Why should SMEs use online training solutions?

Before we start, we want to tell you that we appreciate you being here, because numerous small and medium-sized businesses fail to acknowledge they need an online training solution despite the challenges they face.‍

But you're here. And that's all that matters.

We believe you’re here because you’re looking to choose an online training solution. But before that, you’ll want to understand how it can help you or add value to your business.

Well, you're in the right place.

This article is all about online training solutions and how they enable small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) to seamlessly transfer knowledge to its employees, partners, and customers (and how they benefit by doing so).

We'll also talk about how to choose the right online training software for small businesses.

So, let's get started.

What is an online training solution?

An online training solution is an application used to educate individuals and groups with diverse content materials like videos, quizzes, live classes, polls, and more.

Online training software aims to make the overall learning experience more accessible and engaging for users. Used by many businesses, online training solutions are slowly transforming the way businesses share knowledge with their stakeholders.

What challenges do SMEs face?

This section is going to make you feel one of the following (or both).

Hey, this is us!

• I probably shouldn't have read this.
• We’ve listed the most common challenges SMEs face today when they fail to train their employees, partners, and customers efficiently.

Employee skill gaps

Key findings of a study by the European Union revealed that skill shortage is a serious problem for small to mid-sized companies.

Rapid tech advancement has paved the way for new innovations in most industries. Employees constantly need to upskill themselves, which often doesn’t happen.

This is because employees:

• Don't find enough resources online.
• Find it difficult to learn new skills in an organized manner.
• Might not have the economic luxury to take courses.
• Aren’t motivated enough to upskill themselves.

When a company fails to train their employees, it results in decreased productivity, increased turnaround times, and missed deadlines. All of this eventually leads to poor sales and revenue figures.

This skill gap makes it difficult for businesses to find and hire employees who are a good fit for the job. SMEs also face difficulties in onboarding and making employees understand company policies.

Partners aren’t adequately equipped to meet business goals

63.5% of companies say that partners have contributed to their annual revenue.

If that's not the case with your business, something’s wrong. In most cases, it's not the partner—it’s you failing to equip them with adequate knowledge.

Partners need to know your products, services, and policies (including any changes being implemented) inside out so they can pursue your business objectives actively and efficiently. Without providing sufficient training to partners, you’ll likely miss out on significant sales and revenue. It'll be like they never existed in the first place.

Customers rely heavily on the support team

How frustrating would it be for your support team if they had to answer the same question hundreds of times?

Your customers don't have enough knowledge about your product and they need external help. This not only incurs heavy support costs, but your churn rate is going to spike.

Educating customers about your products and services is crucial to keeping them satisfied and decreasing support tickets.

Resource and budget constraints

Let's assume you knew all of this before, and you wanted to fix it. But again, you would have hit the "resource and budget constraint" roadblock.

Micro, small and mid-sized businesses often function on a tight budget. The traditional in-person training method often turns out to be unaffordable because the expenses related to staffing, physical space, and printed materials are too high.

This made you look for options, and now you're here evaluating whether or not to use online training solutions. This is where an online training platform comes in.

Online training solutions for SMBs

So far, we've discussed what an online training solution is and what challenges SMEs face. Now we'll discuss why SMEs should use an online training software and how it can help your employees, partners, and customers.

Let's start with employees first.

Online training solutions: The employee point of view

 Employees can make or break an organization. If you look at the most successful startups, they’ll almost always have various employee training methods.

 Onboarding

SMEs (or any large organization, for that matter) hire new recruits throughout the year.

Though hired for different roles, the onboarding process will be similar. This means that the HR team will spend immense time and resources on these sessions—which is totally unproductive.

But with an employee training software, you can create online courses and streamline the entire onboarding process.

Employees can access orientation materials easily and consume them in a self-paced manner.

This approach ensures that all recruits receive the same level of comprehensive training and understand your company culture from day one. And, you can accomplish all of this without constant onboarding sessions and meeting room occupancy conflicts.

Compliance training

Similar to onboarding, compliance training is also a time-consuming and never-ending process. But it’s crucial for your employees to understand the company’s regulations and policies.

With online training solutions, you can mandate courses for employees and monitor their progress. The same approach goes for sales and other process-related training based on the employee’s role.

Upskilling

As we’ve already seen, skill shortage is a serious problem for SMEs.

But you can stay afloat by forecasting what skills your employees need and creating courses for those needs. Employees can consume them at their own pace and upskill themselves.

This keeps them updated with the latest technology so they can continue to be a valuable asset to your company.

Remote learning

Online training platforms give your employees the comfort of learning remotely. This is beneficial in scenarios where they can’t be there in person because they live in another city—or even another country. If your online training solution also allows you to connect with employees over live video sessions, the approach works amazingly well.

This minimizes traveling costs for employees and gives them more time to focus on core activities. You benefit from low overhead costs.

