Five reasons to urgently offer extended enterprise e-learning

For businesses of all sizes, performance is increasingly linked to external organisations and people. Many operations are only able to succeed through inter-connected networks of partners, alliances, franchisees, supply chain relationships, and collaboration with customers. This is what’s referred to as the ‘extended enterprise’.

An effective approach to training and communicating with these third-parties— supported by a robust online learning management system like those built by Groove eLearning Solutions—is an amazing way to reduce your risks and increase your competitiveness. Why? Because extended enterprise training creates greater cohesion, compliance, and efficiency.

Let’s explore the benefits of extended enterprise e-learning in more detail:

Extended enterprise e-learning helps you unite and onboard partners and customers

It makes sense to offer training that helps all the key players, inside and outside your business, to get on the same page. Onboarding new business partners, franchisees, suppliers, distributors, or customers is critical to building strong relationships. Using online teaching software is the perfect way to standardise the information you share with third-parties, and streamline its delivery. You could use e-learning to share processes, safety information, or give resellers a clearer understanding of your product range so you can be confident they can represent your brand to the market. Getting new customers quickly acquainted with your business and/or product through online training helps them transition smoothly and reinforces their decision to buy.

Get third-parties onboard faster with extended enterprise e-learning

Online training increases customer adoption of your products and services

Your customers are an important part of your business ecosystem, and finding engaging ways to give them the knowledge and skills they need to succeed must be part of your growth strategy. Leveraging a flexible online learning management system (LMS) to deliver customer training and resources is a smart way to boost uptake and long-term loyalty. If customers struggle to set-up, customise, or apply what you offer, they can become disengaged. This is especially true for organisations that offer SaaS or technology products, but e-learning can be equally effective for training customers in goods like machinery or to guide people to make the most of your services.

An extended enterprise LMS reduces the burden on your internal team

When your partners and customers have comprehensive and easy-to-access online training available, they’ll have less need of support from your team. That means your technical and customer service employees won’t have to deal with as many common, repetitive queries—freeing up their time to solve more complex issues and provide a better customer experience. Extended enterprise training powered by an online learning management system can also ensure that processes and compliance obligations are followed more accurately by partner organisations, contractors or suppliers. Fewer errors means faster workflows, to enhance internal productivity and cost-effectiveness.

E-Learning improves retention and value derived from partners and customers

Strong relationships need to be nurtured. Training and knowledge-sharing via your LMS is a wonderful way to stay in touch with your ecosystem of third-party organisations and customers. Keeping your training material fresh and dynamic through a customised e-learning platform from Groove can help you engage business partners and retain customers. Reducing churn is a particularly valuable outcome of extended enterprise e-learning—the longer you can keep customers happy, the better chance of repeat sales, up-selling, cross-selling and recommendations.

Online training can reduce churn and strengthen partnerships

Online training for the extended enterprise supports growth and higher revenue

It’s easy to see how you can save money, drive more sales, and expand more rapidly when the organisations and people connected to your business are operating better as a result of having deeper product knowledge and/or being in alignment with your internal processes. But you also need an LMS that lets you create content easily, and makes it highly accessible. Providing extended enterprise e-learning at scale requires modern and customisable online training software—Groove builds our solutions by leveraging the popular Open edX® platform, a best-of-breed online learning management system founded by Harvard and MIT.

Your business doesn’t exist in isolation, so don’t limit your online training to employees. Extend the effectiveness of organisations linked to your business, and give customers more value, by offering extended enterprise e-learning. By working with Groove eLearning Solutions to develop your online training platform, you’ll harness the experience of an edtech company with proven success helping businesses in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and the UK.