The greatest asset of an industrial SME is not its machinery. It lives in the heads of its best employees, and every retirement takes a piece of it away. That is why I built Witeach, an LMS for industrial SMEs: an online training platform designed for the people who actually do the work.
Twenty-one years on the shop floor, not in a conference room
I have been training workers for 21 years. Not in a conference room with slides, but right on the factory floor, next to the presses, the forklifts and the welding cells. You know that experienced employee. The one who tunes the machine by ear, who senses a part is about to fail before the warning light even comes on, who has a knack nobody ever wrote down anywhere. The day he retires, he walks out with thirty years of know-how in his head. Everyone signs the card, shares a cake, and the following Monday the question lands: how did he do it, exactly? In our plants it happens faster than you would think: in Quebec, a worker retires roughly every eight minutes.
The real problem for SMEs was never the training. It was the price
For years, I watched online training platforms, the famous LMSs, up close. Good tools, often. But built for large corporations with big budgets and a full training department. When a 40-employee SME simply asked for a price, it was handed a multi-thousand-dollar annual contract, per-module fees, an enterprise tier and a sales rep on the line, with a 45-minute demo to sit through before even hearing the amount.
I saw how those owners reacted. Someone running a 35-person company does not have an hour to give to a sales pitch only to find out the bill is steep. So the SME walked away. Back to the yellowed binders and the usual method: the new hire shadowing the veteran for two weeks. And the know-how kept retiring.
A truly affordable SME LMS did not really exist
An LMS for SMEs that is genuinely affordable, honestly, more or less did not exist. And it bothered me. Online training should not be a luxury reserved for companies with 500 employees. A plant with 30, 40 or 60 people has exactly the same needs as a large organization: train new hires quickly, keep certifications up to date, demonstrate compliance, and above all, hold on to the know-how of its best employees.
The simplicity of Apple instead of the complexity of the PC
So I decided to do the opposite of the software industry. To explain my approach, I always use the same image. Think of the computer world. On one side, the Windows PC: a multitude of brands, models, configurations and prices. You shop around, you compare, you negotiate, and you are never quite sure you paid the right price. On the other side, Apple. The strength of Apple is not that everything costs the same, an iPhone and a Mac obviously differ. Its strength is that the offer is simple and the price is clear, posted, identical for everyone. No negotiation, no quote to prepare. You look, you understand, you decide.
The LMS industry worked like the PC world: custom pricing, negotiated case by case, different for every client. I chose the Apple way: one clear offer, one price, the same for the 30-employee company as for the 200-employee one. You can calculate your own cost before we ever speak.
What it costs, with no quote and no rep on the phone
Here it is, straight up:
- $1,499 for onboarding, one time. We install, configure and launch the platform with you.
- Then $5 per employee, per month. Everything is included: no hidden per-module fees, no higher tier to unlock essential features.
- 10% off when you pay annually.
That is all. No surprise on the next invoice, and the same price for everyone.
What the platform actually does
A clear price is nice, but it is worth nothing if the tool does not deliver. Here is what the platform does, in the day-to-day reality of a plant:
- Import your SCORM courses: if you already own training material, bring it in without starting over.
- Build your own courses with the Maker: videos, photos, PDFs, your in-house procedures, quizzes and exams, no programming required. If you can show a task to a new employee, you can build a course.
- Track certifications and deadlines: the platform warns you before a certification expires, instead of reminding you when it is too late.
- Demonstrate compliance and track Quebec’s 1% training law (CPMT): the proof is ready whenever the inspector or the accountant asks, with no last-minute report scramble.
Your data is hosted in Canada, and the platform is built for local industry by someone who spent his career on the shop floor.
Not sure where to start? That is precisely our trade.
Capturing thirty years of know-how from an employee’s head is not something you improvise. Where to start, what to document, how to turn it into genuinely useful training? That is exactly where Witeach makes the difference. Beyond the platform, we put our expertise in capturing and transferring critical knowledge at your service: we help you identify your experts’ essential knowledge, capture it, and turn it into concrete training your next hires can follow.
In the end, it all serves one goal: preserving your industrial know-how before it walks out the door. If you run a manufacturing SME in Quebec and are wondering where to begin, let’s talk. You can also explore the Witeach platform and its price, posted like everything else. That was the goal from day one.