Those are some of the key benefits an online training solution offers your employees. Let's look at the business side of things now. Improved employee productivity

Effective employee training equips your workforce with the knowledge they need to perform their roles diligently. This makes them efficient and productive, resulting in top-notch work standards.

Better sales and revenue figures

Keeping employees updated on the latest business developments and training them constantly can help them face customers more confidently.

This means more closed deals, leading to better revenue figures.

Improved customer satisfaction rates

Customer-facing employees need to know about your business offerings like the back of their hand. The better the knowledge, the better the customer support.

Amazing customer support paves the path for higher customer satisfaction rates, lower churn rates, and increased customer lifetime value.

Higher employee retention rates

Here are a few statistics to give you some more context.

• 45% of employees tend to stay in the same role provided they receive training.
• 68% of employees say they prefer to learn at work.
• More than 90% of employees say they’ll stay if they get opportunities for development.

These numbers should give you some context: All you need to do is train your employees—the retention rate will take care of itself.

Those are just some of the benefits of employee training. The Association for Talent Development has found that SMEs that invested in employee training witnessed a 218% higher income per employee when compared to SMEs that did not.

This is why employee training is so critical for small and mid-sized businesses.

 Online training solutions: Partner point of view

 Partners are an important sales channel for small and mid-sized businesses. And it's important that you make the best use of them.

Product and service training

Before a partner ventures into the market and starts selling your offerings, they need to know your business end-to-end.

With online training platforms, you can create comprehensive courses about your products and services that cater to your partners. Make sure to include all of the features and benefits that will contribute to the decision factor.

Sales and marketing training

Make your partners market-ready by equipping them with proper training and sales materials.

This will help your partners understand the target market and the sales process, and allow them to contribute more to your business goals.

To put it another way, your partners should simply be another version of your best sales representatives.

Centralized knowledge repository to stay updated

Partners cannot constantly rely on your employees for materials. During a sales pitch, these documents can make all the difference.

An online training platform can act as a centralized repository, ensuring that partners have access to all critical information at their fingertips.

Certification programs

Certifications give your partners additional credibility and can be the deal-breaker in high-value sales conversations.

Traditionally, certification programs required a lot of in-person training, but with an online training software, partners can learn and get certified at their pace.

When you expect your partners to make sales and contribute to your business goals, you need to ensure they’re properly trained. An online training solution helps you develop your partners’ potential.

Similar to the benefits businesses get when they train employees, partner training also results in a set of benefits.

Improved partner knowledge and skills

Training your partners enhances their knowledge about your business. In return, they can represent your offerings with more confidence and bring in more sales.

Partners will be more loyal and committed

When partners realize that you value their role in the business, they reciprocate and commit to your business goals. This paves the way for long-term loyal relationships.

Better marketing and sales efforts

At this point, your partners are well-equipped to deal with customers. This will enable them to understand customer demands quickly and offer appropriate solutions, resulting in better sales.

Online training solution: Customer point of view

Keeping your customers satisfied is the key to running a successful business. In this section, we’ll discuss how an online training platform can educate your customers, improve their satisfaction, and foster loyal relationships.

 Customer onboarding programs

Just like onboarding your employees, customer onboarding is also a crucial process.

Studies have found that 55% of customers will refrain from using a product or service if they don't understand it.

With online training solutions, you can create a step-by-step tutorial to help customers understand the product thoroughly.

Self-service portals

An online training solution can also be the self-service portal of your business. All you need to do is create articles, guides, and FAQs on various aspects of your product.

Self-service portals will allow customers to find answers to questions without having to rely on the support team.

Customer support forum

To foster a sense of community among your customers, you can also create support forums. This will allow customers to interact with your support team and other users.

All of this information will be available for public reference, which will guide new users.

An online training platform can prove to be immensely useful for your customers because it improves their overall experience with your business. That said, training customers can prove to be immensely beneficial for your business too.

Lower support costs

Effective onboarding programs and knowledge repositories empower customers to resolve issues themselves. This will reduce the dependency on the customer support team—leading to decreased tickets and lower support costs.

Increased customer satisfaction rates

Engaging customers with onboarding programs and supporting them with knowledge bases automatically builds a deep sense of product understanding.

This allows them to use the product efficiently, leading to higher satisfaction rates. It also paves the way for positive word-of-mouth referrals.

Higher retention rates

When customers are satisfied and well-informed, they’re going to stay loyal to your brand. You’ll see lower churn rates and solid long-term revenue projections. As a small or mid-sized business, isn't that one of your top priorities?

How do you choose the right online training software for small businesses?

The next step is knowing how to choose the right online training software for your business. Here are the main features your online training platform solution should have.

Course builder

This is one of the most important features that your online training platform should have. As a business, you should be able to create online courses for various purposes.

