By investing in learning and development, businesses can help their learners—employees, partners, and customers—acquire new skills, improve performance, and drive innovation. But the L&D world is rapidly evolving, and it can be challenging for organizations to keep up.

In recent years, the importance of L&D has grown significantly. In a study conducted by LinkedIn, 94% of employees said that they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning and career development. Furthermore, organizations that invest in employee training and development tend to have higher employee engagement, productivity, and retention rates.

The benefits of customer training in an L&D strategy are just as clear. Building long-term connections with your customers across geographic and organizational boundaries is imperative. However, designing and delivering effective training programs for a variety of learners can be a daunting task, especially in today’s digital age, where traditional training methods (and legacy platforms) may no longer be effective.

That’s where digital training technology comes in. LMS software, skills platforms, and sales enablement technology offer organizations a wide range of tools that can help them deliver more efficient and effective training programs.

Learning and Development Technology

In the L&D space, several types of technology are available to support learner growth and development. While these technologies—LMS software, skills platforms, and sales enablement technology—may seem similar at first glance, they have distinct differences in terms of their focus and functionality. Understanding these differences is crucial for organizations to choose the right technology to support their L&D strategy.

LMS software is primarily used by companies to ensure organizational compliance through training, to guarantee that each team member is equipped to do the work required of them. It provides a centralized location for creating and delivering training content, tracking learner progress, and evaluating the effectiveness of training programs. A digital LMS includes features like course creation tools, learner tracking features, and complex reporting capabilities.

Skills platforms, on the other hand, are focused on providing a wide range of learning resources so that learners can improve their skills (yes, the software is aptly named!). They offer a diverse selection of courses and learning materials to help learners develop new skills and knowledge. Skills platforms include features like personalized learning paths, real-time analytics, and reporting tools.

Sales enablement technology, as the name suggests, is specifically designed to improve the sales team’s performance. It provides salespeople with the knowledge and resources they need to close more deals and increase revenue. Sales enablement technology typically includes training modules, coaching resources, and even sales playbooks.

LMS Software Benefits

LMS platforms have revolutionized the way organizations manage their training programs. With an LMS, companies can deliver and track training programs, manage learning resources, and evaluate learner progress all in one place. This technology has become increasingly popular in recent years, with the global LMS market expected to grow to $25.7 billion by 2025.

One of the main benefits of an LMS is its ability to centralize training programs. With an LMS, organizations can create and manage training programs from a single location, making delivering training to learners regardless of location easier. Furthermore, an LMS allows companies to track and evaluate individual progress, providing insights into the effectiveness of the training program.

A digital LMS enables organizations to personalize the learning experience for each learner. Through the power of AI, an LMS can recommend relevant training programs to help learners develop specific skills and knowledge. This personalized approach to learning can lead to better engagement and higher retention rates.

In addition to these benefits, an LMS can help organizations save time and money by automating administrative tasks like registration, tracking, and reporting. With an LMS, companies can create and deliver training programs more efficiently, freeing up resources to focus on other business priorities.

Furthermore, an LMS can help organizations improve onboarding processes for new hires. By providing new hires with the training and resources they need to succeed, organizations can reduce the time it takes for new employees to become fully productive.

A digital LMS can be a valuable tool for organizations to streamline their training programs and drive growth. By centralizing training programs, tracking learner progress, and providing a personalized learning experience, an LMS can help organizations improve their training effectiveness and drive business success.

Skills Platform Benefits

Skills platforms offer a wide range of courses and learning resources to help learners develop new skills and knowledge. These platforms often offer courses in various formats—videos, interactive quizzes, and simulations—making engaging learners with the material easier.

One of the main benefits of skills platforms is their accessibility. With a skills platform, learners can access learning resources anytime and anywhere, making it easier to fit learning into their busy schedules. This can be particularly beneficial for remote or distributed teams with difficulty attending in-person training sessions.

Another advantage of skills platforms is their flexibility. With a wide range of courses and learning resources available, learners can choose the topics and skills most relevant to their job roles and career goals. This personalized approach to learning can lead to higher engagement and better retention rates.

Skills platforms also offer real-time analytics and reporting, allowing organizations to track progress and identify skills gaps. This data can then inform future training programs and help learners develop their skills.

