Real-Time Enablement: An Underrated Competitive Edge

If your IT team is still teaching end users how to use software by:

💤 Creating too many PowerPoint slides to count 
😖 Pulling people away from their craft for mandatory workshops and trainings 
⚠️ Asking them to memorize dozens of procedures that might be useful someday
📌 Burying relevant insights in wordy documentation and long videos 
🫠 Hoping everyone keeps up with constantly evolving software interfaces and business processes
🔎 And leaning on your Learning Management System and Knowledge Base(s) to minimize FAQs

…you’re fighting a losing battle.

Traditional software training sets employees up for frustration and failure. While it’s convenient for IT, it’s anything but for their end users—who have to navigate more and more tools, patterns for getting unstuck, and demands to focus on what will be most impactful to the business. 

Having an org full of employees who can rattle off all of your standard operating procedures (SOPs) by heart won’t move the needle. But having an org full of employees who can spend significantly less time/energy on learning how to use software and significantly more time/energy on work that provides real value? That will quickly create a competitive edge. 

Enter Real-Time Enablement.

What is Real-Time Enablement (aka RTE)?

Real-Time Enablement works in stark opposition to the traditional approach to software training—which expects end users to 1) remember what to click in every tool required to do their jobs, or 2) break flow to find answers.

Real-Time Enablement: 

ℹ️ Offers a more modern and employee-first approach to internal software training 
💡 Embeds software knowledge directly inside of the applications where work is happening
⚡ Introduces on-screen guidance to empower end users to learn software while using it
👍 Embraces the CliffNotes instead of the novel 
🏁 Minimizes context switching and makes SOPs easy enough for everyone to follow on autopilot 
🙏 Helps software end users focus on what they care about (e.g. how to sell more, build better products, and delight more customers) 

And those are just the benefits for end users. 

IT teams love RTE because it gives them a scalable and sustainable way to provide ongoing, step-by-step support (without having to sit side-by-side or trade 1,000 emails). 

With Real-Time Enablement, busy help desk teams can:

⚡ Ensure end users get help when and where they need it, inside of the tools where they work
🌟 Deliver contextualized pro tips to help end users get unstuck on their own
👉 Guide end users right to the screen where they should start/resume a process 
👍 Avoid miscommunications and unnecessary back-and-forth while troubleshooting 
🤓 Pinpoint process improvements to minimize future widespread confusion
✔️ Increase first-touch ticket resolutions and decreases average response times 
🎉 Encourage self-service and reduces IT costs 

Sounds too good to be true, right? It isn’t—as long as you use the right tool in the modern training and enablement tech stack.

The ideal software training tool to make RTE a reality

Digital Adoption Platforms (DAPs) like Tango, WalkMe, and Whatfix were the first tools to bring the concept of Real-Time Enablement to life.

We have thoughts on which DAP makes it easiest to deliver software knowledge to end users’ fingertips (see here, if you’re curious!)—but if you’re new to the world of digital adoption tools, there’s something even more important to know. And that is: 

• Your Learning Management System is great for upskilling and reskilling, improving soft skills, and assessing knowledge retention.
• Your Knowledge Base is great for storing reference information, centralizing knowledge, and creating a single source of truth.
• But if you’re training people on software, neither tool can help you implement and execute Real-Time Enablement like a Digital Adoption Platform can.

9 reasons to switch to RTE sooner rather than later 

If you remember one thing from this article, this should be it: How you use software should be a competitive advantage for your team, and the most competitive companies are winning with Real-Time Enablement.

In case you’re reluctant to let go of traditional software training, imagine if your IT department could help employees:

✅ Instantly become tech savvy with any new tool
✅ Stop doing things “the manual way”
✅ Know what to do next while they work

…and what would happen for your business as a result. ⬇️

1. Teams would stop struggling with busy work.
2. Information and data entry tasks would become effortless and forecasting would improve.
3. Meeting requests to teach (or reteach 🫠) “the new process” would disappear.
4. IT support tickets would decrease and self-service would increase.
5. There would be more speed from idea to execution, as action items get crossed off faster.
6. More team members would pitch and follow through on creative ideas.
7. Employee satisfaction would go way up (as everyone does more work that matters).
8. Channels, experiments, and strategies would start to come together and click.
9. Productivity would increase across the board, with KPIs and revenue not far behind.