The process of creating a course should be easy. Modern online training solutions come with drag-and-drop features and options to add rich multimedia content.

Beyond that, you should also be able to:

• Create multiple courses and bundle them together to cater to employees, customers, and partners separately.
• Create custom categories and assign courses to them.
• Attach downloadable materials to courses to provide additional value to learners.
• Create private or invite-only courses so that users don't overwhelm themselves with knowledge.
• Add tests and assignments to courses and track learners' progress.
• Duplicate courses in case you want to create multiple courses with the same structure.

These features can help you create robust courses that can deliver immense knowledge to your stakeholders.

Live sessions

While the entire objective is to make learning automated, sometimes human intervention is needed. For instance, if a learner completes a set of courses, you can get in touch with them to address their queries and gather feedback.

In these cases, your online training platform should have the capability to host live sessions.

Here are some must-have features for live sessions:

• Include multiple hosts and invite guest hosts if needed.
• Create waiting and breakout rooms to keep the session organized.
• Provide an option to share screen and upload materials during live sessions.
• Conduct tests and polls during the live session.
• Send email reminders to the participants before the session.
• Record the session, check the engagement, and even conduct surveys once the session ends.

All of these features will ensure that your live sessions are on point, productive, and insightful.

 Learner engagement features

The learning experience is an important factor when choosing an online training platform. If the experience isn't great, a massive amount of time and financial investment is lost.

These features can help deliver an exceptional learning experience to your users:

• A dedicated login portal for users and the option to track their learning progress.
• Options to participate in discussion forums and indulge in community learning.
• An option to leave comments and receive feedback.
• A way to engage in live sessions by raising hands and participating in live chat sessions.
• Option to take notes during live sessions and download handouts.

Features like these make the overall learning experience fun and ensure that learners get maximum value out of the courses.

Dedicated mobile applications

Having a mobile application is non-negotiable. Today, almost everyone consumes content from mobile devices, and e-learning is no exception.

Mobile apps offer learners a flexible experience while allowing them to save a substantial amount of time. 

So, when looking for an online training platform, check whether it offers mobile apps for both Android and iOS.

User experience

A feature-rich online training platform is essential. But, is it user-friendly?

Try exploring the platform and its features for a few days or weeks to understand how user-friendly it is. You can even collect feedback from your employees and customers before making a final decision.

User-friendliness is a key factor that decides whether your stakeholders are going to engage with the platform, or whether this will just be another initiative that goes unnoticed and unused.

White-labeling

The option to customize the platform and align it with your brand guidelines is important, especially if you're a mid-sized company.

Even if this doesn't seem important, when your company grows, you'll have no option but to look for alternatives. So, it's better to choose an online training platform now that allows you to custom brand the solution later.

Customer support

Good customer support can solve half of your problems. Read that again.

We cannot emphasize this point enough because customer support is crucial, especially when you’re looking for tech-oriented solutions. So, look for support options like email, live chat, and telephony abilities.

Online training solution providers should also assist during onboarding, configuration, and migration. Plus, look out for knowledge base, community forums, and self-service portals for additional support.

Bonus tip: Check out software review platforms to see how their customer support stacks up.

Pricing

Finally, we come to pricing. Like we mentioned earlier, SMEs work on a tight budget, and buying an online training software means monthly recurring bills.

So, it's important that you decide how much you can afford to spend on an online training solution. Look for solutions within the range and narrow down your options. The key here is not to compromise on features.

Bonus tip: Look out for a free version (or a trial at the very least) before purchasing. This can help you explore the product better and understand if the solution is right for you.

These are all of the features you should look for when choosing an online training solution. Here's one such solution for you.

TrainerCentral is an end-to-end online training solution that caters to businesses of all sizes. The platform is rich in features and delivers an unmatched learning experience to your employees, partners, and customers. To enrich the learner experience, businesses can create tests, assignments, polls, surveys, and host live sessions.

TrainerCentral's extensive features make it ideal for employee training, onboarding training, partner training, and more. It comes with a built-in AI-powered course builder that allows you to create courses 10x faster.

For more information and pricing details, check out the buyer's guide comparison.

Final thoughts

When done correctly, your online training platform initiative will be extremely rewarding, both for your business and stakeholders, ensuring loyal relationships, better business operations, and solid long-term revenue.

FAQs

1. What is an online training solution?

An online training solution is an application that's used to educate learners over the internet using rich multimedia content. Online training solutions have become very popular and are used by various industries because they offer a flexible and engaging learning experience.

2. How can you make online training effective?

Clear objectives should be set beforehand, and learners should be engaged with tests, quizzes, and polls. Constant feedback should be collected from learners and implemented to make the course more effective.

3. How do you plan an online training session?

Planning includes multiple steps, like deciding why you want to conduct a training session, followed by developing a training plan, preparing content for the session, and ensuring the necessary tech is available.