How MBS built a fit-for-purpose executive education platform for working professionals and organisational clients
Melbourne Business School introduced Guroo Academy as a dedicated platform for Executive Education, supporting the distinctive needs of short courses, organisational clients and industry academies alongside the School's award-program systems.
About Melbourne Business School
Melbourne Business School sits in a rare position in Australian higher education. Founded in 1955 and jointly owned by the University of Melbourne and members of the Australian business community, MBS was established to connect rigorous management education with the needs of the world of work. That connection to business and professional practice remains central to how MBS thinks about its role.
Today, MBS serves two overlapping groups: individual professionals seeking to take the next step in their careers, and organisations looking to build capability across teams, functions, or their entire enterprise.
The challenge
As MBS’s Executive Education business evolved, it became increasingly clear that the systems supporting award programs were not always well suited to the different needs of executive education.
In executive education, learners are employed professionals managing competing commitments. The organisations sponsoring their participation also have important relationships with MBS, and those relationships need to be supported alongside the individual learner experience. Programs need to flex across in-person workshops, virtual delivery, and self-paced formats. And the path from interest to enrolment needs to be fast, not routed through a formal admissions process designed for degree candidates.
Three challenges stood out.
A platform designed for a different model.
Canvas is a capable academic LMS, particularly for award programs. Executive education, however, requires additional capabilities around B2B relationships, cohort management, enterprise reporting, flexible purchasing and short-cycle learner journeys.
Limited flexibility in delivery
MBS prides itself on what Magnus calls the "X factor moments" of its face-to-face programs. MBS wanted technology that could better support those experiences - including personalisation, pre-work, post-program engagement and stronger connection back to workplace application.
Scaling enterprise and industry programs
MBS was building increasingly complex partnerships, including whole-of-organisation capability programs, industry academies with scholarship funding, enterprise-wide digital skills initiatives. As these partnerships grew, MBS needed a platform that could support greater scale and consistency without adding unnecessary administrative complexity.
"Our short course business was being supported by systems and processes designed primarily for degree programs. For executive education, we needed a faster and more flexible pathway from interest to enrolment, so learners could begin their journey with less friction.”
The solution
MBS deployed Guroo Academy as a dedicated technology platform for executive education, sitting alongside Canvas for award programs and connecting into the School’s broader CRM and finance environment.
The integration was deliberate. The School’s vision is one broader MBS community: degree students, degree alumni and executive education participants connected through clearer pathways over time.
To make that work, MBS Academy connects back into the school's CRM and finance systems, helping the team build a more connected view of learner and client relationships over time.
A more streamlined short course experience
MBS Academy replaced the admissions-driven enrolment process for short courses with a streamlined purchasing and onboarding experience. For a prospective learner, whether an individual or a team being sent by their employer, the path from interest to enrolment is significantly faster and easier.
The platform supports MBS's blended delivery model across in-person, virtual, and self-paced formats, with pre-program preparation, cohort connection tools, and post-program follow-through all managed in one place. The School’s signature learning experience - built around expertise, challenge, community and engagement - is now better supported by the technology around it.
Enterprise and learning solutions
For MBS's growing learning solutions business, which includes everything from team enrolments in open short courses through to whole-of-organisation capability programs, Guroo Academy provides B2B functionality that is particularly important in executive education, including group enrolments, client reporting and more flexible program structures. Corporate clients can manage group enrolments and access agreed reporting on participation, progress and engagement, subject to appropriate privacy, consent and governance arrangements. The platform handles complex program structures with role-based pathways, scholarship allocation, and co-branded learning environments for partner academies.
Industry academies at scale
The Bastas Academy for Health Leadership (BAHL) is one of the clearest demonstrations of what the platform makes possible. Established through a partnership between MBS and the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, and made possible through a generous gift from Dennis Bastas and DBG Health, the academy delivers a suite of short courses designed to build leadership capability across the health sector. In its first year, the academy supported participants across a suite of health leadership short courses. The platform has allowed the academy to scale efficiently, with technology supporting many of the workflows that would otherwise create significant administrative complexity.
"The platform takes care of many of the core workflows - applications, scholarship processes, enrolments, deferrals, credits and program set-up. That means the team can focus more of its energy on the quality and logistics of delivery.”
Connecting learners to ongoing pathways
One of the capabilities MBS is actively building is the use of the platform to maintain relationships with learners beyond the program itself: promoting ongoing pathways, connecting short course participants into the broader MBS community, and creating the conditions for lifelong learning relationships rather than one-off transactions.
"I'm progressively migrating all of our online and face-to-face short courses onto MBS Academy. As more executive education learners join the MBS ecosystem, the question becomes: how do we continue to support them beyond a single program, and help them find the next relevant pathway?”
The results
The partnership with Guroo is still in its early stages relative to the long-term ambition MBS has outlined, but the operational impact is already visible.
Learners supported across open short courses, enterprise programs, and industry academies since launch without a proportional increase in operational overhead.
Cohorts delivered since launching Guroo Academy, across open short courses, enterprise programs, and industry academies.
More broadly, MBS is seeing strong momentum in short course enrolments, supported by clearer market positioning, stronger client engagement, B2B sales capability and a simplified purchasing and enrolment experience.
"We have tried to simplify the way customers engage with the School - from the conversations we have with them, through to the processes and systems that help remove friction from the experience.”
The platform has also supported MBS's push into team-based and enterprise enrolments, an important area of growth for the business where organisations send groups of staff into open short courses as well as commissioning tailored learning solutions. Having a platform that can support both on connected infrastructure, with appropriate data visibility and governance is enabling the school to pursue the continuity of client relationships that is central to its future.
What made the difference
Purpose-built for the executive education model
The core issue at MBS was not the quality of Canvas as an academic LMS. It was that executive education required additional functionality designed around organisational clients, short-cycle enrolment, flexible delivery and ongoing learner engagement. Executive Education has distinct operating and commercial requirements, including B2B relationships, enterprise clients, flexible pricing and purchasing journeys that differ from degree admissions. Having a platform designed for that reality gave the business more room to scale and innovate.
Integration with existing systems
Connected systems matter when you are trying to scale. MBS Academy connects into the School's broader systems, helping MBS build a more connected view of learner and client relationships across executive education and award programs. That is an important enabler of the broader "one MBS community" ambition.
The platform as an enabler of the operating model, not a constraint on it
The Bastas Academy for Health Leadership is a useful example: a complex, scholarship-funded industry program running across multiple cohorts, supported by a platform that helps manage applications, enrolments, communications and reporting at scale. Across MBS, the platform has supported 4,700 learners across 320 cohorts while helping manage operational complexity. Investing in scalable technology early helps create the operational foundations for growth, rather than relying on manual workarounds as complexity increases.