ThinkEDU Can Manage Your Learning Partners
We can help deliver expert instructor-led training across your product portfolio. For companies like Autodesk and Avid Technologies, our company is responsible for providing these training channels with program expertise, business development, operational assistance and marketing support.
About Us
Representing America’s largest technology companies – Adobe, Microsoft, etc. – ThinkEDU’s management team pioneered the online sales of software and related educational items to K-12 and college students and their institutions. Based in Carrollton, Texas, ThinkEDU is a nationwide academic and skill-based marketing company offering the training communities, which includes students, faculty, staff, apprentices, and colleges/schools, deep discounts on thousands of software and computer accessories. Our company manages or supplies technology products to thousands of online technology stores for college bookstores and schools that serve millions of students each day.
Our Learning Services Division operates throughout the globe. ThinkEDU is Autodesk’s Authorized Learning Partner Distributor for North America. These Autodesk programs help deliver job readiness initiatives for industries such as Construction & Manufacturing. Specifically, we are responsible for Authorized Training Centers (ATCs and MTPs) affiliated with colleges and universities, correctional institutes, non-profits and skill-based training organizations (i.e. unions). We are also the Learning Services Distributor for Unity Technologies. Unity Authorized Training Partners deliver quality training on all Unity products. This Program is intended to allow training centers and re-seller partners a means to benefit from the opportunity to tap into the growing market of Unity creators and to fulfill the community’s demand for high-quality training. Lastly, we manage the Avid Learning Academy program. The Avid Learning Academy (ALA) program is focused on preparing students for a successful career in media. Available to high schools looking to add a new media arts program or enhance an existing one, the ALA program offers a CTE-compliant audio and music production curriculum and video editing curriculum that cover the Avid “First” family of creative tools.
Our company can help deliver expert instructor-led training across your product portfolio. For companies like Autodesk, Avid and Unity Technologies, our company is responsible for providing these training channels with program expertise, business development, operational assistance and marketing support.
Outsourcing Your Learning Partner Channel.
Your core competency is the development of products that are changing the world. You also most likely have a strong direct sales channel and reseller partners to assist you. Ideally you want to keep them focused on sales. However, you also know the importance of having a professional training arm as a part of your support ecosystem. As such, there are many advantages to outsourcing the management of your learning partner channel. When it comes to a training department to help you train your end-users do you feel it is as strong as you would like?
From growing your channel (recruitment), on-boarding, enablement sessions to train-the-trainers, courseware, certification, collection of fees, and more, ThinkEDU can help. We can help you set up a program whereby your costs for running this program are significantly reduced if not totally absorbed by our company. At the same time, we will deliver high quality service that your partners and end-users will expect.
Recruitment – When it comes to business you have heard the old saying, “if you’re not growing you’re dying.” When building your Learning Partner channel, the saying is still true. Growing your Learning Partner channel is job-one. ThinkEDU will assign a dedicated Education Program Manager to your account to make sure that your account grows to targets that are mutually agreed to. New partners help, along with their annual dues, increase the annual revenue that will be available for marketing programs that will help you promote the products that your company develops.
Retention – While finding new partners is very important, retaining your existing partners is just as important. Retention requires outstanding communication skills. Not only do you have to keep your partners engaged and in the know (enablement), but you also have to have good listening skills. At the end of the day you have to make sure your partners remain passionate about the program you are trying to build.
On-Boarding – Once your recruit your new Learning Partner, you need to teach her the skills that are required to be successful. This starts on day one. ThinkEDU will assign a Partner Engagement Administrator (PEA) and Partner Engagement Manager (PEM) to manage their on-boarding. This will take them from the overview of your company and your products to your required reporting. A proper on-boarding experience lays the groundwork for a successful Learning Partner. Our job is to show them the best practices that will lead to that success.
Enablement Sessions – Whether it is new products that your company develops or new strategies that are put in place, enablement sessions provide a scheduled vehicle to communicate to the channel in a formal manner. Marketing ideas, goal setting, or just listening to the channel, a quality enablement session allows a perfect forum for channel communication. Aside from live presentations, our company records each of these sessions. This allows for playback by all who attend.
