Benefits of Training the Extended Enterprise

What is extended enterprise training?

Extended enterprise training refers to learning initiatives designed for and delivered to different groups of learners who may or may not be direct employees of your organization. These learners could be third-party resellers of your products, employees at a partner company, or customers.

Whether your organization encompasses distinct brands, partners with external agents or vendors, or provides an array of products or services to a diverse customer base, ensuring everyone has the information they need can be challenging. Extended enterprise training helps businesses set everyone up for success from the onset.

Who is it for?

Franchises: Companies with a franchise model have a vested interest in ensuring all franchise employees receive adequate training, but they’re often unable to mandate it. That’s because these employees usually aren’t directly employed by the franchisor but rather by individual franchise owners, which means it’s up to the franchise owners to ensure each employee receives training. Extended enterprise training equips franchisors with the technology needed to create individualized learning environments for each franchise brand, distribute training across complex networks, and directly communicate with franchise employees about available resources, learning opportunities, company news, and more.

Customers: If you provide a product or service that requires guidance, it’s essential to deliver that training in a way that’s easy to access and understand. Providing adequate training and educational resources along with your product or service demonstrates professionalism and reliability to customers, making for a smoother customer experience. Ensuring customers have access to the information they need to understand your products and services could also help them troubleshoot any issues independently, thereby reducing customer support inquiries. With the proper training, customers will feel confident using your products and services, engaging with your business, and recommending it to others.

Partners and Resellers: Your partners are crucial to the success of your business. Whether they’re reselling your products or offering them as add-ons to their own, you’ll want to make sure anyone talking to potential customers about your business has the knowledge required to communicate its value clearly and effectively.

Associations, Contractors, and Gig Workers: Even if your organization does not directly employ them, all individuals who serve as representatives of your brand should be well-versed in your company’s offerings and value propositions. Training your brand ambassadors helps these individuals better advocate for your products and services. It also ensures uniformity and consistency in brand voice.

What are the benefits of extended enterprise training?

Reduce Knowledge and Skill Gaps: Even if learners are not directly employed by your organization, it’s beneficial to the business to provide the information people need to be successful in their roles. Knowledge is power, so the more people know, the more confidently they’ll represent your company—and the happier your customers will be.

Increase User Adoption: Training your whole network encourages more people to use your products and services, ultimately expanding your customer base. Proper training can teach customers how to use a product more effectively, leading to a better overall user experience. Training often comes with ongoing support and access to user guides, FAQs, and customer support—knowing these resources are available to your network can boost customer confidence and encourage them to use the product.

Establish Training Consistency: Creating a central “source of truth” for all resources and knowledge bases around your products or services helps you maintain quality control and ensure everyone has access to the same information. If everyone is trained the same way, they’re more likely to perform the job the same way, thereby streamlining operations, increasing employee retention, and making for a more cohesive organization.

Improve Customer Loyalty: When people find a product easy to use and see its benefits, they are more apt to continue using it. Extended enterprise training increases “stickiness” among customers, partners, and vendors, making people more likely to continue engaging with your business.

Build Community: Training can be a way to build a community of users around a product. When customers, partners, and other resellers or ambassadors feel part of a community, they are more likely to remain engaged.

Boost Sales: Equipping external partners or brand ambassadors with the information to communicate about your products and services effectively makes them more likely to do so, especially if they represent other similar companies. Providing adequate training also shows external agents that you’re supportive and committed to their success, making them more likely to promote your business over your competitors.

Boost Brand Awareness: Training everyone who represents your company, products, or services encourages a cohesive brand image and ensures brand messaging remains consistent no matter who is talking about your company.

Save Costs: Online training is a cost-effective way to deliver training across different locations, franchise networks, or regions. It reduces the need for in-person training sessions—saving companies both time and money—and speeds up the process of getting new partners, teams, and representatives ready for success.

Improve Security: For companies that offer software or platforms with data privacy and security requirements, training can ensure that customers are using the product safely and competently.

How to manage it all?

Training different groups of learners can become complicated without the right technology to facilitate course creation, assignments, and user management. Furthermore, providing external parties like partners and resellers with access to proprietary resources can become risky without the proper security protocols in place. A learning management system (LMS) that supports extended enterprise training is crucial for businesses that want to provide training resources to audiences outside their organization. The right LMS will make it easy for your business to securely share training opportunities, coursework, and resources with an extended network of learners.

An LMS built for extended enterprise training allows your business to create distinct learning environments for different audiences through one platform. It enables organizations to tailor training materials to the specific requirements of each stakeholder segment, ensuring training content is relevant and engaging for all learners.

Moreover, a suitable LMS will provide robust tracking and reporting capabilities, enabling organizations to monitor training progress, completion rates, and performance of external learners. This data-driven approach allows for continuous improvement and the ability to refine training programs based on feedback and performance metrics.

An LMS serves as the backbone of extended enterprise training. It empowers organizations to extend their training initiatives beyond their internal workforce, fostering collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and a more successful and engaged external stakeholder network.

Interested in exploring how your organization can leverage an LMS to deliver extended enterprise training? Download our eBook, The Extended Advantage: Strategies for Training Learners Outside Your Organization.