Exploring Customer and Supplier relationships in L&D – new research

I am one of those rare people who started their career in L&D direct from university and I am still here 30+ years later.

Most know me for my 20-year?research?focusing on?exploring?how to improve business impact of workplace learning. The core question that I keep coming back to, time and time again, is ‘how can learning innovation improve business impact?’. I’ve?looked at ?this from so many different angles… What is business impact? What is learning innovation? What do effective practices look like? How is technology influencing our practice as learning practitioners?

I keep coming back to this core issue - how we can improve the impact of learning and development? I guess at heart, I am a re-searcher – continually seeking out an answer to driving better business value.

A little-known fact!

What you may not know about me is that the first 15 years of my career was spent in the supply side of the industry in roles linked to sales, customer success and management. In those early years tools and technologies were continually changing and targets continually rising. But the researcher hidden within made me incredibly curious about the customers I worked with – what did success looked like for them and what needed to be done to deliver?

During those early years, I observed my customers, journeyed with them and learned so much. I gained insights about effective practices that I wanted to share more widely. In some cases, this led to great long-term relationships with organisations. In other cases, anything that I shared was treated with scepticism ‘I bet she’s trying to sell me something!’

In the end, I realised that my interest in uncovering and sharing great?strategic and implementation advice?was more motivating for me than successfully hitting my targets and my career?as an official??researcher began.

Collaboration – the art of bringing the outside in

One of the things that I have seen in studies of high performing learning teams is their emphasis on collaborating and working with others to improve services. We are more likely to work with our learners (thanks to ideas such as human centred design), with business leaders to uncover performance issues, with marketeers to get tips on engagement and with data professionals to tap into their analytic insights.

These internal collaborations?open our minds to?alternative perspectives and enrich our service offering.? But do we tap into the insights of our suppliers and provides? Or are our relationships more transactional?

More importantly, with a focus on ‘I know what I want, take my order’?transactions, are both suppliers and customers missing a trick to improving impact??

What does a good customer / supplier relationship look like?

So many questions! And now I’d love to uncover some answers.

For the month of September I am committed?to exploring what great customer / supplier relationships look like today.?

What is working, what isn’t and what can we learn from each other?

An invitation to those in the?supply side of the L&D industry

So, to those on the supply side of the industry – If you work with customers in sales or customer support roles please take 6 minutes to reflect with me on how you drive value through your customer relationships. I’m really interested in your individual professional approach (although some of the questions might make for a great team debate!).?

It will only take 6 minutes to take part (time is precious!) – here is your link

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LCMprovidervalue24 ?

An invitation to those L&D practitioners who buy from suppliers

If you have bought services or programmes from?a supplier of learning services and have had a great (or not so great) experience, I would love to hear from you.?

The?buyer’s?link is here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LCMCustomervalue24 ?

I’m interested in your personal views, not just the company line, so both of these studies are anonymous. I’ll share the insights gained here in the #learningchangemakers newsletter during October.?

If, like me, you are curious about how our outside collaborations might improve business impact, please share this with your suppliers and customers and invite them to take part.

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