Virtual training
Navigating Tight Budgets: Insights from Our 2023 Virtual Software Training Industry Survey
You’re aware of widespread layoffs and tightening budgets, maybe within your own organization or at minimum across a spectrum of other organizations and industries.
You’re all too familiar with how these pressures are affecting your own software training team–but do you know which challenges are specific to your department and which are facing the industry as a whole? Understanding the big picture can help training departments deliver value to their organizations.
That’s why we surveyed 150+ training industry leaders about their budgets and budget priorities, which types of online training they’re emphasizing, what their top goals and greatest challenges are, and much more.
The report shows how organizations are investing in virtual software training as a key business strategy in tighter economic times: to retain customers, upskill employees, and even remediate understaffing. Yet training leaders face an urgent challenge. In order to effectively show value, they must align training metrics with their organizations’ overall business goals.
Our report includes a snapshot of our key findings and a few stats that are likely to surprise you. We also share the top five training program recommendations that we extrapolated from our survey results. Download the report right away or keep reading for an overview of some of our key insights.
Business Goal Alignment Needs Urgent Attention
We’ll start with our most shocking finding: just how poorly our respondents say their training program KPIs align with their organizations’ business goals. A whopping 80% of survey respondents reported that their training program KPIs are not well aligned with overall business goals.
In the context of tightening budgets, it’s more important than ever for training leaders to show the value of virtual software training programs. A few important steps can help to address alignment issues.
- All training programs must have clear, measurable goals. Organizations should look for training platforms that have baked-in analytics.
- To understand and support business goals, training teams must have a seat at the table when strategic discussions take place among product, sales, and marketing teams.
- All training programs should be evaluated based on how well they meet expected KPIs. Training programs that fall short should be iterated and improved, or shelved for later.
Self-Paced Training Wins the Popularity Contest
Self-paced training has staying power as the dominant virtual software training model, with 58% of respondents using it as their main training method in 2023, similar to 2022. Organizations choose self-paced training for a number of reasons.
- Prospective customers are not always able to attend virtual instructor-led training (VILT) due to scheduling conflicts.
- Larger software companies may have a customer base that spans multiple time zones, making it difficult (perhaps impossible) to schedule sessions that consistently work for everyone.
- 58% of people prefer the flexibility to learn their own way and at their own pace.
Understaffing Is a Big Problem… and Software Training Can Help
We asked respondents in both 2022 and 2023 about their top goals for their training departments. Remediating understaffing as a training goal more than doubled since last year, increasing from 17% to 36%.
Given the news about layoffs, it’s not particularly surprising that understaffing is a challenge. What might be noteworthy is that self-paced training can be part of the solution.
When well implemented, self-paced training gives customers and employees the freedom to learn anytime, anywhere–while saving organizations time and money. But strategic planning is key. Training leaders must communicate across departments to ensure training programs are developed with clear, measurable goals that align with overall business goals.
Organizations Are Focused on Retaining Customers and Employees
Facing economic pressures, organizations are emphasizing virtual software training as a tool to keep current customers satisfied as well as to upskill and retain employees. Following are our survey respondents’ top 3 self-paced training goals in 2023:
- 56% customer satisfaction
- 53% employee competence
- 47% employee retention
Among goals for instructor-led training (ILT), employee competence is #1 at 58%.
High-quality learning experiences based on best practices are the only way to meet these goals. Investing in understanding your customers (or employees) is critical in order to personalize training, provide an interactive experience, and offer an authentic look at how your product works in their environment.
Virtual Software Training Is a Budget Priority
It follows, then, that organizations are recognizing that training is worth the investment in tighter economic times. Most organizations’ software training budgets have grown slightly in 2023 over 2022. The results vary depending on the size of the organization’s training budget.
- Organizations with training budgets less than $10,000 are seeing budgets increase 10–17%.
- Among organizations with training budgets of $10,000–50,000, budgets are declining by 15–20%.
- Organizations with training budgets over $80,000 are experiencing budget increases of 10–17%.
Whether software training is already a key part of your organization’s business strategy or you are working to expand and prove your value, download our survey report for insights from industry leaders about the most important trends in software training.
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