A learning professional since 1998, Khari Bankston, Manager of Learning Technologies at Alteryx, has witnessed firsthand the evolution of learning technology.
When he happened to come across Webflow via a Google search about six years ago, he knew he was onto something. “Immediately, Webflow stuck,” Khari said. “Now, it’s something that’s near and dear to my heart.”
Up and to the right: Webflow for career growth
While working full-time in learning and development (L&D), Khari started to learn Webflow on the side to help with his volunteer work. He built fundraising websites for a local youth football organization, and microsites for parents to celebrate their kids’ year in football.
After switching lanes in his L&D career to focus 100% on digital content design, Khari took one year off to learn as much as he could about the web development world.
During that time, he dove into DreamWeaver, Wix, and WordPress, but all of the above proved to be too complex. “I’m a front-end developer. I know enough to be dangerous with code, but I’m not a coder by any stretch of the imagination,” Khari said. “I happened to come across Webflow, and after that, it didn’t take long at all for me to decrease that learning curve.”
The differentiator: Building custom LMSs in Webflow
As Khari got more comfortable with Webflow — and as the Webflow product continued to grow — he quickly introduced it into his professional life.
At the leading national mortgage lender Khari worked at, he used Webflow to build their marketing site and an internal site for sales enablement. Shortly after, Khari was recruited to his current role at Alteryx, an analytics automation platform, to build out custom content experiences to improve the buyer and seller experience.
Khari’s passion for, and proficient knowledge of Webflow has set him apart in his career. “Webflow has really made me the premier learning and enablement technologist at my company,” Khari said. “And we just wouldn’t be where we are as a team today without it.”
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Stepping into enterprise — and testing Webflow’s limits
Khari's first order of business at Alteryx was to rebuild the company's existing learning and content management system (CMS), Showpad. Webflow helped him accomplish that by allowing him to quickly build and deploy robust, complex, and interactive enablement experiences.
“Out of the box, Showpad is great to give sellers a way to share content with customers. But when it comes to learning and enablement, like interactive pages and experiences with aggregated content, Webflow goes above and beyond,” Khari said. “It's changed the internal sentiment and adoption of Showpad, and it's elevated the sales enablement experience as a whole.”
Tech breakdown: The Field Readiness Hub
The ability to develop custom HTML in Webflow, in addition to the visual canvas, resulted in the most-used resource in Alteryx’s LMS: the Field Readiness Hub. It contains sales readiness tools and marketing materials like interactive data browsers, product sites and collateral, interactive videos, and knowledge checks. All of these tools and materials allow the sales team to optimize their knowledge and have easy access to materials that enable individual and team success.
Since Showpad is Alteryx’s main CMS, they needed a way to display content from Showpad in Webflow-built experiences. To do that, Khari and his team need to apply Showpad’s app links and proprietary protocols to all Webflow files.
Here’s how it works:
- App Links: When content is uploaded into Showpad, it generates a Showpad App Link that Khari copies and pastes into the Webflow project. But, those App Links contain a different protocol.
- Protocols: Showpad has a proprietary protocol. So, to effectively display Showpad content in the Webflow-built LMS, Khari needs to first replace Webflow’s protocol with Showpad’s proprietary one. To do this, Khari exports Webflow files into Brackets — a text editor — to make the switch.
- Results: Once the switch has been made, the files get re-uploaded into Webflow, and voila! Showpad’s content seamlessly displays in the Webflow-built LMS.
The Field Readiness Hub is integral to helping Alteryx’s sales team move the needle. “We’re able to drive revenue by ensuring that sellers have a good system by which they learn, and can share the content and sites developed in Webflow,” Khari said.
Bright futures: Continuing on with career and team growth
What would normally take a week with legacy technology, Khari can accomplish in an hour with Webflow. It “allows us to be nimble and delight our internal audience,” Khari said. And with that success has come even more growth for him personally and for his team at Alteryx.
After witnessing tremendous return on investment (ROI) around the expansion of experiences for the buyer and the seller, the company wants to invest more in Webflow and their LMS efforts. Khari recently got approval to start hiring additional staff to accelerate their build-out. And for his career, he isn’t stopping any time soon. “With Webflow, I can take these large projects, like an LMS, and create more enriched interaction experiences,” Khari said. “It’s created a niche opportunity for me to market myself as a professional, and it’s been a game-changer for my career.”
