How To Make the Business Case for E-Learning Software
Being a part of the sales team here at Articulate, I’m on the front lines answering customer questions (and yes, indeed, we get them all). In a single day, we might hear, “What is e-learning exactly?” “What is the cost of a license?” and everything in between. The most frustrating comment we encounter, however, is “Now I just need to convince my boss to pay for it.” You know how great our software is, but what’s the best strategy to convince the “higher-ups” to go for it? Here are some helpful hints. Share a Demo The first rule of sales is “show . . . don’t tell.” We are happy to offer a free, fully functional 30-day trial of Articulate 360 so you can experience how easy it is to use, and so your boss can see how much this robust software platform can do. To someone not fully versed in e-learning, words like triggers, variables, blocks, microlearning, and highly immersive courses don’t mean a lot. Those people need to see the difference. Identify the Cost Benefit Another piece of advice is to make it make sense—and cents! How much time would Articulate 360 save you compared to all of the tools and resources you currently use? And if you decide to include our AI Assistant in your subscription, your time saved will go up even more! This can be a powerful message, especially if your workload is at capacity. You should also find ways to show how much money e-learning saves your organization. Many people find they can quickly and easily justify the expense when they consider how much this small outlay will save them in the long run. Demonstrate the Ease of Use Articulate differentiates itself by providing outstanding customer support, free training webinars, tutorials, and a helpful, friendly user community. This is key for your manager to know, because you can get up and running quickly with minimal downtime—without lengthy expensive training—and if there’s a problem or something you can’t figure out, our fabulous support team and community are here to help. Fulfill Future Needs Software that meets a current need is good, but software that also has future benefits for your organization is even better. So, think about your organization’s current needs, and how they will evolve. Then, have a good explanation ready for how Articulate 360 will help your organization fill an anticipated need. For example, perhaps mobile access isn’t a huge deal to your company now but might become so in the future. With Articulate 360, you’ll have a ton of robust features to call on as your needs change, and we’re constantly adding and improving those features with monthly software updates that are included in your subscription. Wrap-Up Convincing upper management isn’t always easy, but if you prepare for the meeting and present your case logically, you might find it is easier than you think! Here are some additional resources to help get you started: Get Up to Speed on Articulate 360: What’s Included? Making the Business Case for E-Learning Build Compelling Courses Up to 9x Faster with Articulate’s AI Assistant AI Assistant Released: Pricing Details and Resources Available Don’t forget that you can start a free 30-day trial. And subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest product updates, e-learning examples, and expert advice sent directly to your inbox. If you have questions, please share them in the comments.Upcoming Articulate 360 Training Webinars in 2025
Stay ahead of the curve with our free Articulate 360 Training webinars. These weekly sessions are designed to help busy course creators like you enhance your e-learning skills without investing too much time. As an Articulate 360 subscriber, you can grow your expertise through targeted training on the latest techniques and best practices – all at no additional cost. And if you want to view some on-demand training to view at your own time, visit the Articulate 360 training site to see what's available. Check out our upcoming webinars and level up your e-learning game. If you can't attend, that's OK. We record all of the sessions, so just sign up and you'll get a recording emailed to you. Date Title January 21, 2025 How to Build a Progress Bar in Storyline 360 January 21, 2025 Overview of AI Assistant in Rise January 21, 2025 Beginner’s Guide to NVDA and Storyline for Accessibility Testing January 21, 2025 Typography Basics for E-Learning January 28, 2025 How to Build Onboarding Training in Rise 360 January 28, 2025 Production Tips for Working in Rise 360 January 28, 2025 Creating Images, Narration, and Sound with AI Assistant January 28, 2025 How to Build Tabs Interactions in Storyline 360 January 30, 2025 Quick Tips & Tricks Episode #110 February 4, 2025 Storyline 360: Creating Social Personality Quizzes February 4, 2025 Overview of AI Assistant in Rise February 4, 2025 Using Dials to Create Menu Navigation in Storyline 360 February 4, 2025 Graphic Design Essentials for E-Learning February 11, 2025 How to Build Timeline Interactions in Storyline 360 February 11, 2025 Overview of AI Assistant in Storyline February 11, 2025 How to Build Compliance Training in Rise 360 February 11, 2025 How to Create a Style Guide for E-Learning Not yet an Articulate 360 subscriber? Sign up for a 30-day free trial and check out as many as you’d like. And if the live webinar time doesn’t work for you, no worries! Simply sign up anyway and you’ll receive the recording in your inbox so you can watch it whenever you have time. Hope to see you at one of our upcoming webinars!Explore the Newest and Most-Loved Features of 2024
This year, we rolled out over 120 features to help you create better courses faster. From AI Assistant to snapshots and emphasis animations, each feature was designed with you in mind. Check out the video below for a recap. But that’s not all! We’re excited to release even more new features to help take your courses to the next level. Keep reading to learn more about the features we released in the last quarter of 2024! Rise Accessible Matching Knowledge Checks and Quizzes We’re committed to ensuring everyone has equal access to learning opportunities, regardless of ability. We’re happy to share that matching knowledge checks and quizzes are now fully accessible. Want to learn more about this update? Read this article: Matching Knowledge Checks Accessibility. Accessible Scenario Blocks Looking to create interactive branching scenarios that every learner can enjoy? We’ve updated the scenario block to be accessible for all learners! Simply add scene descriptions to give learners the contextual information they need to complete the activity. For more info on this feature, check out this article: Scenario Block Accessibility. Storyline Resize Writer Dialog Window We’ve enhanced the writer dialog window to be more user-friendly. Now, you can resize the write and edit inline window to display more AI-generated content. Simply drag the window’s sizing handles to fit your needs. So helpful! Mark Favorite AI TTS Voices Storyline offers a wide range of AI-generated voices to help you quickly and easily add audio to your courses. And now you can save even more time by bookmarking your favorites for easy access. Simply