By offering a wide range of courses and learning resources and providing real-time analytics and reporting, skills platforms can help organizations create a learning culture that supports growth and development.

Sales Enablement Technology Benefits

Sales enablement technology focuses on improving the sales team’s performance by providing them with the knowledge and resources needed to succeed. Sales enablement technology typically includes tools like training modules, onboarding programs, coaching resources (for sales mentoring), and sales playbooks.

Sales enablement technology improves a sales team’s effectiveness by providing salespeople with the right knowledge and resources, so organizations can help them close more deals and increase revenue. This can be particularly beneficial for companies that operate in highly competitive industries.

Sales enablement technology also helps organizations track the effectiveness of their sales training programs. By using real-time analytics and reporting, organizations can identify which training modules and resources are most effective, allowing them to improve their training programs over time.

The Ultimate L&D Solution

A digital LMS that can also be a skills platform and effective sales enablement tech is the ultimate solution for organizations seeking to provide comprehensive and effective L&D programs to learners, especially with different roles.

With a digital LMS, employees, customers, partners, and more can access training modules and other learning resources relevant to them anytime, anywhere, and on any device. This flexibility allows all sets of learners to explore at their own pace and in a way that best fits their learning style, resulting in more engaged and motivated learners.

A digital LMS with skills platform capabilities enables learners to develop specific skills and competencies relevant to their roles, allowing them to achieve their goals—whether that is contributing to the success of the organization or using your product more often. By providing learners access to personalized learning pathways that align with their skills and goals, organizations can enhance engagement, increase employee and customer retention rates, and promote a culture of continuous learning.

Moreover, a digital LMS can be used for sales enablement and can provide sales teams with the knowledge and skills they need to drive revenue growth and improve customer satisfaction no matter where they are. Sales enablement tools like on-demand training, role-playing simulations, and gamification techniques can help sales reps to master key selling techniques and product knowledge, resulting in increased sales performance and customer loyalty.

Learning and Development Best Practices

When it comes to L&D best practices, there are a few key strategies that organizations should consider to maximize the effectiveness of their training programs. The primary consideration must be ensuring that training programs are aligned with the organization’s overall goals and objectives.

According to McKinsey, a significant number of L&D functions fall short of their objective, with just 40% of businesses reporting that their learning strategy aligns with their business objectives. This indicates that 60% of organizations lack a clear link between their learning initiatives and strategic goals, resulting in missed opportunities for improved employee productivity, enhanced customer satisfaction, and overall business growth.

Alignment means identifying the specific skills and knowledge that your learners need to succeed in their roles and designing training programs that address those needs. By aligning training programs with organizational goals, learners will be more likely to see the value in training and be motivated to apply their new skills and knowledge—whether that is an employee upskilling or a customer using your product more often.

Employee Training

One of the most important best practices is to make training programs relevant and engaging for employees. This means tailoring training content to each employee’s specific needs and interests and presenting it in an informative and entertaining way. Gamifying training content creates a fun, competitive atmosphere where learning thrives. ExpertusONE’s LMS gamification employs a point and badge recognition system that rewards rising stars and learning leaders across your organization. Badges can also be customized to align with your company’s branding and initiatives to further maximize training adoption.

It is also important to provide employees with ongoing learning opportunities. This means offering a variety of training programs, resources, and tools that employees can access throughout their careers. Providing ongoing learning opportunities not only helps employees develop new skills and knowledge but also shows that the organization is committed to their ongoing growth and development.

Finally, organizations should ensure that training programs are evaluated and refined continuously. This means regularly assessing the effectiveness of training programs through employee feedback, performance metrics, and other measures. By continually assessing and refining training programs, organizations can ensure that they are meeting the evolving needs of their employees and the organization as a whole.

Onboarding Training

Onboarding training happens at the beginning of an employee’s tenure with your company. It is a concentrated set of resources designed to set new hires up for success. Companies that create engaging, effective onboarding programs are more likely to see better employee retention rates and greater employee satisfaction. Onboarding training covers everything from technical processes required to complete work to a company’s values and mission.

Onboarding can make or break your employees’ work experience. Using a digital LMS, team members can take onboarding training into their own hands and work on their courseload whenever they have a spare moment. Then, with our integrated reporting tool, managers can determine which courses have not yet been completed and where employees may need more information. Most importantly, new employees and team members can access all the documents, resources, and training tools they need from a single platform—reducing learner and tech fatigue.

