For the first time, a large percentage of the workforce worked from home during the pandemic, so many organizations are discovering the challenge of training and developing people who do not work in the same building. Some companies have been grappling with dispersed learning audiences and learners who do not even work for the organization.
The “extended enterprise” is a complex network of customers, resellers, channel partners, franchisees and more. Getting a handle on governance, technology, and accountability issues related to extended enterprise learning can be difficult. It requires a cohesive, standardized strategy and the technology to get it right.
The challenge starts at the top. Who owns the extended enterprise? Is it marketing or reaching out to customers? Is it sales or training a network of resellers? Maybe it is operations that oversee franchisees or distributors. This fragmentation exists because there are too many disparate priorities across these groups, and it can often make sense for them to own their slice of extended enterprise training, even if it appears to be, on the surface, a learning process.
From a technology standpoint, however, these groups do not often have insight into the features and functionality of learning solutions and how they can be leveraged for the extended enterprise. The learning function has an opportunity here to partner with these other functions to develop an extended enterprise technology strategy and go through a selection process.
In Brandon Hall Group’s 2020 Extended Enterprise Study, 79% of companies said that technology was, to a medium or high degree, the main reason for the effectiveness of their extended enterprise learning. And among companies that say their efforts are effective or highly effective, two-thirds use an LMS, compared to 54% of those whose efforts are less effective.
However, not all LMS solutions are equal. It isn’t just about providing access to extended enterprise learning audiences. There are other considerations. Different audiences outside the organization may need unique environments requiring white-labeling or branding configurations. There should be a mechanism for accurately tracking and measuring all learning activity since the learners do not work for the organization. Additionally, extended enterprise learning represents an opportunity for the Learning function to generate revenue by selling training. This requires e-commerce functionality, something that is not available in every LMS.
The value created by providing learning opportunities to your extended enterprise will continue to expand as remote work becomes routine, markets become more global and the use of contingent and gig workers increase.