by Bill Cushard (@BillCush)

If your enterprise software business is in an early stage, it is unlikely you offer a mature training program to your customers. This could be for a variety of reasons. You may not think your customers need training because your software is designed so well, or you are still selling to innovators and early adopters who do not tend to need training. As you grow, this will not last and soon customers will ask for training. Enterprise software companies in this stage of development are often caught off-guard with training requests and begin reacting feverishly just to keep up. At this stage, delivering enterprise software training to your customers is a high-stress, constant fire drill that stretches your team thin and negatively impacts customer satisfaction.

In order to help software companies avoid this stage of maturity (or at least shorten time in this stage as much as possible) we developed the Enterprise Software Training Maturity Model. This model describes the different levels of maturity a software training department goes through over time. By understanding the maturity progression, training departments can recognize their current stage, determine actions to take to improve, and move more quickly along the maturity model.

In this blog post, I focus on the first stage of the maturity model (Reacting) and discuss actions to take to mature beyond reacting.

Take Inventory of Existing Training Content

One of the first things you should do when assessing the current state of your enterprise software training function is to take an inventory of your training content. Whatever you call your training content, you need to have standardized materials that can be reused in training courses with little-to-no customization. If you provide training to your customers, but cannot easily point to a document that is your "training guide," then you are likely creating some form of training content uniquely for each training request. This is not a sustainable practice, and your team is likely spending far too much stressful time preparing for customer training sessions.

Don't worry if this sounds like your team. Not all training departments have standard training materials like manuals, slide presentations, guides, and exercises. And if you don't, it doesn't mean you do not have any training content. You probably have more content that you think. You just need to find it.

Determine the Training Need

It is not enough to just find that content. It not be the right content. As Peter Drucker told us, "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." In other words, you might be training the wrong stuff. It is therefore vital to take the time to analyze your customers' needs and determine the actual training need. There are many ways to conduct a training needs analysis, which I will discuss in future blogs, but just like with any analysis process, you should speak with your customers to help determine what their needs are. Ask your sales, support, and customer success organizations, and ask them what customers frequently ask for. Look for patterns and themes to come up with a list of needs your customers have.

Once you have determined the need, you can begin to develop the right training content.

Choose the Top Two or Three Topics

As is often the case, the list of things your customers need will far exceed your ability to deliver. You will need to prioritize and make choices. If you are in the Reacting Stage of the Enterprise Software Training Maturity Model, you will need to focus your energies on the most important topics your customers need to learn to get up-and-running on your product. Make a list of your customers' needs, prioritize them, and select the top one or two or three use cases that they absolutely need and develop courses on those topics only.

Develop Standardized Content on Each of the Topics Above

Here is where the heavy lifting begins. Developing content is time consuming and requires some expertise. In fact, according to the American Society for Training and Development, it takes close to 50 hours of work to create one hour of stand-up training. Lots more for eLearning. You can use these numbers to model a development plan based on what you found in your training needs analysis.

Offer Standard, Not Custom Training

When you set up your training schedule and/or communicate your training schedule to your customers, only offer them the standard training courses. Do not offer customized training. At this stage, you need to tell your customers, "This is the training we offer. Take it or leave it." You are trying to get out of the habit of reacting and responding to every training request. The point is to get out of fire-fighting mode and give customers what they need. If you must offer custom training, charge your customers for it. The earlier on you are in the maturity model, the less equipped you are to efficiently deliver custom training. Once you set up your standard training offering, do everything you can to stop offering custom training until you are further along in your maturity.

The Bottom Line

If you want to get your enterprise software training business out of the reacting stage of maturity, you need to get organized and start standardizing what you offer. If you take the advice in this blog, you will be well on your way to the next stage of the Enterprise Software Training Maturity Model: Performing.