One of the biggest challenges that training providers face today is a lack of time. Whether that is due to a lack of support systems that have them doing everything manually, or having too complex of a setup with every aspect of their business spread out over different domains, people and systems, the result is the same: manual labour that is inefficient, repetitive, and error prone. Nobody likes that.

If you’re a course administrator you probably know all too well the numerous, often time-consuming tasks involved in keeping everything running smoothly. Between updating websites, invoicing, course registration, and tracking participant progress, it can feel like there are never enough hours in the day. Luckily there is a solution.

Investing in a good Training Management System, or TMS for short, can significantly help boost your productivity as well as improve your workflow. Reclaim your valuable time and find yourself with more energy to expand your business and interact with customers, rather than doing admin. Here are our top tips for how a good TMS like EduAdmin can help you save time and money.  

Don’t repeat yourself

How many different systems and apps do you currently use to handle your business? Maybe you have information about your course offerings on your website, you keep all your participants and bookings in a spreadsheet, and your email inbox is full of registrations, questions from participants and follow-ups with instructors. And of course, we can’t forget about the payment system, the marketing platform, and your CRM. When something about a course changes, you might need to enter the same piece of information into 1, 2, 4, maybe even all your systems.

With a good TMS, you should never have to repeat yourself. When you update your course information in EduAdmin it is automatically reflected in your communication with participants, and with its real-time integrations it’s also published to your website, your CRM, marketing platform, HR system, and so on. You and your team will save countless hours, and you will no longer have to spend your day entering the same information over and over. Make your TMS the single source of truth for everything regarding your courses.

The right tool for the job

Speaking of having your data spread across different users and applications, it is not uncommon for training providers to be working with many, many different systems on the daily. As the company grows, so does the catalogue of applications that are brought in to give support to workers in their tasks. These are often brought in as the need arises; you realize that you want to show reviews about the company on your website, and so you look for a review system. You need a way of planning your instructors and courses, so you buy a planning tool. 

These applications are great at their individual strengths, but they fail to give you a birds-eye view of the business as each part is disconnected from the other. Workers must also remember which applications handle what, remember account details per application, often leading to both increased costs and worker frustration.

Look into your TMS and its features, as these can often partially or completely replace other applications. For example, EduAdmin has built-in functionality for handling customer satisfaction surveys and Net Promoter Score, exams, and personnel planning. 

If it’s not possible to reduce the number of applications, see what type of integrations are available to help make sure that things are running smoothly for you and your colleagues.

Reducing system complexity helps your workers be more efficient, drives down costs and speeds up on-boarding for new team members.

Automate, automate, automate

With EduAdmin, as with any good TMS, automation is the name of the game. Save huge amounts of time by letting your TMS handle all your boring, repetitive tasks such as:

  • Automatic booking confirmations, follow-ups, and surveys
  • Automatic payment handling through invoicing and card payment gateways
  • Documentation such as registration lists, receipts, certificates, and diplomas
  • Registration forms and data-entry

This not only frees up time but can also allow you to offer additional services to your customers. Remind participants a day before the course with a text message, send out professional looking diplomas and prompt your customers to display their certifications on social media through slick 1-click sharing to LinkedIn, Facebook and X. Automate reminders to employers when their employees are due to renew their certifications. All your communication, reaching the right recipients at the right time, always. Setup once and let your TMS take care of the rest.

Give the people what they need and want

Do you often find yourself stuck at the end of the day with a big pile of paperwork to do, attendance lists to go through or papers to grade? Is your inbox full of questions about cancellations and participants wanting to transfer to another course or date or lost diplomas?

Your TMS should empower your coworkers, customers, and instructors to do what they need to by themselves. EduAdmin gives them the tools they need to resolve questions as they arise, for example by allowing your customers to see their training history, certificates, and information about their upcoming courses on your website. The powerful instructor portal lets your instructors take attendance, grade participants, and access any course material they might need.

Empower and help your workers by removing unnecessary administrative tasks from their schedule and let them focus on the tasks that really require their skills and expertise, while improving customer satisfaction by providing them with the information they need, when they need it.

Conclusion

The first thing you should do is identify your current bottlenecks and time thieves. Some guiding questions to help you identify them are:

  • What tasks take up the most of your time?
  • Which tasks are the most draining?
  • Do you have checklists or other “to-do’s” to help you through the day that could be replaced with automation?
  • How many different systems are you using and what do they do?
  • Are course administrators working with “their” tasks, or are they doing administrative tasks for others (customers, instructors, participants)?

Remember to ask your coworkers these questions as well, as well as instructors and other parties. Find all sources of friction and remember that even “small” tasks (such as making or sending out diplomas) quickly add up.

After that, its time to look at the TMS you are evaluating and seeing if it can solve those issues while still fitting your other business needs. No system is perfect and a TMS will not be able to replace all of your current workflows and systems, but it’s important to look at how your TMS can:

  • Reduce manual labour
  • Reduce the risk of human error
  • Drive satisfaction and provide value to customers
  • Empower workers and instructors and allow them to finish their tasks independently
  • Eliminate unnecessary lead time
  • Remove repetitive tasks
  • Simplify the daily work

And don’t forget to make good use of your TMS provider. They are the experts and probably know every trick of the trade, and you should capitalize on their experience.