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Partners, not providers: 4 ways to form a true partnership with your learning platform vendor
If you’ve read our recent blog, you’ll know how essential a sense of community is to a successful L&D strategy. This extends outside of the L&D team itself, and to the vendor who supplies your learning platform. They’re so much more than simply a provider; they should also be a partner.
In forming a true, equitable partnership with your learning platform vendor, you’re building a solid foundation on which to base your learning strategy. Both of you have a mutual vested interest in your success, celebrating impact and resolving any issues together as a team.
In this blog, we’ll outline exactly why it’s so important and 4 things to look for in order to make it a reality.
It’s no secret that, generally speaking, one of L&D’s biggest pain points is a lack of resources. Well, a good learning platform vendor (with whom you have an equitable partnership) can actually act as an additional member of your team.
This goes both for the platform itself, and the team behind it. Just take Thrive’s customer Specsavers as an example: By working closely with the Thrive team, they were able to create learning resources that aligned closely with the Specsavers brand and appealed to their colleagues.
Going beyond the implementation stage, the platform itself can act as an additional L&D team member, automating things behind the scenes, gathering analytics to make your work more impactful, and helping you cut costs previously spent on expensive training workshops. Of course, this all-important sense of partnership that we’re talking about will be essential in setting this up for you, so that the vendor can fundamentally understand your biggest pain points and challenges.
Sometimes, you might know what your L&D team needs, but not know how to translate that to your stakeholders. If your vendor’s team is worth their salt, they should be able to bridge that gap for you – speaking both the language of your stakeholders, and that of L&D.
If your vendor isn’t able to act as a workplace learning Rosetta Stone of sorts, you may have trouble getting the strategy off the ground – or even run into problems later down the line. Avoiding these pitfalls is a huge benefit of having a good partnership with your vendor.
This one is obvious, but worth mentioning. An equal partnership between you and your vendor will provide support in the early stages, which will extend throughout your continued use of the platform. Does your potential vendor offer a dedicated Customer Success Manager (more on that later)? Do they have a fantastic support team behind them? If not, you might feel slightly unmoored while getting to grips with your platform. Of course, the best platforms are both easy to use and include great customer support.
Beyond simply helping you use and get the most from your platform, your vendor should also help you to demonstrate its impact. Not to blow our own trumpet or anything, but here at Thrive we’ve won a sizeable handful of awards alongside our customers: The Brandon Hall Awards' "Best Use of Social and Collaborative Technologies" with Jet2Holidays, along with Learning Technologies’ "Best Learning Platform Implementation" and "Best Use of Learning Data Analytics to Impact Learner & Business Performance" with Vodafone and Ann Summers respectively (and that’s to name just a few!)
This is because we have true investment in our customers’ success, and wholeheartedly believe in our catchphrase: “When we win, we win together.”
Hopefully by now, you’re on board with the idea of a joint partnership with your learning platform vendor. Here are some things to look out for during the process of finding a learning platform vendor that will help you achieve just that.
This one may seem obvious; of course you’re going to do your research when looking for something as important as a learning platform vendor. But even more important than the standard, cursory research is exactly what you’re researching. Do they have a good reputation? Who do they already work with, and are those customers in industries that are comparable to yours? What about their customers’ pain points, needs and requirements; are they able to demonstrate how they helped solve them and what they achieved as a result?
Take a thorough look through their case studies, and see what their customers have to say about the support and level of collaboration that they offer. This will give you a good idea of whether or not they’re right for you.
When you’re taking meetings with your potential learning platform vendors, make sure to discuss your values and vision for your learning strategy. Swap ideas, and discover whether or not they share your vision – a crucial element to forming a productive partnership.
Here are a few questions you can ask during these early meetings to gauge whether you have similar goals:
Just like any healthy relationship, good communication should be at the core of your partnership with your learning platform vendor. Pay attention to how your potential vendor communicates with you, how well they listen and respond to your needs.
Transparency is another hugely important quality to look out for when it comes to their communication: Are they upfront about pricing, time-frames and expectations? Are they prompt, clear and concise in their communications – or are they slow and littered with hard-to-understand jargon? This will usually be a good indicator of how they’ll communicate throughout the project, and how effective of a partner they’ll be.
A sure-fire way to guarantee that your LMS vendor will have a high level of investment in your shared project is to make sure they offer a dedicated Customer Success Manager: Someone whose sole job it is to ensure that you are getting the most value out of the product. This person will have in-depth knowledge of exactly how to make sure you get the most from your learning platform. They’ll be able to walk you through how to use the platform, how to train your staff, and techniques for achieving the results you set out – as well as tips for use cases you may not even have thought of!
What do you think; did we miss any other ways in which you can form a partnership with your learning platform vendor? Add your voice to the conversation, and comment over on LinkedIn. Meanwhile if you’re searching for an LMS with a brilliant team behind it, book a Thrive demo today.
