Transforming training from a cost center to a profit center doesn’t happen by simply slapping a price tag on the work you’re already doing. It takes strategic planning, collaboration across the company, and time.

Last week, we shared some insight from our conversation with Jesse Finn. We talked about first steps and rallying the organization around your goals. Jesse’s extensive experience meant that we could ask her big questions, and we got big answers in return. In this post, we’ll continue to dive into the advice she provided, and take a deeper look at packaging your training.

With the rise in SaaS companies and recurring revenue models, businesses are evolving the ways in which they interact with customers. Software sales are no longer one-and-done deals as companies are tasked with continued customer success and renewals. As software companies throw more resources into training, there’s increasing pressure to recuperate costs, and change training from a cost center into a profit center.

As smartphone and tablet use continues to rise, so do our expectations for mobile adaptability in eLearning. The training industry is constantly talking about responsive learning, mobile compatibility, and best practices. Mobile learning is more than just content: it’s an entire experience, and it’s important to consider that as you develop your modern training program. Here are a few tips to consider.

Onboarding content is often an afterthought. Customer Success Managers or Onboarding Specialists will walk customers through a product in a live training, and the information is quickly forgotten, or the customer leaves feeling like they were just completely overloaded.  It’s clear that heightened awareness around onboarding as a critical component of the customer lifecycle is changing this, and customers are demanding that companies make them successful. That starts with providing the right information and resources during onboarding. If you’re building out your onboarding program, here are a few things you may want to think about as you plan and create your content.

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the CEdMA Fall Conference in Wellesley, Massachusetts. CEdMA (Computer Education Management Association) is a professional organization that provides a forum for leaders working in training at technology companies, and hosts bi-annual conferences for its members. Conference sessions covered a variety of topics relevant to the training world - delivery, planning, sales, technology, and organizational trends. The session content, along with meeting so many different training professionals, left me feeling excited to be a part of the training community. Here are my main takeaways from the conference:

With the rise of video learning, more and more training professionals are looking to jump in and try creating videos for their own courses. Video content ranges from simple software tutorials to advanced lectures with complex concepts, and they're published with various amounts of editing and production. Instructional designers who are new to video ask for tips and tricks all the time, so I’ve compiled a few of them that can help elevate your video content and make the creation process much easier.

A new customer lands on your application and he’s ready to use it. He starts looking around and clicking buttons here and there. Maybe he even had a virtual training session with a member of your team last week, and he sort of paid attention as he was shown around the product. But that was then and this is now, and he’s not sure where to start, so he goes to your help center. Once he arrives, he’s greeted by hundreds of articles and has to search for something, but he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. He’s stuck, frustrated, and now has the impression that your product is - gasp - “not intuitive.”