Partner training 101: why an LMS is a good way to enable your partner network

What is LMS?

LMS stands for ‘learning management system’. An LMS is a software that allows you to deliver training remotely based on your specific requirements. Traditionally, LMS is used to onboard new hires and promote ongoing training and development across an organisation.

Using an LMS comes with some pretty significant advantages. Once you’ve set it up, you can:

Offer training to as many people as required, creating personalised learning programmes to meet the needs of different teams.
Allow people to complete their learning at their own pace, reducing pressure on those that don’t like tests and avoiding frustration for those who want to rush through to the end.
Track and monitor a participant’s progress, helping fill in gaps where needed.
Use a built-in authoring tool, or course builder, to facilitate in-house content development among managers and employees who want to share their expertise — this isn’t available in all LMS platforms, however, and it’s worth looking out for!

Extended enterprise LMS

When it comes to partner enablement and training, in particular, companies can reach for an extended enterprise LMS.

Much like an internal learning management system, extended enterprise LMS is all about development opportunities, delivered in a sleek and motivating way — the difference is, it’s aimed externally, to build your ‘extended enterprise’ or team.

Let’s look at the way that My Learning Hub’s aptly named ‘Hubs’ works for partner L&D.

Create your white-labelled hub in minutes and easily onboard your partners.
Get started using a content library template, or start from scratch yourself.
Delegate design tasks to our team of experts, to create highly visual and engaging course content.
Integrate your content with where your partners are, such as Slack or MS Teams.
Accurately measure the return on investment by via a real-time data dashboard, and make your partner collaborations as impactful as they can be.

>> Want to see a Hubs demo? Book one in today.

3 benefits of using Hubs for partner enablement

1. Quick, easy setup

They say that time is money. But wasted time is pure, unadulterated frustration. Being able to share updates and workarounds, or relay fresh intel as it comes in, keeps your partners and customers happy… and your customer support team will be eternally grateful.

With white-labelled Hubs, you can share relevant and ‘hot off the press’ learning content with partners in minutes, using our simple course-building assets that require no specialist design skills.

2. Fixed pricing

Hubs’ fixed price model is another key advantage. We think taking on a new partner should be an exciting opportunity, not an unwieldy additional expense. Having a fixed price model means that you don’t have to worry about the costs secretly piling up as you scale up your business and grow your partner network.

3. Proven ROI

On Hubs, everything works as efficiently and frictionless as possible. But that ease of use can never come at the expense of depth of learning. The only way to get value for money is if your partners learn and develop. Whether you’re training partners on product specifications or upskilling customer support, you set the KPIs and track the ROI.

This partner enablement then has a direct impact on your bottom line as well.

It makes sense. Who’s going to make your business more money: a partner who understands your product deeply, has information at their fingertips and can show off all the bells and whistles your R&D department has spent so much time and energy developing? Or a partner who has to email around for help, leaving customers in the lurch?

Take a seat and relax, safe in the knowledge that your partner training is taken care of and that your partners are hard at work increasing quality and consistency for your customers.

Hubs in action for partner training and enablement

Zonar Systems

Zonar provides advanced solutions for smart fleet management. It can be a pretty technical space and, for Zonar, empowering both partners and customers to use the tech was a total non-negotiable. But while it was clear they needed an LMS to provide top-up training to all end-users, it wasn’t clear exactly how many users that would be. Some estimates thought 300,000+, and that made a variable per user per month pricing model especially risky.

With Hubs, Zonar was able to build a customised training portal in just one day… and stay within budget.

Here’s what they had to say:

“My Learning Hub's solution allowed us to service different customer bases within the business, and be able to create white-labeled hubs in 2 minutes. Their fixed pricing for unlimited users meant risk-free scaling and no unexpected user overage costs.” – Paul Warrick, Training Manager at Zonar Systems

Chess ICT

Chess is a leading technology solutions provider, supporting over 33,000 companies. Not coincidentally, they’re also ranked No1 in ‘The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work’. That’s a lot to live up to!

As you might imagine, they wanted a top-quality training system for the ‘extended enterprise’ — one that was easy and rewarding to use and that really added value to their network. Chess loved the gamification approach we were able to facilitate, allowing participants from new acquisitions to quickly feel part of a competitive, but supportive, team.

In their words:

“My Learning Hub delivered a central system for all learning, documentation and courses that could be used by people across our group and 20,000 external partners. It’s simple to use and technical support is second to none and I think we would be very lucky to get that from another organisation.“ – Tim Wilkinson-Hall, Head of Knowledge and Office at Chess ICT

To see how My Learning Hub could help upskill, develop and extract more value from your partner relationships, then get in touch today.