How Colgate-Palmolive built a Data Literacy & Analytics Academy with DataCamp

The challenge: leveraging data to sustain growth

The consumer-packaged goods industry is rapidly evolving. With strong retailers, empowered shoppers, and data-driven insights, competition is more challenging than ever. To remain competitive, Colgate knew it had to get better at leveraging data.

As Colgate’s data ambitions grew, key challenges stood in the way. For starters, Colgate was collecting more data than ever. Merely hiring data professionals would not be enough for Colgate to leverage the full power of data and sustain the company’s growth and competitiveness.

Moreover, there was a gap in data skills across the company. According to internal and external audits, Data Maturity across the organization was still “developing”—and bridging between data experts and the rest of the organization was crucial to driving outcomes with data. 

"Upskilling the entire organization in data literacy is one of our major learning priorities," said Giuseppina De Bartolomeo, Europe and Africa Learning Coordinator at Colgate. As a result, Colgate launched its Data Literacy & Analytics Academy.

With the Academy, Colgate-Palmolive wanted to enhance their workforce’s capabilities to make data-driven decisions and advance the company’s digital transformation. They had several key practical requirements:

• Tailored learning paths to suit audiences from Csuite executives to general employees.
• Degreed LMS integration to effectively assign learning paths and track progress. 
• SSO integrations to enable secure access for thousands of employees.

The solution: Building an Academy with DataCamp

To address the challenges and bridge their data literacy gap, Colgate partnered with DataCamp for Business to help launch the Data Literacy & Analytics Academy.

To make learning highly relevant, Colgate created multiple pathways for roles & departments — this included:

• Introductory AI-aspiring and AI-aware tracks that introduced foundational topics like A/B testing, time series analysis, machine learning, and how data scientists extract knowledge and insights from real-world data. This track was tailored to accommodate various roles within the organization, including C-Suite & Thought Leaders, People managers, Expert practitioners, and general employees.
• An advanced AI-ready track that included courses on Fundamentals of how Machine Learning is applied in the business world, data-driven decision-making, and core concepts for effective data visualisation.
• Industry-specific tracks focusing specifically on Marketing, Customer Development, Finance, and Supply Chain departments needs and useful tools needed for their roles, such as spreadsheets and business intelligence tools

As part of their program, learners were regularly assessed using DataCamp Skills Assessments, which allowed Colgate to provide learners with personalized course recommendations based on their skill gaps.

The training was designed for thousands of Colgate employees to complete. To facilitate upskilling at an enterprise scale, DataCamp for Business provided Colgate with essential Single Sign On and Degreed LMS integrations, enabling Colgate to effectively assign learning paths, track program success metrics and ensure security compliance.

The results: high engagement and real business impact

The Data Literacy & Analytics Academy results at Colgate have been impressive.

ver 14,860+ employees completed the program, demonstrating high program engagement and state-of-the-art completion rates. Participants have rated the courses with scores of 4.56+ out of 5.

Most importantly, over 80% of learners reported being able to apply their new skills in real-world settings, leading to faster, better decision-making.

The program's success has also made an impact on Colgate's relationship with retail partners. Colgate’s unbiased data insights supported the shift for the company from being a supplier to a strategic partner.

Due to the program's success, Colgate plans to make learning at DataCamp for Business part of the onboarding process for new hires and introduce an organisation-wide and business-specific Capstone project.

Finally, given the rise of generative AI globally, DataCamp for Business and Colgate are now looking into providing 18,000 Colgate’s learners with access to DataCamp’s ChatGPT course and upcoming Generative AI content.