by Kendall Beckelhymer (@KendallBecks)
and by Bill Cushard (@BillCush)
Peter Childers joined Couchbase in January 2014 to lead the new Couchbase Learning Services group. His main goal was to build and grow a profitable enterprise software training business that improves customer adoption and helps Couchbase scale with excellent customer service. He had done this before. Over a seven year period, Pete grew Red Hat's training and certification program into the world's largest Linux training business, grossing $60 million per year in revenue. To put Couchbase on a similar track, would require similar skills and strategy.
One of the first decisions he made was to select and deploy a learning management system (LMS) to provide the infrastructure necessary to grow and scale this learning business. As he searched for a solution he discovered some of the trade-offs: LMS’s designed for on-demand eLearning training solutions, but which do not handle live training registrations, versus LMS’s designed to also handle live training but which are targeted at internal human resources departments in large companies, and which are poorly designed for external customer-facing training.
What to do?
Pete needed a platform that could manage all types of learning events for both external customers and partner channels, as well as internal. Most critically it had to have a strong e-commerce engine, able to handle the global enrollment and registration needs in multiple currencies, and all the administrative functions he needed to run an enterprise software training business efficiently with minimal administration and coordination staff. All to bring unparalleled value to the customer. He found this solution in TrainingRocket.
Choosing TrainingRocket for Couchbase Learning Services
Once he found TrainingRocket, Pete went into rapid implementation mode. His goal was to enable Couchbase, the fastest-growing provider of enterprise class NoSQL databases, to announce its new Learning Services program now offering classroom-based courses with multi-day, instructor-led, hands-on intensive training in core NoSQL skills.
"I selected TrainingRocket on March 8. Began the deployment project on March 12, and began making TrainingRocket and our site ready to launch. We did our soft launch on March 31, just 19 days later. Everything went smoothly and we were able to announce and process first enrollments starting April 2."
Whew!
"With TrainingRocket,(the launch) required only a part time contribution from our web administrator and a total of 19 days, to roll out a robust enrollment and learning platform."
“Think about it this way,” Pete said. “In the early 2000s doing this would have taken 9 months and a team of 4 database specialists, and probably cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. With TrainingRocket, this required only a part time contribution from our web administrator and a total of 19 days, to roll out a robust enrollment and learning platform, as a very reasonable software-as-a-service subscription.”
In less than 90 days at Couchbase Pete had built a team, selected TrainingRocket as his learning platform, launched the public program for customers to take the new training, automated enrollment services and scheduled his first classes for summer 2014 in North America and Europe.
