Learning management systems are often applied in the channel to manage a channel development strategy.  This can be a mistake, and this posting will tell you why.

First, let's get on the same page as to what most of us are trying to achieve in the channel: We're trying to increase sales, drive down costs and improve customer satisfaction.  To succeed we need to optimize the performance of the sales, service and management teams in our channel.  This is a key point: our goal is to optimize performance.  Our goal isn't to provide training.  Although training is a component of our drive to optimize performance, it is by no means our end goal.

Now what are Learning Management Systems good at?  They're good at delivering training and not too much else.  As a result, to effectively drive performance improvement in the channel you will need a Performance Management System.  A Performance Management System is a system that not only manages the delivery of training but also manages the Four Pillars of Performance Improvement, including communications, education (of which training is a component), motivation and measurement.  Why? Because you cannot effectively optimize performance without delivering to all four pillars.  To learn more about Channel Performance Management Systems please see my posting entitled "The Enabling Technologies of Channel Performance Improvement."

At this point you may be wondering why learning management systems can often be effective on the employee side if they won't work effectively on the channel side of the business.  To answer this it's important to make a critical distinction between "reaching" captive employees and non-captive channel partners:

Employees can be reached effectively through a wide range of media, and therefore, a company is not dependent upon a single vehicle to drive the performance of their employees.  The components of the Four Pillars are often delivered through multiple media solutions such as company newsletters, email correspondence, meetings, multiple websites and much more.  Because employees are effectively a "captive" audience it is not unreasonable to expect them to deal with the myriad media solutions that, together, deliver the Four Pillars of Performance Improvement.  In fact, employees really have no choice but to accept that situation and find ways to make it work for them.  This is not to say, however, that they too wouldn't be better served by a Performance Management System vs. a Learning Management System.

On the channel side the front line customer-facing people, such as those in sales, service, parts and finance are often hard to reach.  And, more importantly, they are not inclined to invest a lot of effort into accessing your training and knowledge-based systems.  If it's not easy to access everything they need, when they need it, and from a single point of access, you will quickly loose them.  You basically have one shot at reaching them and that shot better deliver against all of the Four Pillars.  To deliver less will result in an under performing channel.

To read how a Performance Management System delivers on the Four Pillars of Performance Improvement please see my posting entitled "Contextual Performance Improvement--The Next Revolution."