As demand for hands-on learning at Hyland's user events grew, they realized their homegrown virtual lab solution wasn't providing the customer enablement they needed.
It was time for a more robust virtual lab environment that could create high-fidelity software training experiences.
But questions remained…
How could they scale a software lab program like this? Could they reduce dependencies on IT and operations teams? And how could they increase the ROI of their training content? That’s what Hyland had to figure out.
Challenge
- Homegrown, in-house lab environment wasn’t allowing them to scale hands-on learning and software training labs at user conferences.
- Reduce the time, effort and number of resources to keep employees, customers and partners skilled on frequently updated software.
Solution
- Implement high-performing, easily accessible hands-on learning experiences to build software skills, product affinity and validate training effectiveness.
- Outsource their software lab ecosystem to Skillable for powerful lab authoring tools, improved performance, reliability and scale for better global reach.
- “Build once, deploy many” approach where labs are available 24×7 around the world.
Result highlights
- 80% decrease in time required to update and deploy labs at events.
- Eliminated transporting equipment to build on-site lab datacenters at events, saving significant time and money (and stress).
- Scaled user event training lab rooms from 25 seats to 100+ seats.
- Reduced severity of last-minute lab changes disrupting customer experiences and internal team operations.
- Increased content ROI by repurposing labs into a premium training subscription.
- View other program successes.
Keep scrolling to read the abbreviated case study.
Company overview.
Hyland is a leading enterprise content services provider that enables thousands of organizations to deliver better experiences to their customers with process automation, case management, reporting, analytics and more.
Hyland’s initiative for more robust hands-on experiences started with the need to improve the caliber of its user conferences’ lab room experiences, beginning with its annual event CommunityLIVE.
Events like this include software training sessions where customers get to be hands-on with Hyland’s products. These conference lab rooms introduce users to new features with the intention to advance their proficiency, improve tech adoption and decrease time to value. It also connects Hyland experts with customers to capture real-time user feedback.
Challenge and opportunity.
Hyland’s lab initiative, led by Senior eLearning Specialist Melissa Warren, started as a side project and quickly gained momentum both internally and externally at their events. “As a software company, we need our customers, partners and employees to have a tangible understanding and stay on top of our constantly changing platform modules in order to achieve our ultimate goal – our software helping customers optimize their potential,” said Melissa.
But as they tried to scale, they encountered the challenges many in-house lab programs face. “It was an administrative and time-consuming headache to maintain the environment, impacting our ability to create and optimize the training labs we knew helped our learners. On top of the performance issues, we had a frustrated internal user base maintaining the virtual environments but were committed to supporting the value of the hands-on experience,” said Melissa.
Dave Amen, Hyland’s Director of Research and Development, said, “With limited resources and an on-premise model, we just weren’t able to create the software learning experience we envisioned.”
This vision not only included providing hands-on learning opportunities at their annual conferences, but also making hands-on learning available 24/7 on Hyland’s website. They wanted their software labs as part of their training subscriptions to improve customer and partner adoption of their product, increase training engagement and provide customers around the world valuable experiential learning experiences.
When Hyland learned they could achieve their vision with an on-demand, cloud-native hands-on lab environment, they were quick to act.
Hyland's business goals for hands-on labs.
Streamline logistics.
Reduce the logistics and operational risks with providing hands-on software labs at events, including Hyland’s annual marquee conference.
Improve tech adoption.
Deliver industry-leading customer enablement and partner education with on-demand hands-on learning experiences.
Increase lab team autonomy.
Reduce the reliance and strain on the Hyland Information Systems (IS) department.
Mature software lab expertise.
Advance lab capabilities to reduce the time it takes to develop, deploy and edit labs.
Improve ROI of training content.
Find ways to repurpose, reuse and extend the life of training content and training labs.
Solution: Move their on-premise lab environment to Skillable's platform to streamline operations, management and provide greater scalability and performance.
Why Hyland selected Skillable.
- Skillable's robust lab authoring and hosting platform enabled Hyland to mature their lab environment and capabilities.
- Skillable's global footprint delivers high-performing lab experiences for Hyland's worldwide user base.
- Lab Author and Instructor tools to boost their efficacy and be more learner-focused.
- Ability to offer and maintain multi-version software training labs which enables a SaaS organization like Hyland to offer training labs beyond the latest software release.
- Tools and automations to reduce friction across their lab and learning environments.
- Proven track record to support virtual labs at global events for other leading software organizations by Skillable’s Professional Services team.
Software labs are strategic training tools.
Hands-on virtual labs now deliver strategic training to Hyland’s global learning community, enabling participants to learn, configure and experiment with new Hyland technology without needing their organization’s production or test environments.
Key program successes.
Hyland’s education team built an award winning, high-performing, easy-to-scale hands-on learning environment focused on accelerating software product adoption and improving the effectiveness of their customer enablement training programs.
Streamlined logistics and reduced the complexity of offering labs – especially at events – so they could be more customer focused.
Moved from locally-hosted servers at each event to a launch-from-anywhere cloud solution that extended hands-on software labs to Hyland’s on-demand training subscription available 24/7.
The access to Skillable’s global datacenters meant that regardless of geographic region, users experienced faster loading and higher performing software labs.
At their customer events, they were able to scale from 25 lab seats to 100+ seats.
Mitigated the disruptions of last-minute lab changes and attendee registrations at user conferences so people had a frictionless experience.
Reduced the threat of last-minute changes (or errors) disrupting customer experiences and internal team operations at conferences.
If they have last minute attendee registrations for a training session, Operations and IT teams are no longer scrambling to spin up additional virtual machines (VMs) thanks to training keys.
“The Lab Developer can easily make changes on the fly during the conference if needed.” – Melissa W.
Decreased time to build, deploy and manage labs and digitally transformed the user experience.
In addition to the 80% decrease in time it takes to update and deploy labs, Hyland moved away from providing PDF-based instructions and access credentials, which were difficult to manage and caused user-access issues.
Skillable’s lab platform thoughtfully integrates the virtual environment and an instruction pane on one screen, eliminating the need for physical collateral and enabling users to view instructions, login information and leverage mouse-click reducing tools such as “Type Text” that drastically reduced login issues and the need for manual credentialing.
Access to comprehensive engagement reporting and performance analytics to help improve the quality of their training content.
Customers who use Skillable’s API have access to detailed usage and high-fidelity skill data, enabling them to become thorough in their reporting. Examples include where and when labs are launched, the number of launches, performance, latency, completion progress, student type, course popularity and more. This data helps inform training strategies and content roadmaps.
Increased event lab ROI and value of Hyland’s training subscriptions to accelerate product adoption and time to value.
Previously, training labs at events were a one-time-use tool. Now, in the Skillable environment, Hyland can repurpose their labs. This enabled them to add hands-on learning to their customer and partner training subscriptions which include a variety of on-demand eLearning courses, certifications, end-user training and tools.
Hyland Software’s experience-driven program earned three Brandon Hall Group awards in 2023.
- “Best Advance in Education Delivered Through Technology” – Silver
- “Best Advance in Learning Management Technology for External Training” – Bronze
- “Best Advance in Technology for Virtual-Classroom or Conferencing Technology” – Bronze
