Learn More About Technical Skills Development Software
What is Technical Skills Development Software?
Technical skills development software delivers online courses designed to build a user’s skills in technical fields such as software development, data science, IT support, cybersecurity, user experience (UX) design, artificial intelligence (AI), and programming languages, such as HTML, CSS, or SQL.
Similar to online course providers, which cover a broader range of topics, these products are specifically focused on helping employees acquire new skills or refine existing skills in highly technical subjects. Courses in technical skills development software typically include interactive course content like videos and exercises, plus assessments for users to demonstrate what they learned.
Employees can follow personalized learning paths based on their interests and goals and the company’s needs. These products can be used for upskilling, or for employees improving their skills to help them perform better in their current role, as well as reskilling, which is when employees learn new skills so they can do a different job. Employees may possess certain soft skills, but lack the technical hard skills necessary to grow in some industries.
For business leaders, technical skills development software provides a streamlined way to keep their teams updated on technologies as they change so employees are better equipped to perform in their roles, grow their technical knowledge, and move the business forward.
These platforms can scale their educational offerings depending on the needs of the customer, from a single user taking courses in one subject area to a large company with a variety of different roles across thousands of employees. For individual workers, technical skills development software provides an opportunity to brush up on in-demand skills, potentially opening the door to new career opportunities.
What are the Common Features of Technical Skills Development Software?
The following are some core features within technical skills development software that can help users refine or acquire technical skills, increase productivity and performance, boost employee engagement and retention, and create a more efficient onboarding process for new employees.
Course library: Most tools have a library function that allows users to browse different online courses or eLearning modules. The courses are often grouped into learning paths and users can select topic bundles or modules based on the technical knowledge they want to acquire. This grants users an organized means of knowledge discovery without introducing unwanted noise.
Customized learning plans and curriculum: Depending on the needs of the organization, the creation of personalized learning plans can be driven by company leaders, employees, or both. Technical skills development software allows for individualized course sequences, which can be influenced by the employee’s interests or by the company’s needs. These custom course maps might mix in lessons from more than one discipline. In some cases, employees might be able to skip courses if they prove they have the skills by passing assessments. This allows leadership to build custom learning plans based on the needs of the company and it allows users to feel more engaged in the learning process, rather than simply going through the motions.
Preassessments: Users take a test before starting a course or a learning path to determine what they already know and what they need to learn. That information can be used to craft an individualized learning plan for each user. Some of these preassessment tools can assign scores to learners for each of their competencies, giving company leaders a high-level view of skills across the workforce and a better sense of where they need to invest in additional training. The preassessments are helpful for establishing a baseline and growth plan.
Usage dashboard and analytics: Most technical skills development solutions have a way of tracking employees’ usage of the software. Hiring managers can see which staffers are enrolled in courses, completion rates, and scores on assessments. This data can be compiled on a dashboard or in a report, giving leaders insight into which skills and technical knowledge employees acquire or into employee engagement. Company leaders can use this data to coach employees or adjust their training priorities.
Exercises and projects: In addition to lectures and other course content, many products include exercises or projects designed to encourage users to practice whatever skill they learn in the course. Some courses include projects resembling real-world challenges. For example, a software development course on JavaScript might include an exercise about how to debug a button that isn’t working or how to write code for a math formula. These exercises help further develop competencies and hard skills.
Video: To make content more engaging, technical skills development products incorporate video segments with instructors explaining course content or demonstrating a technique. These videos often include screencasts so users can follow along with the steps on their computer.
Discussions: Some platforms have discussion forums, where students can leave questions for the instructor or ask questions to other learners.
Mobile and TV apps: With mobile devices overtaking computers as many users’ devices of choice, mobile compatibility is an important factor in driving engagement. Many platforms offer apps for mobile phones that allow users to stream or download course content. Some offer TV apps so users can pull up the course on their connected TV.
Offline viewing: This feature enables users to download courses onto a computer or mobile device, letting them continue learning even when on an airplane or in another place without internet access.
Assessments and quizzes: Designed as checkpoints partway through or at the end of a course, assessments are a key part of measuring the user’s learning. Users can accumulate badges or certifications by passing assessments. That assessment data can be aggregated into reports to give company leaders insight into employee performance on the courses they are taking. The badges or certifications can also be added to LinkedIn to promote the new skill set.
Application programming interface (API): The inclusion of API integrations allows technical skills development platforms to connect to other software that a company uses, such as a learning management system (LMS) or a reporting tool. Data integrations make courses more accessible and allow managers to effectively track and analyze data generated by employees completing learning activities.
Career coaching: As part of some technical skills development products, users can access human coaches to help with topics like interview preparation or career counseling. For example, coaches could review a cybersecurity analyst’s resume or give a software developer feedback on their coding portfolio. This will help users track growth and determine additional skills needed to progress in the career path or learning path.
