Increase Revenues and Margins With Effective Extended-Enterprise Learning In today’s networked economy, organizations are finding that by effectively engaging and training their extended enterprise of channel partners, franchisees, and resellers, they can develop new profit centers and increase revenue and customer satisfaction scores. Extended-Enterprise Learning provides a platform for training the entire value chain to achieve greater business performance and returns.

1. White Paper
Increase Revenues and Margins With
Effective Extended-Enterprise Learning
In today’s networked economy,
organizations are finding that by
effectively engaging and training their
extended enterprise of channel partners,
franchisees, and resellers, they can
develop new profit centers and increase
revenue and customer satisfaction
scores. Extended-Enterprise Learning
provides a platform for training the entire
value chain to achieve greater business
performance and returns.

2. White Paper
n
Increase Revenues and Margins With Effective Extended-Enterprise Learning
Why Care About Extended-Enterprise Learning?
Companies are realizing that educating just their employees is
not enough. Many companies rely on an extended enterprise that
could include channel partners, franchisees, and resellers to sell
their product and services and to deliver on their brand promise.
If the channel is not continuously trained, there is great impact
on revenue and competitiveness. Similarly, several companies
rely on their suppliers during the product development phase.
“
Extended-Enterprise Learning can have a
great impact in strengthening the weak link
in the value chain and dramatically improving
”
business outcomes.
CLO Magazine
If the suppliers are not well trained on the expected quality
standards, the end-product quality suffers. This has direct cost
through product recall, unsold inventories, and negative brand
value. Many companies rely on outsourced call centers for firstline customer support and other partners to deliver post-sale
services. If this part of the value chain is not properly trained, the
impact on business is customer churn. Not training the extended
enterprise is like creating a weak link in your value chain that can
dramatically impact your revenue, customer retention, brand
value, and margins.
What Is Extended-Enterprise Learning?
Extended-Enterprise Learning (EEL) provides continuous learning
for the organization’s entire value chain — including employees,
customers, channel partners, suppliers, resellers, distributors, and
franchisees. EEL is designed to be accessible and to constantly
engage this value chain, ensuring they have the right skills to
sell the products, service the customers, ensure regulatory
compliance, and exceed the expectations of the end-customers
on all fronts to enhance the brand value of the organization.
EEL shifts the paradigm from simply training internal employees to
training the entire value chain — and especially the weakest links
in the value chain — to achieve greater business outcomes.
High-Impact Extended-Enterprise Use Cases
The high-impact use cases tend to vary based on the industry
sector and business model of a particular organization. For
example, most high technology companies rely on their channel
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partners for a significant portion of their revenues and interaction
with customers. Similarly, most restaurant and hospitality chains
rely on their franchisees for growth and brand consistency. A
lot of manufacturing companies rely on their extended supply
chain during their product development and production process.
Almost all automobile manufacturing companies depend on the
dealership network to not just sell the vehicles, but to offer postsell services as well. After collaborating with hundreds of best-inclass companies, our research has identified patterns of several
high-impact use cases. Mission-critical business problems solved
by companies using EEL include:
ƒƒ Optimizing channel performance and
engagement to drive revenues
ƒƒ Turning learning into a profit center by offering
fee-based training and accreditation programs
ƒƒ Achieving greater customer service reach and
excellence by enabling more services partners
ƒƒ Ensuring regulatory compliance across the
entire value chain to reduce business risk
ƒƒ Channel partner engagement: The difference between
a successful channel partner and others is usually the
difference between their engagement levels. Channel partners
that are trained and certified produce greater revenues than
the ones that are not. In many cases partners and extendedenterprise employees are busy executing and are unable to
find time for refresher training programs. A blended learning
(formal and social) solution plays a critical role in engaging
and making the channel partners more effective in selling
your company’s products. However, the channel partners
can be distributed across multiple countries, require training
in different languages, and sell different products, thereby
requiring unique course content and workflows. Leveraging
a comprehensive solution that resolves these complexities
can make significant impact on business outcomes. Many
companies in the high technology industry have seen greater
correlation between the performance of channel partners and
their level of certifications.
ƒƒ For-profit training: Many companies in the technology,
retail, and hospitality industries have course content that is
very high value for the end-customers as well as channel
partners. These companies have an opportunity to transform
their training department into a profit center by offering these
high-value courses for a fee. However, in order to realize
the revenue from training, companies need comprehensive
eCommerce capabilities to process payments, ability to
implement multiple pricing schemes for different audiences,
and configurable workflows that vary based on audiences
and roles. Many companies have successfully transformed
their training departments into a profit center by generating a
profitable revenue stream from training course fees.

