As successful training providers, you know that your reporting strategy is just another part of what makes your business a success. Here, we cover how to leverage reports so you can continue taking your training business from good to great.
The Importance of Reports
Suppose that we have two training providers looking to get the same client: Company A and Company B.
Company A
- Has been working as a training provider for over five years
- Has had success but is noticing that the number of repeat clients is starting to dwindle
- Does not have a reporting strategy in place
- Provides some clients with SCORM files and uses a multi-tenant learning management system (LMS) for others
Company B
- Has been a training provider for two years
- Has had tremendous success so far, due to being able to express the return-on-investment (ROI) with every client presentation
- Sends SCORM files to some clients and uses a multi-tenant LMS for others
Both companies seem similar enough on the surface, but the client selects Company B as their new training provider, even though Company A has been around longer. The company owner chose B specifically because they wanted to express the ROI to their stakeholders.
How did Company B get that ROI? It used the reports within the LMS. When calculating ROI, we suggest working directly with clients to understand how they calculate business results. This way, you can collaborate on finding the appropriate reports for the client.
Common Reports Used By Training Providers
- Starts and Completion — These reports enable you to view the completion rates of your courses to determine how many starts and completions there are for each one. These are useful for training programs that need to be completed by a certain date and can enable the training provider to follow up with the clients to understand why completions are low. Many LMS vendors can schedule these types of reports to be sent on a regular basis. Routine access to completion data will help you be proactive, helping you attain the completion rates that you expect and have promised your clients.
- Participant Status Summary — This report summarizes the status of participants for all activities. Much like the Starts and Completions report (which gives you a sense of how many users are completing your training), this one provides a snapshot of all your active courses and participants, like how many users have started/not started, have passed/failed, or are overdue. Sending this data to clients regularly shows them the strength of their training programs. It also enables them to follow up on their own with anyone who has outstanding training assignments.
- Interaction Data — This is data received from the learning content and saved per user attempt. It’s helpful if the content contains an assessment or quiz, as it will enable you to view data such as questions, responses, and scores for each item. This type of data can also be helpful in understanding what is happening with your training content. For example, suppose that you notice that learners are getting the same question wrong on the quiz. Interaction data can help you determine if this question is too difficult or if users are selecting the right answer, but it’s not correctly mapped in the quiz. It can also help you be more proactive vs reactive and enable you to review your content to make it better for the next group of learners.
Making the Data Matter
Now that we understand the types of data that can be pulled from the LMS, let’s go over how to leverage reports as training providers.
The best usage for reports is to show your clients the strength of the training program. Once data is extracted from the LMS, it can be turned into rich and easily digestible data, such as charts, graphs, and pivot tables. These reports are often interactive, enabling you to drill into more detailed data as needed.
Here are quick ways to demonstrate to multiple clients the strength of their training programs:
- Use interaction data within the LMS to show the quality of your training content.
- Regularly send completion reports to clients so they are aware of how close learners are to completing the training program. You can also schedule these reports in the LMS and have them automatically sent to the appropriate stakeholders.
- Review participant reports with clients to see how engaged learners are in the content.
Having an LMS that offers a single interface for reporting on all your clients is incredibly helpful. Going a step further, think about providing reporting access to your clients based on various admin privileges (i.e., only some of their managers can get access to reports).
Key Takeaways
Being able to leverage reports will help you keep your training business on its upward trajectory. Reporting helps you gauge the success of your current training programs and provides insights into how to improve your training in the future. Using reports to show training ROI is a great way to demonstrate to potential clients the success of your business and how you can help solve their training needs. Using the reports within your LMS means having a single interface for all your reporting goals.
If you are providing a multi-tenant experience for your clients, you can also provide reporting access based on various admin privileges if needed (e.g., only some of the client’s managers can get access to reports) or have reports automatically sent to specific people. This can be a helpful tool for empowering your clients to take control of their own training programs.
The depth and flexibility of reporting means you can offer plenty of data and insights no matter the needs of your clients. High-level reporting using graphs/charts makes it easy to keep an eye on your training programs, which can help you stay proactive for your clients if any issues arise. Scheduling reports can also help with this.
To continue learning about how to leverage reports as a training provider, we invite you to review these resources:
These are great tools to continue understanding how reporting can be helpful in creating a rockstar training program.
Here at Firmwater, we don’t just sell an LMS for training providers. We partner with our clients, giving them the tools and insights they need to implement the best practices in e-learning course development, growth, and delivery. We care too much about our customers’ businesses to have them wade through forums and chatbots for help.
Ready to use an LMS that’s designed for the way YOU work, with a team dedicated to YOUR needs? Book a no-obligation consultation directly with our team today!