While this is a great thing in an increasingly competitive business environment, businesses are now burdened with tracking the results of their extended enterprise efforts while also bringing down the costs of getting said results. Training is a critical part of establishing an extended enterprise. However, when you are training your employees, you face unique challenges. Let’s talk about some of the most common challenges associated with extended enterprise training, and how businesses can overcome them:
Overcoming Cultural and Linguistic Differences
Many large enterprises face such challenges with in-house training of their employees as well. When your learners are present in different geographical locations, their learning habits, and of course, their preferred language of instruction can vary. While translation services and eLearning authoring tools for extended enterprise training can easily help overcome the language differences, overcoming the challenge of adapting to different learning habits can often turn out to be a tricky task. The only way to overcome this training challenge is to understand the differences in learning habits and designing your course material and structure to address these differences. For instance, in some cultures, people learn better in groups. For such an audience, a training program that includes a lot of group sessions and social learning work great. On the other hand, for cultures where learners prefer microlearning, short lesson videos may work better. Most large enterprise authoring tools come loaded with features that will enable you to tweak your courses to align with your learners’ needs.
Overcoming Lack Of Motivation In Learners
When you train your employees, they are compelled to bring their best foot forward. However, in most cases, external stakeholders have radically different motivations. For instance, some people may be self-motivated and using your training to acquire a new skill. On the other hand, a customer may be motivated by the ability to make the most of their purchase. There is also the case of compulsory training for certain stakeholders, and the lack of motivation that comes with anything that is compulsory.
So what can you do to motivate these audiences?
The answer is simple, offer relevant and meaningful incentives. For instance, voluntary users that complete your training can be treated with a sweet discount. Similarly, a stakeholder attending a compulsory training can be motivated with a time-based incentive.
Tracking The ROI Of Training
Delivering training outside your organisation will come with obvious tracking challenges. Keeping up with the progress in different ecosystems, analysing data from different audience sets, zeroing in on problem areas for different learners can all feel a little overwhelming. However, this challenge can be easily overcome by being a little more diligent while selecting an LMS. Essentially, you are looking for a learning management system that allows for custom reporting. This way, you can automate the reporting part of the job and make sure the reports you receive, contribute relevant data to supplement your extended enterprise goals.
Controlling The Cost Of Delivering Training
Delivering effective extended enterprise training isn’t cheap. With that said, the benefits of extended enterprise training, when executed right, outweigh the costs. Most businesses only focus on the first statement and forget about the latter. This creates a perceived barrier in front of their extended enterprise training plans. While there is very little to be done to reduce the cost of extended enterprise training, businesses need to understand that the long term benefits will more than make up for the cost and effort involved.
Conclusion
These were some of the unique challenges that accompany extended enterprise training. While overcoming geographical and linguistic differences, figuring out the intricacies of delivering the right training and motivation. While managing costs, may seem overwhelming, all these challenges can be overcome with planning, diligence, and meticulous implementation.
