In today’s increasingly competitive and complex business environment, companies must constantly explore ideas for improving operations to drive down costs and increase efficiencies. At the same time, they need to make sure that they are maximizing revenue opportunities and maintaining awareness and adherence to ever-changing industry and regulatory standards.
To effectively address these challenges, many organizations are now looking at the entirety of their corporate ecosystem to uncover and leverage any opportunity for a competitive advantage. What has emerged is the concept of the “Extended Enterprise” and the realization that the full extent of an organization’s opportunity for success lies in a company’s ability to bring together its employees, suppliers, partners, customers, and all other entities that can contribute to a company’s productivity.
The Benefits of Extended Enterprise Training
Historically, one of the primary ways a company would seek to gain a competitive advantage was through employee training and development. But recently, as the concept of the extended enterprise has continued to gain traction, organizations are seeing the benefits of including relevant external entities in their training programs. While expanding and diversifying corporate training programs to include these additional entities does add some overhead, the benefits can be significant.
Increased Revenues
By expanding training to include not just your internal sales team, but channel partners and other revenue-generating entities as well, you increase your potential sales opportunities. And including customer support organizations (both internal and outsourced) can help protect your customer base and your existing revenues.
Decreased Costs
While expanding your training program across the extended enterprise does increase cost, the opportunity to save money through improved processes across all of your relevant delivery organizations can present savings that far outweigh the added program expense.
Reduced Risk
Extended enterprise training can help to manage your organization’s risk by ensuring that all your vendors and suppliers are on the same page with regard your company’s product and service offerings, industry changes, and all relevant compliance issues.
Enhanced Brand
Including outside entities in your training strategy provides a great opportunity to strengthen your brand by demonstrating your company’s commitment to excellence across all of your associated entities. In particular, training your customers to help them derive the greatest level of benefit from your products and services can enhance loyalty and facilitate significant word-of-mouth advertising.
LMS Portals for Extended Enterprise Learning Management
LMS Portals provides our clients and partners with a cloud-based, multi-tenant learning management system (LMS) that is well-suited for extended enterprise training. The system allows you to launch and manage multiple private eLearning environments (portals) to uniquely support each of your training audiences.
Some of the features of the system that enable streamlined management of extended enterprise training include:
Portal Branding
Create a unique look for each of your training portals with branding elements that include images, logos, titles, favicons, and more.
Rapid Course Development Tools
The platform offers embedded tools that allow you to build and deliver robust eLearning courses quickly and easily. No previous course development experience is required.
User Onboarding
Streamline the process for inviting users onto a portal and into the specific courses that are relevant to them, given their training needs.
Learner Collaboration
Allow users to communicate and collaborate with each other in order to support and enhance the online learning experience.
Recognition and Awards
Offer certificates and recognition for learners who complete their coursework and excel in your training program.
Detailed Analytics
Capture and share detailed information regarding user engagement, progress, and success. The ongoing review of this information can help determine the future direction of your program as your training needs evolve and grow over time.
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