What Are The Benefits Of An Extended Enterprise Training LMS?

What Are The Benefits Of An Extended Enterprise Training LMS?
Summary: The potential benefits of extended enterprise training are endless. In this article, I'll analyze how you can get a more agile enterprise by using an eLearning solution tailored to your business needs. Plus, you'll learn how an extended enterprise LMS can help increase revenue and lower costs while training all stakeholders involved!

Thoughts On Extended Enterprise Training (An Overview)

Extended enterprise training is the next step in corporate training. That's why many organizations have already taken the opportunity to implement it in their training strategy. Most organizations have different types of audiences that extend outside of the business, this is known as an extended enterprise. These external audiences consist of customers and partners that require training to help make your business a success, but it often gets neglected.

In today’s hyper-competitive market, organizations cannot rely just on their internal employees, they also need to rely on their extended enterprise to help reach their goals. Educating your partners on your products or services will help them to better sell your offerings, driving revenue for your organization. Training your customers on your products will help them to get the most value from your solution, which reduces customer turnover. This is why providing extended enterprise training is vital for any organization to remain competitive.

eBook Release: Extended Enterprise Training: What Are The Benefits And How To Implement It Successfully
eBook Release
Extended Enterprise Training: What Are The Benefits And How To Implement It Successfully
Deliver impactful extended enterprise training using an LMS: A complete guide for L&D professionals.

With multiple types of audiences, delivering training can be a challenge because each segment has its own unique training needs. An extended enterprise LMS platform can help with this by allowing organizations to create different environments with branding and training content that is relevant for each specific group. This enables businesses to deliver effective training to external audiences while making it easy to manage.

What Is Extended Enterprise Training?

Extended enterprise training refers to the training of external business partners who contribute to the success of the business, such as customers, vendors, resellers, distributors, franchisees, and consultants.

The goal of extended enterprise training is to provide these segments with the resources they need to be more knowledgeable about your products, services, and processes. With extended enterprise training, your customers will be better equipped to use your products and your partners will be able to sell your products better.

What Are The Different Types?

There are many different types of extended enterprise training an organization can offer to its external partners. Here are a couple of the most common:

  • Partner training
    This is the training of resellers, dealers and agents, franchisees, contractors, and consultants to make them more knowledgeable about your products to help drive more revenue for your organization. For example, a retail company that offers sales training and product guides for resellers to become more familiar with their product and how to sell it better.
  • Customer training
    This is training an organization’s customer base about their products to help them use it more efficiently. For example, a software company that provides training courses, how-to tutorials, and FAQs for its customers on how to use their product.

Benefits Of An Extended Enterprise LMS

Delivering extended enterprise training through an LMS will provide your partners and customers with the knowledge and information they need to succeed. Training your customers on your products will make them more knowledgeable about how to use your offerings more efficiently, resulting in improved user adoption and reduced customer churn. Properly educating your partners will help them sell your products better and grow your business.

Here are 5 key benefits you can expect when you provide extended enterprise training:

1. Establish A Unique Learner Experience

The ability to customize your sub-platforms to reflect your brand and tailor it to your audience’s needs will provide a unique voice and feel. It also creates a stronger brand as your partners and customers will receive the same education on your products. It improves consistency, enhances the company’s image, and turns your partners into brand advocates.

2. Increase Your Organization’s Revenue

When you provide effective training for your partners, they will be more familiar with your products, processes, and the benefits of your offering. As a result, they will be able to drive more sales and increase your revenue.

3. Eliminate Redundancy

You can instantly share courses to each of your sub-platforms and keep your course content up-to-date across all platforms through live synchronization. This will significantly reduce repetitive tasks and manual work, saving you time and energy and letting you focus on higher priority business work.

4. Improve Customer Loyalty And Retention

If your customers are not using your products to their full potential or if user adoption is low, you run the risk of losing your clients. This is why providing solid training on how to use your products more efficiently is vital. You will be able to increase customer satisfaction and ensure your clients stay with you for the longest time possible.

5. Minimize Costs

There is no need to purchase full licenses for each sub-platform you require. Each sub-platform acts as a subsidiary and all core features and functionalities are provided from the parent platform.

How Can An Extended Enterprise LMS Platform Support Extended Enterprise Training?

An extended enterprise LMS platform provides organizations with sub-platforms to help deliver distinct and relevant training for each audience, under one system.

Manage Multiple LMS Platforms Under One System

Your organization may have diverse branches, brands, and partners that require their unique training. An extended enterprise LMS provides organizations with the ability to create numerous sub-platforms with unique sub-platform hierarchy and training content for these different segments. Admins are also able to manage and navigate between these sub-platforms quickly and easily. For example, a software company that has multiple product lines with different branding can create a sub-platform for each of those product lines for its customers. They can customize the branding to match the various products and include training materials relevant to that line of business.

Share Courses Across All Platforms With A Few Clicks

An extended enterprise LMS platform will offer course sharing features that allow you to share content with your different platforms with only a few clicks of a button. This prevents you from having to rebuild your courses from scratch for your various platforms, giving you time to focus on creating the most effective training program.

You can instantly update your courses across all sub-platforms.

Customize Sub-Platforms To Your Needs

You can customize the look of each sub-platform to match your unique audience and branding. Easily customize each environment with white labeling options, from custom colors and logos to personalized login pages and email notifications to provide your learners with a more personalized and engaging experience.

Track And Report Learner Progress

An admin of the master platform can generate reports on all sub-platforms from the master level to track learner progress and performance at all levels. You can automate these reports by scheduling their delivery directly to the inboxes of you and your team so everyone can quickly stay on top of what’s going on with each audience.

How To Prepare For Your Extended Enterprise Training Program

The most important thing you need to do is evaluate your LMS’s capabilities before implementing extended enterprise training, you will want to make sure your LMS can support it. If not, consider looking into other solutions that can. Check to see if your LMS supports the features we covered earlier and if it allows you to manage content, users, customization, branding, and rules for each segment.

Final Thoughts

Training your extended audience will significantly help you with your bottom line if done correctly. You will be able to drive additional revenue for your business and minimize the risk of your customers leaving you for competitors. However, it can be challenging to train numerous audiences under a single training platform.

An extended enterprise LMS should be considered if you plan on educating multiple audiences. It can solve the above challenge by providing various environments with its branding and content tailored to provide relevant training based on each audience’s needs. Utilizing an extended enterprise LMS platform will allow you to provide effective training to both your partners and customers so your business can operate like a well-oiled machine.

For more information, you’re more than welcome to download our eBook Extended Enterprise Training: What Are The Benefits And How To Implement It Successfully.

eBook Release: SkyPrep LMS
SkyPrep LMS
SkyPrep LMS specializes in automating and transitioning any aspect of your employee training to an online platform, simply, and painlessly.

Originally published at skyprep.com.