Q&A

What are the benefits of virtual classroom training?

It’s no wonder that technical training for employees, partners, prospects, and customers has shifted – even before the pandemic made it a necessity – from the classroom to the screen. When compared to traditional, in-person instruction, there are a half-dozen key benefits that have driven this rapid, evolutionary migration:

  1. Instant spin up: Without the logistical limitations of travel logistics or geography, you can instantly spin up a virtual classroom within seconds, even to spontaneously demonstrate a feature in the middle of a sales call. No need to coordinate schedules, find a place to meet, or spend time getting there. Once you have chosen your virtual environment software, it only takes a few clicks and a browser to provide a live, genuine training session, anytime, anywhere, for anyone around the globe.
  2. Scale it up: Because the physical boundaries of a classroom – and the desks/computers it can contain – are no longer a consideration, cloud-based virtual learning environments can scale instantly and without limits on attendees, hardware, software, or bandwidth.
  3. Cost savings at every step: With virtual classroom training, you zap long lists of line items from the training budget: conference space rentals, hotels, airline tickets, and car rentals, catering bills, hardware and software shipping, and the hours dedicated to configuration. Especially when you have a global team to support, or international prospects to pitch, these expenses simply vanish.
  4. Tracking Usage: Whether for partner or customer certification, employee onboarding, or a POC left with a prospect to explore as a sales enablement tool, you’ll know what they’ve done, when, and for how long. Dashboards and reports can provide the product development team and senior management with valuable insights to guide business.
  5. Hands-on: Once the overview or initial instructions are complete, virtual classroom software is the ideal way to let trainees experience the product first-hand – at their own pace, their own schedule, and with a focus on what matters most to them. A pre-packaged or pre-recorded presentation does not provide the audience with an authentic experience and the confidence to know they have understood the subject matter. Interactive sessions also keep participants involved and prevent them from losing focus.
  6. Consistency through centralization: Once you’ve fully embraced virtual instructor-led training, your sales team – sales engineers in particular – no longer have to be worried about keeping demo software up to date. There is one “bulletproof source of truth” – a certified-clean, up-to-date, reliable copy of the software that serves as a template – for everyone. No exposure of private data from a recent demo, no crashing software mid-session, and no worries that it’s not the latest version.