Best Practices for a Formal Product Release Training Program - Partners/Customers
We're looking to launch a more formal product release training program and looking at industry/standards and best practices around Education/Enablement timelines and deliverables for partners/customers. For instance, what's industry standard or best practice to provide partners training opportunities on a product release is it at 30 days before GA or earlier or later. Also, what's best practice around the actual training deliverable should it be via webinar, micro-learning on demand or what's best practice. Same for customers, what's right timeframe to give partner enough time to be aware and trained to then engage with customers and ensure they're aware. Thank you.
Best Answer
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Hi Yvonne, I think I'm referring to TSIA for the industry best practices, thinking that there must be some proven data. From my point of view I can add some data points first around delivery formats. IBM moved throughout the last 2 years to provide all partner training as eLearning, and we have a clear learning path for each product, all structured the same (level 1-3 paths for each product set), the learner earns a badge based on various tests with questions, meaning the partner and we know who-learned-what. This approach increased significantly our speed, the reach, and we can see how skills at partners increased. For level 4 and 5 we provide hands-on training, but those are not mandatory for our resellers, meaning they are really for those doing the implementation.
If you talk about the time of availability the 30 days that you mentioned seem to be a good and realistic target. Keep in mind you could also go with "level 1 need to be ready at GA and level 2 30 days after"… but as mentioned above I assume there is industry experience for the dates.
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Thanks so much Alexandar! This was very helpful, much appreciated. Agreed, the Level 1 ready at GA level and Level 2 30 days after seems to be a good approach. Good to know as well moving to more eLearning vs. other format such as webinar, etc.
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