Corporations across the globe are searching for innovative ideas to increase revenues and productivity.   I had the privilege of working with Tom Kelly, who ran the Cisco Enterprise E-Learning program from its inception.  He later took this incredibly successful extended learning model to Network Appliance.  We quickly learned there are many benefits to training an extended enterprise.
 

Benefits and Advantages of Enterprise E-Learning

• Rapidly brief customers and re-sellers on new product roll outs 
• Certify resellers to service the company’s products 
• Track compliance of franchisees with regulations and company processes 
• Ensure maximum utilization of your products and services
• Reduce support costs
• Create a community and network with your products and services as the focal point
• Create a profit center by selling training to customers and partners 

The last bullet tends to get the most attention. Currently the Cisco certification program generates well over $500 million in annual revenue.  However, all the points lend to a healthy bottom line.  

With eLearning and a capable Learning Management System, training your extended enterprise can be a tremendous competitive advantage.  Ideal solutions are scalable, customizable to specific learning populations and easily deployed.  Effective reporting on teams, regions, product groups, etc. will likely be crucial for executive buy-in.
 

LMS Training Audiences

In 2012 ELearning! conducted a research survey and found that only  53% of the corporations use their LMS to support reseller/channel partners, customer audiences and other supply chain partners.  That was up 27% from 2011.  In addition, they found many of the LMS did not support federated multi-tenant training, i.e. one portal for each target audience.


 

Simple. Smart. Affordable.

The Accord LMS feature set provides a superior e-learning solution for training an extended enterprise.  From a single administrative portal you can easily create any number of customized learning portals with their own learners, catalog, enrollment, workflows, processes, branding, feature set, eCommerce gateway, languages and filtered reporting. Set-up and support is simple and powerful:

• Automated learner import and updates from HR systems
• Site layout, skin colors, branding and Learner UI are easy to customize 
• Drag and drop technology enables easy content and catalog organization 
• The reporting engine is powerful yet simple to use with automated deliver of custom templates  
• Hundreds of optional extensions support additional business needs

  
The Accord LMS is a simple enterprise learning solution that's smart and affordable...with particular emphasis on affordable!  The Accord LMS cost structure encourages large end-users counts.  100,000-800,000 users do not break the bank and, at the same time 1,500-10,000 users are extremely cost effective.

The question to be asked is, “What is the cost of NOT training your extended enterprise?”