How to Sell Your Boss on Articulate 360

We hear it all the time. You’re convinced that Articulate 360 is the way to go, but you’re not the one holding the purse strings. So, how can you get your boss or other stakeholders to see all the value that Articulate 360 brings—especially when they don’t know much about what it takes to build e-learning courses? Here are some tried-and-true talking points you can use.

1. Focus on How Much Money You’ll Save

One of the easiest ways to get your boss on board with spending money now is to share how much that investment can save in the long run.

• You don’t need to pay extra for future updates. There’s no need to buy a new version of Articulate 360 to access new and improved features. Updates are included in your subscription, and you’ll get them as soon as they launch.

• Stock media is included too. Buying stock photos, illustrations, videos, and icons can get pricey fast. But with the ever-growing library of millions of course assets in Content Library 360, you can reduce how much you spend on images and video—if not cut those costs entirely.
• You’ve got a library of fully built courses and lessons to pull from. Sometimes important courses need to get launched faster than your team can handle. You can push everyone to work overtime. But that can lead to burnout and staff turnover. Or you can buy courses from vendors or contractors. But that can be costly, particularly if you need customizations or future changes. Articulate 360 gives you a better solution—the real content included in Rise 360. These prebuilt courses and lessons cover a wide range of popular business and thought-leadership topics. You’re free to launch them to learners as is or customize them to your heart’s content. Either way, it doesn’t cost anything extra!

• When you need help, there’s robust support at no extra cost. If you hit a snag, not to worry. Your subscription includes access to our world-class customer support! 

2. Highlight How Much Time You’ll Save

Time is money, eating up team budgets and resources. So another compelling angle to discuss is how the Articulate 360 apps and resources can drastically speed up e-learning design, development, and review work.

• Rise 360: This authoring app makes creating beautiful, fully responsive courses incredibly fast—even for people new to building e-learning. If you need to speed up production, the included templates with placeholder content can help. They take care of the course structure and outline; all your team has to do is fill in the content. And Rise 360’s collaborative authoring means team members can work simultaneously on the same course, speeding up development even more.
• Storyline 360: This app has tons of features to streamline workflows—like the Convert to Freeform feature that helps you build interactions in just a few clicks and the Triggers panel that makes building complex interactions a breeze. And with Team Slides, colleagues can share files fast, making it easy to work together on projects or repurpose slides.
• Review 360: Getting stakeholder feedback and approval tends to be the bottleneck in the course creation process. But Review 360’s intuitive, web-based interface simplifies this step. Not only does it help stakeholders complete their reviews faster, but the app helps make their feedback more precise, making it easier to implement.

• Content Library 360: Because access to these course assets is integrated right into our authoring apps, it’s a breeze to find the media you need. And this library also includes professional-looking Storyline 360 slide templates, which can speed up course development.
• Support: If you’re stuck on something, you won’t be for long thanks to our helpful community of over one million members and our dedicated support team!

And this is just the tip of the iceberg! We’re constantly adding and enhancing product features to improve your workflow and save you even more time.

3. Emphasize the Gentle Learning Curve

When you say “new software” your boss might hear “training needed” and worry about how much time it will take you—and the rest of the team—to get up to speed. To ease their mind, give them a quick demo. Start by sharing how quickly courses come together using the blocks in Rise 360. Then give them a peek at the friendly, PowerPoint-like interface of Storyline 360. Point out how simple it is for course reviewers to add their comments in context in Review 360. And most important, don’t forget to mention that unlimited access to Articulate 360 Training is included in your subscription!

4. Showcase Key Examples

One of the quickest ways to help stakeholders see the breadth and depth of what Articulate 360 can create is to show them compelling examples. And you can find all the sample courses you need on the Examples Hub on E-Learning Heroes. Not sure which examples to choose? Consider your team’s objectives and goals and the type of training you make most often.

Is your boss obsessed with the micro-learning trend? Or do they want you to build dozens of courses in a short amount of time? Start with some Rise 360 examples like these:

• Mars Curiosity Rover
• 3 Techniques for Successful Upselling
• Performance Support 
• Space Travel–Themed Interactive Infographic
• Software Training

Has your boss been asking for more fun and game-like courses? Showcase these Storyline 360 examples to show them what’s possible:

• 360° Interactive Storytelling
• Gamified Policies
• Codenames-Inspired Learning Game
• Broomstick Brew Game

Does the boss want you to personalize your courses down to the last pixel? Here are some Storyline 360 examples with custom interfaces:

• How To Fight a Bear
• Successful Role Play Management
• Storyline: Interactive Guide With Parallax Effect
• Task Prioritization Immersive Scenario

Not finding what you’re looking for here? There are tons more where these came from on the Examples Hub.

5. Build a Sample Course

Chances are you’ve already started your free trial of Articulate 360. So why not take advantage of it and build a mini-course for your boss? Pick a training topic that’ll appeal to them, like one your team is working on now or something you anticipate tackling in the future. Or try rebuilding one of your team’s existing courses to show how Articulate 360 makes development speedier and content more engaging.

Your sample course may not have all the bells and whistles of the examples above. But creating it specifically to address your boss’s interests can help you build a case for how Articulate 360 can solve some of their most pressing problems. It’ll also give you great talking points about the course-building experience and the time it took to create your example.

More Resources

Feel like your boss may need even more information to be persuaded? Check out these resources for more tips on everything Articulate 360 has to offer:

• How To Make the Business Case for E-Learning Software
• All the Examples You Need To Sell Articulate 360 to Your Boss
• 7 Reasons Stakeholders Love Review 360
• Top Considerations for Choosing the Right E-Learning Authoring App

Don’t have Articulate 360? Start a free 30-day trial. And subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest product updates, e-learning examples, and expert advice directly in your inbox.