We can assist in a number of ways:
Certification Program – Getting your trainers certified on your products is critical to building an ecosystem of talented users that the commercial marketplace will hire. As the world moves to a global economy with easier movement of employees and increased competition, there is a technology skills gap that can be felt in every country. The 2017 IT Skills and Salary Report from Global Knowledge confirms that skills gaps are a global concern. In their survey of 14,300 IT professionals worldwide, more than two-thirds of the IT decision-makers reported a gap between their team’s skill levels and the knowledge required to achieve organizational objectives. The increased need to match employer needs with workforce skills points out the value of certification. Certification, particularly entry-level certification, helps to build a skilled workforce that meets the needs of local employers and government tech initiatives.
ThinkEDU works with companies like Certiport, a Pearson-Vue Business, to help you build a certification program. If you have a certification program in place, our company can assist you in promoting your program. Our goal will be to help you grow the number of certified users using your products.
Train-the-Trainer – As your company publishes world-class products, it will fall on our company to make sure that your Learning Partners are trained. Train-the-Trainer workshops are held at various locations and online to facilitate training the greatest number of partners. At the same time, we will open the training to educators across North America. Our company can host many on-campus events to promote and train your strategic products.
Collection of Fees – ThinkEDU will take on the responsibility of collecting the annual fees of all Learning Partners. For those Partners who fail to make their payments, we will ensure that they are removed from the program. By outsourcing your business to us, all of your administrative headaches for the program (as well as the expense) are completely removed.
Business Development – A major part of building a Learning Partner Channel is assisting your partners in their growth and development. This requires assisting partners each year with plans in helping them build their business. Successful partners not only need to put students in seats to fill their classrooms, but they also need to invest time and monies in offering courses in new products that may not make a lot of money right away. We will work with you to establish goals and a plan that can be used for most locations as a starter in helping them with their business.
Operational Assistance – Each and every day Learning Partners may encounter issues that impact their business. Licensing or technical issues are just two of many areas that require immediate operational help. The first line of defense is their Partner Engagement Administrator. The PEA will work with the Learning Partner until the issue is resolved. Partners can also seek assistance from the Partner Engagement Manager or the Managing Director. At the end of the day, it falls on our company to resolve the issues that the Learning Partner is experiencing in a timely manner.
Marketing Support – ThinkEDU is considered, by reputation, one of the best marketers to students and faculty in North America. As part of our services, we will provide Learning Partners with comprehensive marketing to help Partners promote their offerings. At the same time, we will offer guidance, templates and best practices for effective campaigns.
Partner eStores – A core competency of ours, we can design customized stores for your partners or for your channel and stock them with products you would like to see in them. These eStores can be set up as Partner reseller stores, where all pricing is at their cost. At the same time, we can build eStores for your end-users as well. These stores would be designed to support your overall strategy in delivering products or services to your end-users or Partners (resellers). We would be responsible for all management and fulfillment of items in these stores. If you serve the academic market, we can also assist in verification of the buyers.
Reporting and Strategy – As the old saying goes; “Any road will take you there if you don’t know where you are going.” Working together, we will put in place a strategy to assist you in reaching your goals and objectives. Once the strategy, goals and objectives (SGO) are established, we will provide you with real-time reporting and dashboards to monitor your channels results as they relate to the SGO. Reporting will include access to our cloud-based evaluation portal to monitor the various courses by your channel.
There are many types of learning partner management
From recruitment of new members (academic or commercial), certification, courseware, goal setting to reporting, ThinkEDU has the right solution for you.
Autodesk Learning Partner Community
Avid Learning Academy Program
Skill Based Training
ThinkEDU can assist you in managing your learning partner channel.
The first step only takes a few minutes.
Service Programs
The management of ThinkEDU has been working with service-based businesses for over 25 years. In that time, we’ve had the opportunity to get to know a lot of business owners who are past the startup phase and are now wondering what they should be doing to expand their business into the academic space. The goal for many of these business owners is to get to the point where they aren’t chasing down new business every month and instead have a steady flow of leads, projects going on and recurring or passive income coming in through subscription billing programs.
Product Manager
The ultimate aim of any organization is to develop a better relationship between the customer and the product.
Channel management helps in developing a program for selling and servicing customers within the academic marketplace. The aim is to streamline communication between a business and the customer. To do this, you need to segment your channels according to the characteristics of your customers: their needs, buying patterns, success factors, etc. and then customize a program that includes goals, policies, products, sales, and marketing program.
The goal of channel management is to establish direct communication with customers in each channel. If the company is able to effectively achieve this goal, the management will have a better idea which marketing channel best suits that particular customer base. The techniques used in each channel could be different, but the overall strategy must always brand the business consistently throughout the communication.
Reach out to learn more.
A ThinkEDU team member will be in touch within one business day.