Sales Team Training

To ensure that sales teams are equipped to achieve their goals, investing in effective sales team training programs is essential. Companies must meet sales team where they are. Salespeople don’t want to leave their preferred workspaces (including digital workplaces, like sales software) to complete training, so compliance regulations fall behind and pitches become stale.

Sales teams rely on training for accurate information and updates to support their sales pitches and keep their knowledge of the product fresh and accurate. Extensible apps for platforms like Salesforce and Slack make training content easily accessible.

Sales team training helps sales professionals stay aligned with the corporate strategy, giving them access to the best tools and information, and connecting them with colleagues that will help them drive success. For example, sales team training programs could focus on areas like product knowledge, sales techniques, customer relationship management, and negotiation skills.

It is important to track key performance indicators like sales revenue, customer acquisition rates, and customer satisfaction levels to measure the impact of the training on sales team performance and to identify areas for improvement.

In addition to designing and delivering effective sales team training programs, it is also important to provide ongoing support and resources to sales team members, like access to coaching and mentoring programs, sales tools and resources, and other types of support to help sales team members continue to develop their skills and improve their performance over time.

Customer Training

By providing customers with the training they need to use products and services effectively, organizations can improve customer satisfaction, reduce support costs, and increase revenue through retention. Customer training programs should focus on the specific training needs of the organization’s customers—things like product usage and troubleshooting—and developing training programs that align with customer goals and objectives by selecting the most appropriate delivery methods for the training. Most customers don’t want to read a lengthy manual or sit through any more PowerPoints, so understanding how your customers want to receive information is crucial.

Customers need engaging content and ongoing support to be successful. Customer training should provide access to support forums, online resources, and other types of guidance as well as personalized learning paths. Most importantly, companies need to pay attention to customer satisfaction levels and product adoption rates. If customers give feedback, companies must listen.

Partner Training

Partner training helps companies disperse essential information so that all partners—reseller partners, VARs, and training partners—can convey a cohesive message. Partners can use an LMS platform to access essential information about your products, offerings, and services to understand your business’s core messaging. Training helps companies ensure that partners represent the brand well.

Partner training enables companies to effectively promote and sell products and services, increase revenue, and build strong, long-lasting partnerships. Partner training programs are most effective when aligned with partner goals and objectives.

To ensure that all partners accurately represent your company, it’s crucial to establish a unified brand message. This is especially important when dealing with partner teams from different countries, speaking different languages, and representing your company to various buyer personas. To maintain consistency across all partner channels, keeping them up-to-date with important information about your brand, products, and services is essential.

A digital LMS platform provides an optimal solution for ensuring that channel partners have access to the necessary information anytime and anywhere. This allows partners to learn at their own pace and refer back to training content whenever needed, even while on the job or working remotely. By having accessible and informative resources at their fingertips, partners can focus on building relationships on behalf of your brand.

Compliance Training

Compliance training is a type of training designed to ensure that learners understand and follow the rules, regulations, and laws that govern their industry or profession. It typically covers topics like workplace safety, data privacy, anti-discrimination policies, and financial regulations.

Compliance training is mandatory for certain industries, like healthcare, finance, and government, to ensure that employees are aware of the legal requirements and consequences of non-compliance. However, many other industries also provide compliance training to ensure employees understand and adhere to company policies and procedures. Compliance training is often required annually or as laws and regulations change.

The requirements for compliance training can differ based on the nature of work, the organization’s size, and the learner’s job description. This process is crucial for many industries as it ensures that team members are knowledgeable about the products they sell or services they provide, thereby maintaining industry standards.

By prioritizing L&D initiatives, businesses can help their employees, partners, and customers develop new skills, improve performance, and drive innovation. As the landscape of L&D continues to evolve with the advent of new technologies and innovative strategies, it is important for organizations to keep up and stay ahead of the curve.

The importance of investing in L&D has become increasingly clear, and by investing in a digital LMS that can cover the capabilities of a traditional LMS, skills platforms, and sales enablement technology, businesses can provide learners with accessible and informative resources.

By embracing these tools and investing in L&D, organizations can unlock the full potential of their learners and drive overall business growth. Schedule a demo today to see how a digital LMS can enhance your L&D strategy.