Empower Your Team With Online Training Software: A Comprehensive Guide

Whether you’re a small startup or an expanding global franchise, online training software can benefit your organization at every stage of its growth.

Training software empowers organizations to create, deliver, monitor, manage, edit, and track custom, cutting-edge training programs—not only for employees and staff but also partners and customers. 

Of course, not all training software offers the same capabilities—or delivers the same value. To maximize your ROI, avoid wasting time or money, and achieve optimal results, it’s imperative to choose online training software that aligns with your company goals and L&D strategy and delivers the power, performance, and flexibility you need.  

So what features should you look for, and what are the most common uses for online training software? What are some potential challenges or pitfalls to be aware of, and how can you mitigate or avoid them? 

And—perhaps most importantly for stakeholders—how does leveraging training software benefit your organization? 

In short, why is training software a worthwhile investment? 

We’ll cover these questions and share tips on choosing the right online training software for your business. 

Discover why digital training software is an essential tool—and how it can help you score more wins and exceed business goals. 

What is online training software? 

Online training software goes by many names, including but not limited to computer-based training software, eLearning software, and online L&D platforms.

You may also encounter the term learning management system or LMS (not to be confused with a content management system or CMS). 

Read more: What is an LMS vs. a CMS? Understanding the Differences & Benefits

Depending on the software and its use, you may also hear it referred to in role- or department-specific terms, like employee training tracking software, customer service training software, or sales training software. 

This speaks to the wide range of scenarios where online training software can be used to educate, upskill, and reskill your team. But training software can be used for more than just teaching employees or salespeople—in addition; some platforms include tools for training external parties, such as customers and partners.

These are just a few examples of using online training platforms to achieve better business outcomes. We’ll explore uses for training software in more detail in the next section. 

Whether it’s being deployed to train sales staff, new hires, existing customers, or another group, the primary function of training software is the same: equipping users with skills and knowledge that will empower them to perform their tasks with greater confidence, efficiency, and success. 

Depending on who the program caters to, this might involve: 

• Reskilling employees to perform new tasks, such as training employees to work remotely, work in a new department, or use a new app that the company is rolling out 
• Upskilling employees to help them transition into mid- or upper-level positions, such as training employees to function as managers or department heads 
• Compliance training and ensuring team members are up to date on the latest legal and safety issues impacting your industry, along with the newest technology, equipment, and best practices 
• Teaching customers and partners how to get the most out of your product or service

These goals can be achieved using an LMS to deliver memorable, engaging, and personalized educational content.

Learning management systems, like the Learning Cloud from WorkRamp, provide the tools to create, assign, and track customizable training content that learners can complete in real-time or asynchronously, empowering your teams to grow and evolve at the speed of business. 

But how do you know whether the content is really being absorbed? By tracking the right L&D metrics, businesses can determine whether their training programs are working effectively and if necessary, take steps to adjust and improve their content accordingly. 

Well-designed training programs can yield numerous benefits—not only for the individual participants but your organization as a whole. 

What is training software used for? 

From retailers and manufacturers to legal and financial services, all types of organizations can use online training software. In fact, research indicates that roughly 83 percent of professionals have used learning management systems, while an astounding 98 percent of large businesses reported using them as of 2021. 

Within the numerous organizations that use them, LMSs and online training programs are typically managed by the human resources (HR) or learning and development (L&D) team. However, all types of employees and departments should be encouraged to participate, including your sales and enablement teams, customer service and support teams, and various managers.

Your customers and partners should also be invited to participate, such as having the option to complete online customer certification programs. 

The right LMS makes it possible to develop and deliver content that closes skill gaps, reduces churn, increases employee productivity, boosts bottom-line revenue, and supports your organization’s long-term objectives. 

In addition to offering these and other benefits, online training software has another advantage: it’s highly customizable. It has a versatile range of applications, helping you save time and money using a single platform for multiple purposes. 

Here are six common use cases for training software that might be applicable to your organization.

Student education 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous colleges, universities, and other educational institutions adopted eLearning to keep teachers and students safe. 