Other Features of Technical Skills Development Software: Advanced Analytics, Channels, Course Recommendation Engine, Learning Paths
Specific Subject Matters: Cloud computing, Cybersecurity, Data science, IT operations, Network administration, Software development
What are the Benefits of Technical Skills Development Software?
Technical skills development software has benefits for both businesses and their employees. Staying on top of emerging technology trends is crucial in the evolving technology industry. A company that doesn’t prioritize its workers’ skills, competencies, and technical knowledge will fall behind.
Streamlined learning: With technical skills development platforms, business leaders have a streamlined way of helping employees get the skills they need to continue developing innovative products and advancing the company’s goals, whether employees are software developers, data scientists, project managers, or in some other technical role. Employees will be more productive if they can build relevant technical knowledge and put it to practice in their daily work.
Insight for leadership: For company leaders, these platforms often offer tracking features so managers can monitor how their employees use technical skills development software and tailor how they use the software to achieve the company’s employee development goals.
Employee engagement: For employees, access to technical skills development tools is a great way to build competencies, stay engaged at work, and feel like their employer values their professional development. Some of the top reasons employees leave jobs is because they don’t feel challenged or think there’s no room to develop new skills and grow in their organization. Investing in employee education and professional development will help with retention and attracting a high-performing workforce.
Personalized learning: Technical skills development software often offer personalized learning paths, so individual employees and hiring managers can choose the courses most relevant for their specific role or career path. Employees that feel like their company is invested in their career development are more likely to stay and be productive contributors. Retaining those workers also saves the company thousands of dollars in recruiting and hiring costs. Technical skills development software solutions benefit new employees as well. They offer a way to streamline training so new hires can quickly acquire the necessary skills to succeed in a new role.
Who Uses Technical Skills Development Software?
Any company or organization with employees who work in technical roles like software developer, database administrator, or data analyst could use technical skills development software as one piece of their training program. Within those organizations, the main users of the software will usually be company leaders, team leaders, and employees.
Company executives: Based on a company’s needs and goals, corporate leaders can determine what skills their employees need to master in order to move the business forward. Technical skills development platforms enable companies to set company-wide learning strategies based on the areas they want to focus on. Leaders can analyze company-wide metrics about how their teams use technical skills development software to maximize the use of the courses and make adjustments to the company’s training plans as needed.
Managers and team leaders: Tracking features in many technical skills development software products allow managers to keep tabs on how much progress their direct reports have made on their learning paths. That insight can provide opportunities for collaborating and coaching to ensure employees receive the most guidance. Managers also benefit from taking the same courses as their employees to delve deeper into their technical abilities and keep their skills sharp.
Employees: Individual contributors in technical roles are the primary users of technical skills development software since they are the ones taking courses and completing assessments that show they acquired the necessary skills. Personalized learning paths give individual employees a chance to shape their own learning journeys and allow them to develop their technical abilities.
What are the Alternatives to Technical Skills Development Software?
Technical skills development software products often have APIs that enable integrations with other systems that companies use. Alternatives to technical skills development software can replace this type of software, either partially or completely:
Corporate learning management systems: Corporate LMS helps companies organize, track, and manage efforts to train employees, customers, and other external partners. Corporate LMS products are used to manage individualized training programs for onboarding, development, and compliance training purposes. Organizations use a corporate LMS to assign courses to employees or external end users, then track learners’ progress as they complete course lessons and assessments.
The technical skills development platforms commonly integrate with corporate LMS systems, giving managers and trainers a streamlined way to distribute course content to employees.
Business intelligence software: Business intelligence (BI) tools help provide visibility into a company’s data. By being able to visualize and understand business data, employees can make more informed decisions and impact the company in a positive way. It is essential for businesses to implement BI software to understand the data and learn how the data impacts the business.
Reporting APIs allow business intelligence software to extract and analyze relevant learning data.
Business instant messaging software: Business instant messaging software serves as an internal messaging system for businesses via a text-based messaging application. Business instant messaging software facilitates one-on-one, direct messaging as well as messaging within predefined groups and teams. The rapid nature of business instant messaging software eliminates back and forth emails sent for simple questions or concerns.
Integrations with messaging platforms help facilitate alerts to users and make courses more accessible.
Challenges with Technical Skills Development Software
Software solutions can come with their own set of challenges.
Financial constraints: While investing in employees’ skills can pay dividends down the line, technical skills development platforms require an initial cost. Plans can cost hundreds of dollars per employee per year for enterprise-level plans—this quickly adds up for larger organizations. Individual plans also cost hundreds per year. Skills platforms often promote the return on investment (ROI) their customers have when employees take their courses, however, it’s crucial for companies to fully engage their employees to maximize their subscriptions’ value.
