The Challenge

Summerset works exclusively with Autodesk products and recently recognized the need to provide robust support resources for those products to its staff. The organization worked with Cadpro, a New Zealand-based technology provider and Eagle Point Software partner, to find the support solution that would be the best fit for its unique business model.

Kevin Hagen, business performance manager for Summerset, worked with the team at Cadpro to identify and develop a class-leading learning solution that would help realize the design teams’ vision and business goals.

“It had to be affordable… it had to be customizable and fully-integrated,” Hagen recalls. “More importantly, the freshness of the content needed to keep up with the demands of the market.”

Summerset already had a corporate learning suite, but the system was reliant on creating specific technical content that the team didn’t have the capacity to create themselves.

“Our vision is to provide industry-leading design solutions to our residents and to equip our staff to enable them to do that,” Hagen explained.

To give its team the tools to fulfill its corporate vision, the Summerset team made the decision to look externally for an industry-leading technical learning solution that would help them keep up with the demands of constantly-evolving technology and complex projects.

Summerset provided its goals and what it hoped to achieve with a learning management system to Cadpro, and the vendor only had one recommendation: Pinnacle Series by Eagle Point Software.

The Solution

Cadpro demoed Pinnacle Series for the Summerset team, assisted with the creation of a proposal, and helped Hagen develop a business case to bring to Summerset’s leadership in March 2022.

“Cadpro has been fantastic. They’re super knowledgeable, approachable, and a real key partner for us as a success,” Hagen said. “We’re developing something special here as a practice, and Cadpro has been a key partner in that.”

The integration with Pinnacle Series and KnowledgeSmart was amazing, and we’ve had 35 of our technicians go through fundamental KnowledgeSmart courses…

Summerset’s Development team leadership approved the proposal, which set in motion what Hagen called an “aggressive timeline” to promote engagement with the solution ahead of its full rollout in June 2022.

“The integration with Pinnacle Series and KnowledgeSmart was amazing, and we’ve had 35 of our technicians go through fundamental KnowledgeSmart courses and complete and work through the custom learning pathways,” Hagen said

The Results

Although Summerset’s implementation of Pinnacle Series is still relatively recent, Hagen said the organization has seen great engagement with the platform and looks forward to the next stages of the project. Since the solution’s introduction in June 2022, more than 1,400 pieces of educational content have been accessed by Summerset staff.

Hagen credits Summerset’s Pinnacle Series Customer Success Manager with the success of the implementation at the organization and creating a rollout timeline that “was on our terms, and our time, to deliver our goals.

The Pinnacle Series team created a custom interface within the solution for Summerset, which the organization has dubbed ASPIRE, or “Academy for Summerset Design Professionals to Inform, Revolutionize & Empower Your Development.”

You don’t feel like in six months you’ve reached the full potential of what you can do on the platform — there’s still so much more for us to tap into.

Up next on the organization’s timeline is growing its custom content and role-based learning within ASPIRE, as well as increasing the number of live training events it puts on.
“But even as it stands currently, without that content, we can deliver a fast, stronger, and high-quality experience… because of the support and input that we have within Pinnacle Series,” Hagen said.

As Summerset looks forward to its future using the Pinnacle Series solution, Hagen said its customization capabilities and its ability to grow with an organization are what truly make the platform a class-leading solution. The goal is to continually grow the platform so it becomes a “one-stop shop” of technical development learning for staff.

“You don’t feel like in six months you’ve reached the full potential of what you can do on the platform – there’s still so much more for us to tap into,” Hagen explained. “[Pinnacle Series is] just stunning in terms of the support and the work that we can do to collaborate to really push and drive engagement.”