Since then, the popularity of eLearning for students has only continued to grow. 

Employee onboarding 

New employees need to be educated and trained on numerous topics, from your corporate values and the company’s mission to workplace culture and what’s expected of their role. But onboarding is more than just educational—it delivers quantifiable value for your business.

 According to research, companies with robust onboarding programs can improve new employee retention by 82 percent while simultaneously increasing productivity by 70 percent. However, an astounding 88 percent of employees feel that their employers’ onboarding processes need improvement. 

Organizations can make onboarding smoother, more productive, and more efficient by using learning management systems to deliver and track online training for new hires. 

Read more: 6 Best Practices for New Employee Training and Onboarding

Customer onboarding 

It isn’t just new employees who can benefit from robust onboarding. 

Through online onboarding programs, your customers and partners will become more knowledgeable about—and satisfied using—your product, which has two advantages for your organization: 

1. Your customers become less likely to switch to a competing product 
2. Your customer support team receives fewer support tickets, enabling them to focus on other tasks or issues

Of course, customer education doesn’t stop after onboarding. Learn more about the benefits of a robust customer education program, such as retaining more customers, decreasing customer support costs, increasing Time to Value (TTV), and creating more upsell opportunities.

Talent development

Research shows that 70 percent of Millennials and Gen Z employees want employers to provide talent and career development opportunities—and are willing to quit or seek employment elsewhere if organizations fail to make those opportunities available. 

Offering online pathways for talent development is a cost-effective strategy for delivering what Gen Z and Millennial employees—who now comprise most of the workforce—want from employers. 

This has the triple effect of increasing morale and job satisfaction, reducing employee turnover, and minimizing the substantial costs associated with high employee churn. 

Read more: 7 Things Employees Want From Employers

Support and sales enablement 

Your customer service and sales team members need support to succeed.

A sales training LMS can deliver that support through convenient online training programs, such as content focused on building the necessary skills for field sales, inside sales, or sales management. 

The on-the-go, on-demand accessibility of online programs is an added bonus for sales reps, who may be unable to attend on-site training programs. By making eLearning content accessible and empowering team members to learn at their own pace, you can build a high-performance culture where your team has the tools they need to achieve bigger wins.

Course creation 

eLearning isn’t just for students. You can use a learning management system to build and deliver engaging, personalized online courses for internal and external users. 

Lesson content can be updated to reflect the newest developments in your industry, equipping your team with the knowledge they need to stay ahead of the curve. 

6 Online training software features to look for 

Choosing the best online training software doesn’t need to be confusing or daunting. You simply need to know which features to look for, which will help you find a platform that suits your needs. 

For example, it’s important to choose software that features specific LMS integrations with the tools your organization is already using, such as integrations with Salesforce, ZenDesk, Google Analytics, BambooHR, Slack, and more.

Read on to learn about essential features to look for in an online LMS, including: 

1. Ability to customize and personalize content 
2. Automated reports and workflows
3. Content management capabilities
4. Interactive features
5. Robust data reporting and analytics 
6. Top-notch technical support 

Drag-and-drop content management 

Simplicity and ease of use are essential factors to consider when choosing a platform to manage your employee, partner, or customer education content. WorkRamp offers intuitive, drag-and-drop course creation capabilities, which means you can design and build sleek, professional-looking programs without needing advanced IT skills. 

You also need a nimble and customizable platform to update your content library and revise your training materials as necessary. 

Automation 

Automation is a hot topic in business, and for good reason: it decreases operating costs, increases productivity, facilitates collaboration, boosts efficiency, and ultimately, positions your business to be more competitive. 

One of the most effective ways to automate employee training is with an LMS that allows admins to create custom educational content and allows learners to complete courses, quizzes, and assessments at their own pace.

You should also look for software that allows you to receive automated data reports, such as weekly reports tracking compliance and completion rates. 

Reporting and analytics 

Data reporting, analytics, and visualizations give stakeholders actionable insights that your organization can translate into a more productive, engaging online training program. 

