AG5

Who it is built for

AG5 is a competency management system for frontline operations in manufacturing, aerospace, pharma, logistics, and food and beverage, and says of those places: “A missing qualification here isn’t an HR problem. It’s a stopped line or a failed audit.”

If AG5 is being bought through HR, that line raises the first thing to settle, which is who in your organisation will own the record on the floor. The situations in which AG5 works for its customers will help you answer that.

What its figures measure

AG5’s figures are about time saved and about the size of the customers behind its stories.

Where it stops

Some limits stay whatever settings you choose and whichever plan you buy.

What it costs, and what leaving involves

AG5 does not publish a price for its three plans, Core, Accelerate and Enterprise, so the first figure you see will come in a quote.

The only figures on the plans are counts of results: 10,000 for Core, 20,000 for Accelerate and more than 40,000 for Enterprise. A result is one skill attained by one employee on a date. A new result is created each time someone is assessed, and failed results count towards the total just as passed ones do. AG5’s own example counts 150 employees holding an average of 30 skills each as 4,500 results. At that rate, 300 people would already reach 9,000 results, close to Core’s 10,000, before anyone is reassessed. Before you choose a plan, ask AG5 whether the results figure is a limit and what happens if you go past it.

Check the features in each plan as well, because several that an audited site needs are listed only in the higher plans. Single sign-on, workflows, custom fields, advanced permissions and the programming interface your IT team would use to connect other systems all start at Accelerate. Compliance and FDA features are listed only in Enterprise, along with advanced analytics, central management of skill and role definitions, 24-hour support and custom contract terms. Contracts are annual with monthly payment options, a shorter trial can be discussed, and you can upgrade at any time, paying the difference for the days left on your current plan.

A company of a few hundred to a few thousand people sits inside the range AG5 has described. In 2023 it said it targeted factories with 200 to more than 40,000 employees, and it states no minimum. The smallest company it gives a headcount for in a case study is Johma, a single-site food manufacturer with 293 employees, which was also an early pilot customer.

What to ask on the demo

1. Result approvals, self-assessments and the rules that award skills automatically are all switched off by default. Are they included in the plan you are quoting, and will they be on from the first day?
2. With approvals on, results a manager enters for their own team skip sign-off. Can we require a second sign-off for those as well?
3. Notes and attachments cannot currently be made compulsory. Can we make an attachment or a signature compulsory for particular skills, such as a forklift licence?
4. Which change history and audit trail features come with Core and Accelerate, and which only with Enterprise?
5. Your plans show 10,000, 20,000 and more than 40,000 results. Is that a limit, what happens when we go past it, and how are reassessments counted?
6. What does “predictive skills gap analysis and forecasting” predict, and what is it based on?
7. If we change a rule that awards a skill automatically, how do we keep the record of who already held that skill?
8. For each reference customer you offer, how many people and sites use AG5, as opposed to the headcount of the whole group?
9. Which of your customers run AG5 from HR rather than from operations, and can we speak to one?
10. When we leave, do we get every result with its history, attachments and signatures, in what format, and how long do we have before our data is deleted?

Alternatives to AG5, including buying nothing

The main alternatives to AG5 are the qualification spreadsheet you may already keep, a skills matrix that also tracks certificates, such as Skills Base, and, if you want skills worked out from people’s work, Microsoft People Skills or TechWolf.

The cheapest option is to buy nothing yet and keep your qualification spreadsheet, which is what AG5 is built to replace. Its 2023 funding announcement was headlined as raising money to “save the manufacturing industry from Excel”. If that spreadsheet does not depend on a single person to keep it current and your audits pass, buying AG5 would mainly save time.

If certificates matter but your people can keep their own records, look at skills matrix products that also track certificates. Skills Base, for example, keeps them in an optional Qualifications module, where by default they are entered as free text and employees with permission can update their own. The choice between a product like that and AG5 comes down to whether a certificate record your people keep up themselves is enough, or whether your sites need results signed off on the floor against each role’s requirements.

If you came to this category for software that works out skills from people’s work, AG5 does not do that. Two products that do, Microsoft People Skills and TechWolf, have both published evidence of a gap with frontline workers. Microsoft says the performance of Microsoft People Skills may be limited for people who are not heavy Microsoft 365 users, and gives frontline and field workers as its example. TechWolf’s own T-Mobile case study, where employees confirm their own skills and were never required to, puts skills validation at around 32% across the company and about 70% in back-office functions, with the gap concentrated in frontline retail and care. For a frontline workforce, someone still has to record or confirm what people can do, whichever kind of product you buy.

Our overview of skills intelligence software covers the other products that ask people to record their skills, and explains when that kind of product is the right answer and when it is not.