed administrator

The LearnOps Transformation:

Maddy brought in Cognota to operationalize learning—without adding headcount. Here’s what changed:

Centralized Request & Workflow Management

SMEs, trainers, and legal teams now collaborate in one system to manage intake, build content, and track reviews.

Streamlined Content Creation with Design Blueprints

Instead of recreating content across multiple tools, Americo now builds scalable, compliant training directly in Cognota—with built-in assessments, videos, and audio.

Faster Compliance Turnaround

Legal and stakeholders review directly in-platform, reducing approval bottlenecks.

Real-Time SME Collaboration

Department trainers contribute directly to blueprints. Content stays current, audit-ready, and aligned to business needs.

Operational Visibility

Feedback loops through post-onboarding surveys help Maddy and the team measure effectiveness and iterate fast.

 “Cognota is next level. It’s streamlined everything—from how we build training to how our new hires experience it.”

Results & Business Impact

Cognota turned a lean function into a high-output learning operation:

88 associates hired in 2020

42 new hires onboarded with Cognota-created content

360 employees completed compliance training through Cognota

SMEs and legal now collaborate faster and update content in real time

Why It Matters for the Business

  • Fewer manual hours spent chasing approvals
  • Faster speed-to-readiness for new hires
  • Stronger compliance with audit-ready workflows
  • Increased stakeholder trust and visibility
  • No additional headcount required
What’s Next

With payroll onboarding next in line and more departments joining, Americo is turning Cognota into its single system of record for talent operations.

“If we can go from good to outstanding—we will. That’s what Cognota helps us do.”

— Maddy Poletis

LearnOps ®️

What We Do

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Case Study: Americo

Case Study: Americo