How AGSM scaled executive education to 60,000+ professionals – without adding headcount
More than 60,000 learners have enrolled in AGSM programs delivered through Navigator.
About AGSM
The Australian Graduate School of Management has been developing leaders and business professionals for nearly 50 years, as part of UNSW Business School. UNSW was recently ranked number one in Australia and 19th in the world in the 2027 QS World University Rankings, the first time a NSW university has claimed the country's top spot. AGSM sits at the intersection of that world-class research and practical, workplace-relevant education, and was itself recognised as the number one provider of executive education in Australia by the Financial Times.
AGSM's programs span three areas: MBA programs for senior leaders and executives; a portfolio of 26 leadership and skills-based short courses for individuals seeking to advance their careers; and corporate learning, focused on building capability across organisations. That last category includes some of Australia's largest employers in financial services, mining and energy, and government.
“We really get to support individuals and organisations to build their capabilities so that they can be better at work and perform to their best potential.”
The challenge
In 2017, AGSM had a clear ambition: build a scalable short course portfolio that could serve both individual professionals and large corporate clients. Their existing approach, a patchwork of platforms and manual processes, wasn't going to get them there.
Scaling individual programs
AGSM wanted to offer open-enrolment short courses to working professionals across leadership, strategy, finance, and capability development. These programs needed to run across multiple delivery modes: in-person workshops, live virtual sessions, and self-paced online modules. The platform needed to handle that without creating a coordination nightmare for the team.
Supporting social and work-integrated learning
Executive education lives or dies on the quality of peer interaction and the relevance of learning to real work challenges. AGSM needed a platform where facilitators could genuinely engage with cohorts, where participants could work on group tasks and share insights, and where assessments could be tied directly to workplace application rather than tests and quizzes.
Winning and delivering enterprise programs
AGSM's B2B pipeline included some of Australia's largest organisations. These clients needed custom-branded academies, complex cohort management, pathway logic based on role and seniority, and reporting that could satisfy an L&D leader presenting to a board.
The solution
Guroo began working with AGSM as a learning design and production partner in 2017, then in 2020, Guroo Academy (branded as Navigator) was deployed as the foundation for AGSM's digital short course offering.
Building the short course portfolio
Working closely with Guroo's learning design team, AGSM developed more than 50 programs for the portfolio: open programs, virtual courses, and blended offerings. Within the first two years, more than 15,000 learners had enrolled. The pace of program development was a direct result of Navigator's architecture: consistent templates, reusable components, and user friendly authoring that let the team iterate quickly.
Learn to Lead — free leadership development at scale
One of the more visible programs in the AGSM portfolio is Learn to Lead, a free two-week leadership program that initially ran on a separate platform before being migrated to Navigator. It now runs annually and regularly draws large enrolment numbers, particularly among UNSW alumni. Guroo's team provides administrative and technical support throughout the program each year, ensuring the program ran smoothly at scale.
Enterprise programs for Australia's largest organisations
AGSM had long delivered large-scale, in-house programs to major organisations including the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the Australian Taxation Office, Synergy, and VPSC. What Navigator changed was the quality of the experience on both sides: corporate clients gained proper visibility over participant progress and reporting that could satisfy an L&D leader presenting to a board, while learners got programs that could flex across delivery modes, with pathways tailored to their role and seniority rather than a one-size-fits-all structure.
The most significant of these was an enterprise-wide leadership academy delivered to Woodside Energy, a whole-of-organisation transformation program designed to uplift leadership capability at every level across the global workforce. With more than 6,000 participants and five distinct leadership phases managed within the platform, it was one of the most complex programs Navigator had supported.
Ongoing development and analytics
The partnership extended beyond delivery. Guroo's Learning Studio worked closely with AGSM on new program development, including self-paced eLearning design, video production, and accessibility, while the analytics capabilities in Navigator and Guroo Pro gave AGSM the data they needed to continuously improve their programs.
The results
After nearly a decade of partnership, the numbers reflect both the scale of what AGSM has built and the quality of the learner experience they've maintained through that growth.
Learners have enrolled in AGSM programs delivered through Navigator.
Average learner satisfaction rating maintained across the portfolio.
Net Promoter Score, placing AGSM's programs in genuinely exceptional territory for executive education.
Enterprise programs delivered to major Australian organisations.
“Find like-minded partners. Make sure those partnerships are genuine, that you are aligned around purpose and capability development, and that they're long-term partnerships, not just transactional. We've been working with Guroo Learning for a number of years, and that relationship, how we are both very focused on ensuring we are delivering outcomes to our customers, is what ensures we can deliver impact.”
What made the difference
Purpose-built beats adapted
AGSM had previously worked with platforms designed for academic delivery. Navigator's architecture, built specifically for professional education with cohorts, blended delivery, and workplace-integrated assessment at the core, meant the team wasn't constantly working around the system.
The platform has to support the facilitator, not just the learner
Executive education is relationship-driven. The tools facilitators use to engage with cohorts, run group activities, and respond to participants in real time matter as much as the content. Navigator's facilitation features were central to AGSM's ability to maintain quality at scale.
Enterprise clients need enterprise infrastructure
Custom branding, role-based pathways, integration with HR systems, and reporting that satisfies senior stakeholders aren't nice-to-haves for large corporate programs. They're table stakes. Having that infrastructure in place meant AGSM could say yes to programs that would have been operationally impossible otherwise.
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