Transform your Extended Enterprise through Training
If your company works with channel distribution partners, re-sellers, suppliers, franchisees or dealers, you need a good Extended Enterprise Training model. A model that delivers targeted training to learners beyond your organization. Such a model can engage your extended network and create immediate, measurable impact. It can also help your organization gain a competitive edge.
A well-organized Extended Enterprise Training program provides a range of benefits such as:
Super-Charged Supply Chain
Provide training to your dealers, channel distribution partners and even your blue-collar workforce to boost quality throughout the supply chain.
Optimized Business Outcomes
Generate extra revenue by offering paid courses to your clients. You can also provide your partners with certification training modules to boost their credibility and sales, thereby increasing your profits.
Lowered Costs
Keep your training up to date online and make it accessible to your complete extended enterprise. Removing knowledge gaps, misinformation and confusion among partners/resellers will reduce the amount of support queries that need to be managed,thereby reducing customer support costs.
Reduced Partner Onboarding Time
Providing online training to your partners on how to use your products can cut down their onboarding time and reduce their time to competency.
Contract Workforce Compliance
If you are a part of retail or large-scale construction industries, many of your workers would also be contractors. Use an Extended Enterprise LMS to diligently train contractors and ensure congruence in their regulatory certifications.
Increased Competitive Edge
Software providers, telecommunication companies and manufacturers usually have global partners who resell their product lines. These partners often sell competing products from competing organizations. The organization that best trains these partners experiences better sales, diversification of sales channels and increased customer satisfaction.
The multiple benefits of Extended Enterprise Training make it sound too good to be true. But recent industry-wide adoption of such initiatives proves its worth as a business strategy.
Executing such a program however, isn’t as complicated as you might think. Getting started with your own Extended Enterprise Training program involves just 3 steps. Identifying your target audience, creating content and deploying it using a suitable tool.
1. Identify your Target Audience
The first step is to identify the external audiences whom you need to serve. Determine their size, profile, needs, and their potential to boost business performance when provided training. Moreover, identify the key business performance indicators in your case. For eg; Do your channel partners want an increase in the quantity of sales, frequency of sales or improvement in the quality of their services?
2. Create Learning Content
Quality learning content is the backbone of any training program. Similar to employee training programs, extended enterprise training programs require tailored learning content in order to be effective.
Pick content topics based on who makes up your extended enterprise audience. For eg; Your learning content could certify partners and make sure they follow brand guidelines, or troubleshoot common issues faced by your customers with tutorials and end-user guides.
3. Deploy an Extended Enterprise Learning Management System
Once you’ve picked your audience, secured a budget, and prepared learning content, you’ll need a platform to actually deliver training to a potentially distributed group of learners.
A Learning Management System is the most commonly used platform for such an initiative(used by 76% of companies). An LMS will act as a knowledge hub for all audiences, both external and internal. Use an LMS to enable instant updates on products and services.
If your organization has a product or a service which requires customer/partner expertise, it is worth training your customers/partners. When thoughtfully designed, extended enterprise training will help your organization drive revenue, cut down costs, and accelerate your business performance.