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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Partners, not providers: 4 ways to form a true partnership with your learning platform vendor
If you’ve read our recent blog, you’ll know how essential a sense of community is to a successful L&D strategy. This extends outside of the L&D team itself, and to the vendor who supplies your learning platform. They’re so much more than simply a provider; they should also be a partner.
In forming a true, equitable partnership with your learning platform vendor, you’re building a solid foundation on which to base your learning strategy. Both of you have a mutual vested interest in your success, celebrating impact and resolving any issues together as a team.
In this blog, we’ll outline exactly why it’s so important and 4 things to look for in order to make it a reality.
It’s no secret that, generally speaking, one of L&D’s biggest pain points is a lack of resources. Well, a good learning platform vendor (with whom you have an equitable partnership) can actually act as an additional member of your team.
This goes both for the platform itself, and the team behind it. Just take Thrive’s customer Specsavers as an example: By working closely with the Thrive team, they were able to create learning resources that aligned closely with the Specsavers brand and appealed to their colleagues.
Going beyond the implementation stage, the platform itself can act as an additional L&D team member, automating things behind the scenes, gathering analytics to make your work more impactful, and helping you cut costs previously spent on expensive training workshops. Of course, this all-important sense of partnership that we’re talking about will be essential in setting this up for you, so that the vendor can fundamentally understand your biggest pain points and challenges.
Sometimes, you might know what your L&D team needs, but not know how to translate that to your stakeholders. If your vendor’s team is worth their salt, they should be able to bridge that gap for you – speaking both the language of your stakeholders, and that of L&D.
If your vendor isn’t able to act as a workplace learning Rosetta Stone of sorts, you may have trouble getting the strategy off the ground – or even run into problems later down the line. Avoiding these pitfalls is a huge benefit of having a good partnership with your vendor.
This one is obvious, but worth mentioning. An equal partnership between you and your vendor will provide support in the early stages, which will extend throughout your continued use of the platform. Does your potential vendor offer a dedicated Customer Success Manager (more on that later)? Do they have a fantastic support team behind them? If not, you might feel slightly unmoored while getting to grips with your platform. Of course, the best platforms are both easy to use and include great customer support.
Beyond simply helping you use and get the most from your platform, your vendor should also help you to demonstrate its impact. Not to blow our own trumpet or anything, but here at Thrive we’ve won a sizeable handful of awards alongside our customers: The Brandon Hall Awards' "Best Use of Social and Collaborative Technologies" with Jet2Holidays, along with Learning Technologies’ "Best Learning Platform Implementation" and "Best Use of Learning Data Analytics to Impact Learner & Business Performance" with Vodafone and Ann Summers respectively (and that’s to name just a few!)
This is because we have true investment in our customers’ success, and wholeheartedly believe in our catchphrase: “When we win, we win together.”
Hopefully by now, you’re on board with the idea of a joint partnership with your learning platform vendor. Here are some things to look out for during the process of finding a learning platform vendor that will help you achieve just that.
This one may seem obvious; of course you’re going to do your research when looking for something as important as a learning platform vendor. But even more important than the standard, cursory research is exactly what you’re researching. Do they have a good reputation? Who do they already work with, and are those customers in industries that are comparable to yours? What about their customers’ pain points, needs and requirements; are they able to demonstrate how they helped solve them and what they achieved as a result?
Take a thorough look through their case studies, and see what their customers have to say about the support and level of collaboration that they offer. This will give you a good idea of whether or not they’re right for you.
When you’re taking meetings with your potential learning platform vendors, make sure to discuss your values and vision for your learning strategy. Swap ideas, and discover whether or not they share your vision – a crucial element to forming a productive partnership.
Here are a few questions you can ask during these early meetings to gauge whether you have similar goals:
Just like any healthy relationship, good communication should be at the core of your partnership with your learning platform vendor. Pay attention to how your potential vendor communicates with you, how well they listen and respond to your needs.
Transparency is another hugely important quality to look out for when it comes to their communication: Are they upfront about pricing, time-frames and expectations? Are they prompt, clear and concise in their communications – or are they slow and littered with hard-to-understand jargon? This will usually be a good indicator of how they’ll communicate throughout the project, and how effective of a partner they’ll be.
A sure-fire way to guarantee that your LMS vendor will have a high level of investment in your shared project is to make sure they offer a dedicated Customer Success Manager: Someone whose sole job it is to ensure that you are getting the most value out of the product. This person will have in-depth knowledge of exactly how to make sure you get the most from your learning platform. They’ll be able to walk you through how to use the platform, how to train your staff, and techniques for achieving the results you set out – as well as tips for use cases you may not even have thought of!
What do you think; did we miss any other ways in which you can form a partnership with your learning platform vendor? Add your voice to the conversation, and comment over on LinkedIn. Meanwhile if you’re searching for an LMS with a brilliant team behind it, book a Thrive demo today.
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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