5 Ways to Apply Your Digital Transformation Strategy to Training for Your Entire Value Chain

If 70% of global revenue is tied to third-party channels, the influence partners have on your customers cannot be understated. Yet, improvement in the digital training experience for partners (your extended value chain) has lagged behind. What is your digital transformation strategy for partner training? Are they prepared to deliver the kind of experience your customers expect?

Here are five ways to better enable your entire extended value chain to provide the level of consistency and service your customers expect.

Show the Value of Operational Learning

Establish a pricing model that shows the value of the investment you ask the extended enterprise to make. For example, provide basic training to everyone but make other training available at a cost to demonstrate shared investment. Alternatively, consider making select training available only to certain tiers of suppliers or franchisees. You can drive a higher adoption rate by using early adopter stories that show the linkage between the deployment of operational learning and better results.

Inkling and Educe Group clients have experienced measurable reductions in training costs, decreases in onboarding time, and improvements in client satisfaction scores after deploying modern operational learning solutions to the extended value chain.

Put Training Where It Matters Most

Training is often quite literally locked in the manager’s office, so if the manager is not there no one can get to the computer, binder, or other resources that are behind that locked door. The better solution is to embed learning in the flow of work so that people learn as they are shoulder to shoulder with managers, supervisors, and more experienced coworkers. Instead of studying away from the job and completing traditional tests, utilize operational checklists and tablet-based solutions that allow employees to learn while doing.

Rely on a Mobile Learning Solution

Specialized mobile features can bring added value and drive more targeted training to your users. QR codes can be used to deliver the training an employee needs right when they need it. Just like scanning a code to check for available inventory, sales associates can scan right from the sales floor to get more information about a given product and better answer customer questions. Geofencing can be used to make training available only when a learner is at a work location, helping enforce any rules around training being performed only during work hours.

Deliver Digital, Engaging Training Content

Many companies still rely on paper-based training and manuals. The problem with that strategy is it’s really difficult to keep up to date, and it’s hard to know whether an updated chapter that is printed and distributed ever makes it into the manual it’s intended for. A digital transformation strategy applied to these paper-based items ensures that when an employee or partner accesses a resource, they’re accessing the most current information. 

Conversion of the content also provides the opportunity to improve the employee training experience by breaking training into more consumable microlearning, making learning searchable so that it is accessible in the moment of need, and creating a higher level of engagement using quizzes, video, and other interactive components. 

Enable Simple Administration

Employee training management is just one of the many jobs that a store manager, line supervisor, or franchise operator is performing, so keeping administration simple is key to driving high learning adoption. A decentralized approach that allows the full employee life cycle to be managed locally (e.g., the franchise operator hires the person, determines their role, gives them the right amount of access, and assigns the appropriate training based on the role they will be playing) minimizes delays and encourages local ownership and accountability. Establishing a centralized support mechanism so that local administrators can get help when they need it reinforces system and process adoption.