click the heart icon in the voices tab to bookmark them. Note that favorite voices are saved to your computer, not shared across your subscription. Learn more about AI voices in Storyline here: AI Assistant: Producing Highly Realistic Audio. Display Recently Used AI Voices When you’re in a rush, every second counts. Save time and quickly find AI text-to-speech voices you’ve recently used from the View drop-down arrow. Get the details about AI voices in Storyline here: AI Assistant: Producing Highly Realistic Audio. Support for Multiple AI TTS Models If you’re creating courses in Hungarian, Norwegian, and Vietnamese, you’ll be thrilled to hear that you can now generate text-to-speech audio in these languages in Storyline. That’s right! We added an additional AI text-to-speech model to our toolkit, taking the number of supported languages from 29 to 32! To generate audio in Hungarian, Norwegian, and Vietnamese, simply select Turbo v2.5 in the drop-down menu. Want to learn more about the different language models? Read this article: AI Text-to-Speech Models in Storyline. Add Text-to-Speech Audio To Markers Need to quickly create audio for your interactive markers? Now that markers support AI and classic text-to-speech audio, you can easily generate narration and sound effects. Simply select your marker, go to the Format tab on the ribbon, click Audio, and select either Text-to-Speech or AI Audio. To find out how this works and get tips on adding text-to-speech to markers, check out this article: Adding Audio to Markers in Storyline. Reach Additional Reach Learner Interface Languages Delivering training in multiple languages with Reach? Good news: we added additional language options to the Reach interface! We now support: French France Canada German Germany Spanish Spain Mexico Latin America Portuguese Portugal Brazil Your learners will appreciate using a Learning Management System that speaks their language. Want to learn how to change the interface language in Reach? Take a look at this article: Managing Your Profile: Select Default Language. Wrap-Up We hope you’re as excited about these new features as we are! If you’re a subscriber, you can take them for a spin immediately* by logging in to your Articulate 360 account. And if you’re not, simply sign up for a free 30-day trial to check them out. Curious about what other features are currently in the works? Keep an eye on the Articulate 360 Feature Roadmap. And subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest product updates, e-learning examples, and expert advice sent directly to your inbox. *Note that AI Assistant features will be available for subscribers to test free of charge for 30 days. At the end of the trial period, you’ll need to upgrade your subscription to Articulate 360 AI for continued access to AI Assistant.Reach 360: Publish Training
To add training to your account library, it must be published. Once it's live, you can enroll learners and groups or learners can discover it for themselves. Keep reading to see how to get training into the hands of your learners. Publish New Training Publish Updates to Existing Training Note: Reach 360 Admins can directly publish training from Rise 360 if they're also an Articulate 360 seatholder on their team. Publish New Training On the Courses section of the Manage tab, newly submitted content is listed at the top of the training list with an Unpublished button. Unpublished items are always listed before content with submitted changes. Don't see your training listed? If you're an Articulate 360 seatholder, you can also click Add Courses and select Publish Courses from Rise to open Rise 360. Note: Reach 360 content creators can select an admin to notify by email when submitting Rise 360 training. Storyline 360 training submissions automatically send a notification email to all admins. Click the item in the list and click the Publish Course button. The author may have modified these values already, but you can change them here before publishing. Above the title, click Preview Course to open the submitted training in a new tab. This doesn't count as an active learner event. For Rise 360 courses, set training completion parameters. Learners can complete the training by viewing a specified percentage, passing a selected quiz lesson in the training, or both. You can also choose to publish the training without a completion requirement. Note: If the author lowers the passing score of a quiz after the training is published, learners will have to take the quiz again in the republished training to gain the benefit of the lowered score, even if their prior score would be a success with the new parameters. The training duration value is how long it takes the average learner to complete the training. The default value is 30 minutes and can be overwritten. Select the Completion Celebration option to display an animated celebration for learners when they meet the completion parameters. You can also provide learners with a downloadable completion certificate. Note: If a user takes training as part of a learning path that has a completion certificate, they'll only be able to download one certificate for that learning path, not the individual certificates of its composite items. Set how long a learner has to complete the training after they've enrolled. You can set a specific date, no due date, or a custom timeframe of your choosing. When selecting an interval of a set number of days, the time period begins when the learner is enrolled in the training. If you’d like learners to be able to find this training in your account library, set Library Visibility to On. If set to Off, only those learners enrolled in the training will be able to take it. Also, we recommended turning off library visibility if the training is part of a learning path. Once library visibility is enabled, you can select the library where users can find it. Click the Choose Topic button, then select as many topics as apply from the pop-up menu. Use the search bar to filter the topic list. Click the X once you’re finished. Remove an already-added topic by clicking its X icon. Click Publish to complete the publishing process and return to the training details. Publish Updates to Existing Training When an author submits changes to training, it moves to the top of the training list under any unpublished training and displays a New Changes button. Click the training to access the training details. Click the Publish Updates button to open the Publish Course window. Review the publish settings as detailed in the previous section, making any changes as necessary. Note: When you republish an existing training where each lesson has been updated, the manually modified training duration value will be overwritten. Click Publish. Learners aren't notified when training is updated, you'll have to let them know there are changes. They'll see your updated content if they're currently taking or retake the training. If they've already completed the previous version of the training, their progress isn't reset. Pro Tip: Want to remove access to training, make it invisible to learners, or remove it from your library entirely? Click here for more information.