The Learning Cloud provides advanced reporting features to measure the performance of your program and identify gaps and opportunities for improvement, including team and individual performance, completion rates, speed of completion, time spent on the platform, and more. 

Personalization 

Personalized learning supports and improves employee development by “mak[ing] it easier for learners to discover the content they need to build the right skills at the right time,” LinkedIn Learning explains. “In turn, this will help align your workforce’s desired career paths with organizational goals—helping everyone succeed.” This is a perfect example of how employee development programs are strategic for businesses. 

So how do you personalize online training experiences around individual learners, especially when you might have thousands of employees (or even more)?

Possible approaches include building customizable learning paths, leveraging microlearning, and limiting course content to non-generic role-specific training material. (For example, different content should be made available to accounting team members versus marketing team members.)  

Interactive elements

Interactive training content can take numerous forms. Some examples include: 

• Flip cards
• Quizzes
• Video instruction
• Challenges
• Roleplay
• Simulations

Platform support

In a world of same-day Amazon deliveries, red-eye flights, and 24-hour mobile banking, business never stops—and neither does the demand on your systems. Your clients and customers don’t care about what time it is or why your website is down; only that you find a solution and provide the product or service they count on. 

That’s why we recommend looking for a platform that offers 24-hour customer support, which ensures that you’ll receive prompt assistance any time you encounter an issue, experience a problem, or have a question. 

Some organizations follow a different strategy and opt to minimize costs by choosing a platform that offers FAQ forums or a collection of help articles instead of live support. This strategy can save you money in the short term, but it is generally not recommended unless you already have robust IT support. 

6 online training software benefits

One of the advantages of online training is that it can easily incorporate numerous learning styles and methods, including video content, quizzes and assessments, gamification, interactive content, social learning, discussion forums, and traditional text. 

Online learning also offers flexibility and convenience, making educational content accessible while keeping your L&D budget affordable. Read on to learn about six benefits of using cloud-based learning management systems to deliver educational content to your employees, partners, and customers. 

Streamlined training processes 

When training procedures are inefficient, disorganized, or outdated, employee morale suffers. So do retention rates—and, in turn, your bottom line. You can make training programs less costly to implement, easier to access, and more enjoyable to use—simply by bringing them online with a learning management system. 

Reduced ramp time

Businesses that leverage WorkRamp’s all-in-one LMS to deliver educational content can reduce ramp time significantly. For example, the moving and storage company Clutter experienced a 60 percent decrease in ramp time after switching to WorkRamp’s online training platform. 

Resource optimization

There are various steps businesses should take to optimize resources, such as prioritizing projects effectively, making decisions based on cost-effectiveness, and clearly identifying the skills that are needed to fill existing gaps. 

An LMS platform can aid you in reaching all of these goals by: 

• Helping you manage and organize large volumes of information
• Providing data and analytics so you can make more strategic business decisions
• Equipping you with the tools to upskill and reskill your team

Easier reporting

WorkRamp’s platform offers visualizations and analytics that make it easy to assess and quantify the efficacy of your online training programs. That makes it simple to bring all of your stakeholders on the same page, giving you the data you need to measure—and maximize —the ROI from your training programs. 

Improved engagement 

Employee development programs are linked to improved engagement. In turn, improved engagement is linked to positive business outcomes such as decreased risk of burnout, increased levels of productivity, and improved customer service. 

Learn more about why employee engagement matters—and how to boost it. 

Accessibility

Technology has changed how we consume and absorb information, creating the expectation that knowledge should be at our fingertips. Delivering your L&D content online makes it easily and instantly accessible, eliminating friction and accelerating learning.

Through asynchronous learning, your employees, customers, and partners can learn at their own pace, like replaying videos, getting instant chat-based support, or taking quizzes to quickly assess their mastery of skills.

With access to online content libraries, employees no longer have to disrupt their tasks to attend physical training sessions. 

