For many organizations, the learning ecosystem extends far beyond their four walls. More companies find it necessary or beneficial to deliver training to external audiences such as customers, channel partners, distributors, value-added resellers and franchisees. The gig economy also makes it critical to provide training and development opportunities for non-employees.
Organizations that expand training to include their extended audiences drive additional revenue, brand recognition and overall-performance.
By providing product and service training to resellers, customers and potential customers, companies can ensure they are receiving the best, most up-to-date information.
Salespeople tend to sell more of a product they know about than one with which they are unfamiliar. Customers rely less on help and support channels when they are well-informed.
How does extended enterprise learning help your business?
1. Increases awareness of products/services
Providing product and service training to resellers, customers and potential customers ensures these extended audiences are receiving the best, most up-to-date information.
Most resellers typically sell products or services from multiple companies — giving the customer options. Product and service training can increase the probability of your products being sold because the reseller is able to give knowledgeable advice and answer questions.
Making product training available to customers allows them to have the best experience possible. It also allows organizations to differentiate themselves from competitors, boost customer engagement and loyalty and conveniently offer product tutorials.
2. Improves customer relations
With more and more organizations realizing the benefits in training customers — online customer training programs have been on the rise. Depending on the nature of the product being sold, customer training may be just as important as the training provided to the employees that made it.
Offering customers with product training fosters customer loyalty and a brand following.
Customers rely less on help and support channels when they are well-informed — and are more likely to become repeat customers.
3. Meets compliance requirements
Compliance, or required, training is a common theme within partner training.
Successfully tackle compliance requirements, drive mandatory training and easily verify who has taken training with an extended enterprise training program.
Present learners with certificates of completion for heightened training engagement.
4. Reduces training costs
With a focused, engaging extended enterprise training program, a 2020 Brandon Hall Group Extended Enterprise Study found that 44% of organizations experienced a reduction in training costs.
Extending knowledge to extended audiences reduces the knowledge gap between customers and partners — resulting in less time and money spent on after-the-fact training.
5. Increases employee engagement
Training focused on improving the employee experience will increase engagement, motivation and morale.
Quality employee training allows organizations to retain the right talent and boost profits. Ensure employees feel valued and have a positive impact on efficiency, innovation and productivity.
6. Reduces training travel time
The inherent complexity of the extended enterprise is compounded further when managing training across hundreds, even thousands of partner locations.
Offering an extended enterprise training program via an LMS allows organizations to provide customized training to each segment of their partner network without requiring employees and partners to by physically present.
7. Helps meet and exceed corporate objectives
An extended enterprise training program empowers employees and partners to be ready for today and tomorrow's business objectives.
Control consistency throughout the training process and deliver a tailored learning experience for each extended audience focused on the knowledge and subject matters that meet your business objectives.
8. Reduces employee turnover
Increased job satisfaction leads to lower turnover.
When employees feel that companies are investing in their futures rather than just their current job roles, they are more likely to invest back in the company with increased loyalty, engagement and productivity.
9. Maximizes client retention
Organizations rely on a network of resellers to sell their products — making resellers' product knowledge essential to the organization's success.
Enable resellers to pass on knowledge to clients and convey your company's culture and vision, resulting in a positive client experience.
10. Increases sales
Highly trained partners and resellers have the potential to increase sales of your products and services.
Supply your partners with the insight and knowledge needed to put your product on top.
11. Generates revenue
An extended enterprise training program helps ramp new hires up to speed quickly, boost performance in areas of need, update skills of existing workers and develop new, efficient processes — all resulting in increased revenue.
12. Reduces client support interactions
Ease the load on your customer support team and reduce the number of help desk requests by allowing customers to independently browse support content.
More and more companies are embracing the idea of broadening training and certification to include extended audiences. Organizations that fail to consider all possible learning audiences may miss critical opportunities to improve customer relationships, increase sales and generate revenue.
The Right Technology
Managing a training program focused on external groups comes with challenges. These audiences have a wide range of characteristics that complicate the process.
Latitude understands these challenges and have developed a learning platform specifically designed to manage extended enterprise training programs.
For more than 20 years Latitude has helped organizations large and small use technology to drive employee and partner performance. With our vast knowledge and experience in the extended enterprise training space, clients rely on our software and consulting to help them optimize channel performance and improve the effectiveness of their training and certification programs. Learn more.
Brandon Hall and Latitude Survey
In a collaborated effort, Latitude CG and Brandon Hall took to the training community to get a pulse on the current state of the extended learning space.
We surveyed training managers from small, mid-size and large organizations on their learning audiences, allocated budgets, modalities for delivering training, learning objectives, training challenges, realized benefits and effectiveness of training.
We created a knowledge graphic summarizing our findings.It will help get you started on preparing your extended enterprise training program, answering critical questions such as:
- What challenges do organizations face when delivering extended enterprise learning?
- How does extended learning help business?
- How effective do other organizations consider extended learning?
Get Knowledge Graphic
About Latitude CG
Latitude CG is an industry leader in driving performance and the home of LatitudeLearning, an extended enterprise training solution. LatitudeLearning is for executives that oversee training programs and want employees and partners to be ready for today and tomorrow’s business challenges. Our product is a learning platform that manages organizational skill development and makes external training of business partners painless. Unlike other LMSs, which is limited to managing knowledge acquisition, our LMS manages knowledge acquisition, skill development and organizational readiness.
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