3. ƒƒ Customer service excellence: Successful and timely
resolution of customer issues and increasing successful firstcall resolution rates are critical for delivering the experience
that your consumers are expecting. With rapidly evolving
product lines and demanding service-level agreements,
customer service representatives need to keep their
knowledge fresh. Many companies use outsourced call
center partners for first-line customer support. Similarly,
companies such as automobile manufacturers rely on
dealers to offer post-sale maintenance services. Training
this global network for hundreds of thousands of services
partners in their local languages and delivering them targeted
training on the specific products they are servicing requires
a sophisticated and proven solution with geographic reach
and scalability.
ƒƒ Ensure regulatory compliance: The cost of noncompliance
can result in significant fines, criminal penalties for
executives, and negative brand image that impacts future
revenues. For many companies, their extended value chain
is involved in selling, manufacturing, and servicing their
products and services. Just like their own employees, the
actions of their extended value chain employees must be
in compliance with the appropriate regulations. Regulations
are different in different countries, and the criteria to be
compliant are also different. You need a sophisticated
solution that can handle these complexities, by country, by
partner, and by customer to provide you peace of mind.
Key Attributes of Your Ideal Extended-Enterprise
Learning Solution
How do you know you have a right EEL solution that will
effectively solve your business problems? What key capabilities
should the EEL possess that will help you fulfil your particular
business? After working with hundreds of customers who have
leveraged EEL capabilities for driving business outcomes, we
would like to summarize some of the key elements you should
look for in an EEL solution:
ƒƒ Configurable domains for targeted branding: Configurable
LMS domains to meet the needs of each partner, brand, and
country and to create specialized branding experiences.
ƒƒ Audience types for targeted, role-based training:
Configurable audience types to offer unique and targeted
training programs for specific roles. Some roles require
mandatory continuing education credits to stay compliant
and remain eligible to perform their jobs. For example, the
manager of a restaurant in Paris will have different legal
requirements than a manager in New York.
ƒƒ Configurable workflows for internal and external learners:
The access control rules are different for internal learners
and extended-enterprise learners. Similarly, if you are offering
for-profit training, the workflows could be different if you are
offering them via a channel partner instead of offering them
directly to the end consumers.
ƒƒ Compliance and certifications: The certification workflows
are different for different roles. For example, employees who
are cooking food in a restaurant require different compliance
training than other employees who are performing other jobs
such as cleaning. Additionally, several regulations require
eSignatures and audit trails for the changes made to key
certification requirements. Comprehensive audit trails and
reports are critical to be able to quickly generate reports to
seamlessly respond to regulatory inquiries.
ƒƒ eCommerce capabilities: To offer training programs for
fees and seamlessly process those transactions to realize
revenues, you need the ability to process purchase orders
and credit cards, compliance with standards such as PCI,
and the ability to offer multiple pricing schemes for different
audiences. Without these capabilities, it is difficult to realize
revenues and turn training into a profit center.
ƒƒ Social learning: The solution must deliver capabilities such
as rating, tagging, bookmarking, following experts or groups,
asking questions of experts, and sharing resources directly
with mentees that help to foster rapid knowledge sharing
and unlock tacit knowledge from experienced workers and
executives.
ƒƒ Real-time collaboration: Built-in online collaboration and Web
and video conferencing capabilities are essential for allowing
learners to collaborate with remote co-workers, experts,
and coaches and to conduct virtual training sessions, record
these knowledge-transfer sessions, and share them with the
rest of the community.
ƒƒ Mobile, anytime, anywhere capabilities: Your learning solution
should allow learners to get answers to key questions while
being in the field, review video tasks performed by experts,
and launch an online collaboration session with an expert via
a mobile device such as iPhone or iPad.
ƒƒ Scalable, secure, and global: Your extended value chain is
often spread across the globe and can comprise hundreds of
thousands of users. In order to offer effective, targeted training
programs you need a scalable, global, and secure solution.
Conclusion
Companies that have embarked on the journey of continuous
EEL have realized a wide array of benefits, including strategic
impact on revenues, customer satisfaction, and margins.
EEL shifts the paradigm from simply training internal employees
to training the entire value chain to achieve greater business
performance. By implementing an effective EEL, you increase the
predictability of your business by exercising increasing control
and influence on your virtual corporation, as well as create an
opportunity for training-based revenues that will help to cover
costs and could contribute to the bottom line.
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