AG5

Built for frontline sites that need proof of who is qualified

AG5 is built for frontline work in manufacturing, aerospace, pharma, logistics, and food and beverage. AG5 puts it plainly. “A missing qualification here isn’t an HR problem. It’s a stopped line or a failed audit.”

Its published figures measure less than they imply

AG5’s figures mostly cover the time it says customers save and the size of the customers in its stories.

Some limits do not change with your settings or plan

AG5 has six limits that no setting or plan removes. Most follow from one fact. Someone has to enter, send or trigger every skill.

AG5 does not publish a price for any plan

AG5 has three plans. They are Core, Accelerate and Enterprise. The first figure you see will come in a quote.

The only numbers on the plans are counts of results. Core allows 10,000. Accelerate allows 20,000. Enterprise allows more than 40,000. A new result is created every time someone is assessed. A failed result counts towards the total, just like a passed one. 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. That is close to Core’s limit of 10,000, before anyone is even reassessed.

Check the features in each plan too. Several features an audited site needs are only in the higher plans. Accelerate also adds extra fields you can add yourself. It adds finer control over who can do what. Compliance features are listed only in Enterprise. So are advanced analytics, central control over skill and role definitions, support around the clock, and custom contract terms. Contracts run for a year, with monthly payment options. AG5 will discuss a shorter trial. You can upgrade at any time. You then pay only the difference for the days left on your current plan.

In 2023, AG5 said it targeted factories with 200 to more than 40,000 employees. It states no minimum size. The smallest company it names a headcount for in a case study is Johma. Johma is a single-site food manufacturer with 293 employees, and was also an early pilot customer.

What to ask before you sign

1. Approvals, self-ratings and automatic skill rules are all off by default. Will our quote switch them on from day one? Can a manager’s results for their own team need sign-off too? A good answer is yes to both, written into the quote.
2. You cannot currently force a note or a file to be attached to a result. Can you require one for certain skills, such as a forklift licence? A good answer is yes, for the skills we name.
3. Which record-of-change features come with Core and Accelerate? Which ones come only with Enterprise? A good answer is a written list for each plan.
4. Your plans list 10,000, 20,000 and more than 40,000 results. Is that a hard limit? What happens if we go past it, and does a reassessment count? A good answer gives the limit and the cost of going past it, in writing.
5. Every plan includes “predictive skills gap analysis and forecasting”. What does it predict, and from which numbers? A good answer names the data it uses and shows one customer’s result.
6. For each reference customer you offer us, how many of its people and sites actually use AG5? A good answer gives both numbers next to the headcount of the whole group.
7. Which of your customers run AG5 from HR rather than from operations? A good answer names one we can speak to.
8. If we leave, do we get every result, with its history, attachments and signatures? In what file format, and how long before you delete our data? A good answer is yes, a named format and a date, in the contract.

The cheapest alternative is a qualification spreadsheet

AG5 has three main alternatives. One is a qualification spreadsheet. Another is a skills matrix that also tracks certificates, such as Skills Base. A third is software that works out skills from people’s own work, such as Microsoft People Skills or TechWolf.

The cheapest option is to buy nothing yet and keep the spreadsheet. AG5 is built to replace exactly that. Its 2023 funding announcement was headlined as raising money to “save the manufacturing industry from Excel”. A spreadsheet may already pass your audits. If more than one person keeps it current, AG5 would mainly save time.

If certificates matter and your people can keep their own records, look at a skills matrix that also tracks certificates. Skills Base, for example, has an optional feature it calls the “Qualifications module”. By default, certificates go in there as free text, and employees with permission can update their own. Pick a product like that if a certificate record people keep up themselves is enough. Pick AG5 if results must be signed off on the floor, against each role’s requirements.

You might want a system that reads people’s day-to-day work and works out their skills by itself. 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. It gives frontline and field workers as its example. In TechWolf’s own T-Mobile case study, confirming skills was left to employees and never required. It puts skills validation at around 32% across the whole company. In back-office functions alone, that figure rises to about 70%. The gap is concentrated in frontline retail and care. Whichever product you buy, someone in a frontline workforce still has to record or confirm what people can do.

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