Lack of engaging content: Sitting through a lecture, struggling to pay attention as a presenter reads off PowerPoint slides is not a great learning experience and the material likely won't stick. Technical skills development providers are increasingly building interactive content like videos and practice exercises to create a more engaging user experience, but not all courses have those elements, causing user engagement to plummet. If employees aren’t completing the course or aren’t retaining the material because the course isn’t engaging, they won’t walk away with the skills they set out to acquire and the business won’t benefit.
Which Companies Should Buy Technical Skills Development Software?
Technical skills training products are often targeted to either individuals or corporate teams. While the course offerings are often similar in both types of products, some of the features vary.
Individuals: The personal versions are generally geared toward individuals looking for skills training outside a specific job. These might be career changers who want to pick up skills to make themselves more attractive to employers in a certain industry. It could be a software developer or programmer who wants to stay in the same industry but pursue a different role that requires skills that they don’t have.
Corporate teams: Enterprise versions of technical skill development software typically come with additional features aimed at deploying courses and learning programs on a large scale. This might include curriculum planning functionality that maps out multi-year learning strategies for a company and analytics dashboards that show how employees use the courses. Enterprise versions of technical skills development software typically include integrations with other software, such as learning experience platforms (LXP), corporate learning management systems, HR software, and single sign-on (SSO) software.
Aside from the individual or enterprise distinction, there are a wide array of topics covered in technical skills development software. Some course and topic offerings include: programming and software development, web development, IT operations, cloud computing, data science, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, cybersecurity, and DevOps.
How to Buy Technical Skills Development Software
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Technical Skills Development Software
There are many issues to consider when choosing a technical skills development software as an individual or company. Each business, team, and person has unique needs and will need to consider some or all of the following: desired learning outcome, business size and team member count, onboarding process, software cost, vendor customer support options, mobile compatibility, and customization. Buyers must determine what set of features will help the learners feel engaged, empowered, and what will provide the best learning experience.
Compare Technical Skills Development Software Products
Create a long list
An initial list of potential technical skills development solutions should include any products that meet the basic feature requirements. At this point, buyers should be aiming to get a sense of the options that meet the essential needs.
Create a short list
After a long list has been created, it’s time to look at each product in more detail to determine if it sounds like it will meet the needs of the employees or individuals looking to purchase the software. This should include evaluating additional features of each product beyond the ones identified as essential to determine if that additional functionality would provide more value or more engaging learning experiences.
Conduct demos
Demos are a great opportunity for buyers to see how the software works. Only the shortlisted vendors are invited to demonstrate their solutions. Demos should be performed live, using the system, and not through slide decks and screenshots. All vendors should follow a predetermined scenario that simulates the business processes of the buyer. Buyers should request to see a walkthrough from the perspective of an instructor and a student to understand how the interface looks for both sides and ensure it is user friendly for everyone. Additionally, request to see various stress tests to see how video, audio, and internet connection quality holds up for higher participant sizes. Buyers can then determine what integrations exist for the product to see how it would work with other products.
Selection of Technical Skills Development Software
Choose a selection team
To choose a selection team, decision makers need to involve subject matter experts from all teams that will use the system. For any company or organization, this will likely involve company executives, managers and team leaders, and employees. An IT administrator should also be present, to weigh in on technical concerns with the products. The selection team should be a representation of the people who will use the system.
Negotiation
After narrowing in on the preferred product, it’s time to negotiate a pricing package. Buyers must consider the pricing model of the software, such as whether the seller charges a flat monthly fee or, more commonly, charges a fee based on how many user seats the buyer needs. Buyers should also note if they can negotiate to add more user seats to a package that would otherwise meet their needs. They might also consider negotiating a discount in exchange for signing a multi-year contract.
Final decision
The final decision should rest with the primary users of the software, such as managers and their employees. All parties should consider whether the software is easy to use, provides a clear learning path to gain new skills, and benefits the users and the company or organization as a whole.
Technical Skills Development SoftwareTrends
Trending course offerings: Topics including cybersecurity, AI, and data analysis are often featured learning paths, largely because those skills are in high demand. Software developers can find plenty of topics to explore. Instead of going through a competitive hiring process to find talent in those areas, companies hope to use technical skills development software to augment their existing employees’ skills. Developing employees’ hard skills will also make companies more attractive to future employees and help companies retain current employees.
On-demand access: With the growing storage capacity of devices, consumers have more options for taking data with them, even if they are offline. Many technical skills development tools are prioritizing giving users offline access, so they can continue learning even in a subway or airplane. Providing greater access might encourage employees to complete courses at higher rates since it allows them to watch lectures or videos on their own time if they choose. Integrations with other streaming platforms give users even more options for pursuing their learning goals.