3 Online training software challenges (and solutions) 

Because of the virtual environment where it occurs, online training presents its own set of challenges and limitations. However, businesses can overcome (or completely sidestep) these challenges by choosing software that anticipates—and provides solutions to—the drawbacks of eLearning. 

Here are a few examples of some challenges that online training software can pose—and, more importantly, how our platform addresses them. 

Problem #1: Users can encounter technical problems that slow down progress 

Solution: WorkRamp’s reliable, people-centric platform is backed by dedicated, 24/7 customer and IT support, along with a comprehensive self-support info center, to ensure your team members, customers, and partners get help fast. 

Problem #2: Lack of interactive features can diminish learner engagement. 

Solution: Employee engagement is the core of your workplace culture, which is why WorkRamp’s LMS is packed with interactive features and social learning features that make it engaging and fun to use.  

Problem #3: Content isn’t accessible to employees with disabilities or special needs. 

Solution: Accessibility is the cornerstone of any successful customer or employee development program, which is why our platform was designed to be inclusive and easy to use—for everyone.   

How to choose the best online training software

We’ve looked at use cases, benefits, and features; now, it’s time to bring everything you’ve learned together so that you can choose the best online training software for your team.

Here are four tips to help you choose the right platform to meet your organization’s online training needs. 

Use cases

There are various instances where online training software can be deployed to deliver content and facilitate learning, such as employee or customer onboarding, support and sales enablement, and partner certification. 

Choose a flexible, easy-to-use LMS that lets you organize, manage, and share content tailored to your company’s needs, whether training sales staff or teaching customers how to leverage your product’s features. 

Integration opportunities  

Integrations enable different apps and software systems to work together and share information, which means you can build an all-inclusive learning experience. Your employees can enjoy a seamless training process. 

To avoid wasted time and unnecessary headaches, be sure to choose online training software that integrates with your tech stack. WorkRamp’s all-in-one LMS integrates with numerous HR tools, content management systems, sales applications, and more, including Bamboo HR, Box, Chorus, Gong, Google Calander, Salesforce, and more. 

Plans and pricing options

In addition to providing performance and flexibility, training software must also be cost-efficient to deliver the value that stakeholders expect. 

Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you consider pricing. 

 

• Look for a platform that offers multiple pricing options and will accommodate your budget as you grow and scale
• Calculate how your costs could be impacted by add-on or premium features and services so that you can develop a more accurate picture of the potential expenses
• Compare the costs of different subscription models where applicable, such as paying monthly versus annually. You should also be aware of any licensing fees that may apply

Proven ROI

With so many companies tightening their belts, getting your budget increased for any reason can be a challenge.

To generate buy-in and secure the funding you need to develop and implement your program, you’ll need to convince stakeholders that online training content—whether designed primarily for use by customers, partners, or employees—will add to your ROI and drive the company’s growth. 

WorkRamp customers love using WorkRamp because the platform consistently delivers value. That’s crucial for Seema Jain, AVP of Revenue Effectiveness, MURAL, who says, “We leverage everything from certification programs to micro-training to assessments. [WorkRamp’s] analytics help us communicate the ROI of our enablement programs. As a result, our GTM team provides customers with a consistent, outstanding experience that translates to stronger business outcomes.” 

Hear more from Seema, who shared insights at a panel on big, bold enablement strategies during WorkRamp LEARN. 

Chauncy Cay Ford, Director of Customer Enablement, Quantum Metric, highlights the platform’s versatility, like how it empowers companies to achieve multiple goals through a single, convenient LMS. 

“WorkRamp enables us to train employees and customers in a single platform,” she says. “This allows us to share training materials across teams and provide an amazing education experience for our customers without the added work of spinning up a new instance.” 

Use the best online training software for your employees and customers 

Want to build better employee and customer training programs? Then you need the best online training software for your business.

WorkRamp’s interactive, cloud-based platform is fun and easy to use, empowering you to deliver a rewarding, inclusive training experience personalized to your employees, customers, and partners. 

Create a culture of learning, elevate your teams, and build employee development programs that contribute directly to revenue growth. Contact us to schedule a free, personalized demo.