March 28, 2024
As your business grows and evolves, you’ll continue to need more tools that automate human resources (HR), customer experience, and project management functions. After all, you’ll reach a point where things like payroll, customer information tracking, and task planning just can’t be done on paper anymore.
Business leaders on the hunt for streamlined department practices often beeline it to these four tools: a Human Resources Information System (HRIS), a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM), a Project Management System, and a Performance Management System. And once they find the winning software in each of those categories, they think they’re totally covered. Sound familiar?
The only problem: Company training and important documentation (like policies, processes, and other business need-to-knows) can’t go in any of these systems. And failing to acknowledge (or prioritize) the need a separate tool for this (like — ahem — Trainual) can lead to inconsistent training, knowledge gaps, and costly mistakes.
Here’s a complete overview of why you need HRISs, CRMs, Project Management Systems, and (most importantly) Trainual — the all-in-one onboarding and training tool that works together to systematize your business operations:
First, let’s talk about the software that connects all the others: Trainual. The source of truth for how and why you use all of your other systems.
Trainual is a comprehensive tool for company knowledge storage and training, allowing you to do the following:
Now, let’s get into the other three systems and how Trainual fills in the gaps of each one.
HRISs aid small to medium businesses in digitizing HR functions — helping them track employee information and maintain compliance. Some examples of popular HRISs are Workday, Bamboo HR, Gusto, and Zenefits.
In short, HRISs allow HR departments to securely store, organize, and retrieve documents and information electronically. Reducing paperwork, improving data accuracy, and ensuring compliance with data privacy and security regulations.
Here are the top ways organizations use HRISs:
So, we’ve learned that HRISs allow the HR team to collect and provide individualized documentation. In other words, each team member’s personal information (like their SSN, date of birth, and so on) is automatically inputted into the forms they fill out (and often sign). However, they don’t provide a space to document general policies and processes that aren’t individualized for each team member (like Trainual).
Here’s why you need both: We’ll use the example of employee benefits. When a new hire starts, you need to give them all the information they need about the benefits you offer and what they qualify for according to their classification. That’s where Trainual comes in.
You can document everything from what medical insurance options you offer — and what the heck coinsurance is — to how to enroll in health insurance using your HRIS (and how long you have after your hire date to do so).
👉 Check out this Company Perks & Benefits training example made with Trainual.
Your HR team will cry tears of joy when they aren’t blasted with benefits questions, and your employees will be able to exercise their benefits options with total confidence. Win-win.
And yes — some HRISs do have tools for knowledge sharing. But there’s one problem: Information sharing with an HRIS does not include the accountability piece. You can share best practices and policies with your team, but there’s no way to know if they’re actually looking at them. There’s no tracking who’s seen what or who agrees to follow your guidelines.
Plus, there’s no way to search for answers with an HRIS. When you use your HRIS to store company information, your team could spend hours sorting through their assigned training looking for the answer to their specific question. When you use Trainual, you can type a question about your company in the search bar and your answer will surface, right alongside the full policy or process that contains the answer to your question.
Performance management systems aid in the assessment and improvement of (you guessed it) employee performance. A couple of examples are Lattice and BambooHR.
Here are just a few of the things they do:
Let’s say that you put everything your team needs to know about your company’s strategic direction in Trainual. Then, you outline your employees’ responsibilities (both individual and role-based responsibilities) so everyone knows who’s in charge of what. But, you also need a place to actually hold your employees accountable for making decisions that complement your strategic direction and for executing their responsibilities.
That’s where your performance management system comes in. Your performance management system is what you’ll use to actually set goals for the responsibilities your employees own, as well as evaluate their performance as they strive to meet their goals.
CRMs manage interactions and relationships with customers and prospects through optimization of sales, marketing, and customer service processes. Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, and Pipedrive are some examples of CRMs you may have heard of.
Here’s how they work: CRMs gather prospect and customer data (like contact information, purchase history, communication history, social media interactions, support requests, and so on) from various sources, like emails, calls, and social media. When all that information is in one place, it’s easy to do things like:
Let’s circle back around to how CRMs primarily focus on managing external (customer and prospect) relationships. This is different from Trainual, which manages internal (employee) documentation for onboarding and training. But here’s why both are important.
If you need information about a certain customer, you’ll head to your CRM — where you’ll find a wide range of customer information, like how to contact them, interaction history, inquiries, purchase history, and so on. But what do you do with that information? Head to Trainual to find out how to actually sell to and care for your customers using the data in your CRM — including strategies on how to engage prospects and customers and other need-to-knows like your target customer persona.
Project Management Systems help plan, execute, monitor, and control project-based work from start to finish. Project Management Systems you’ve probably heard of are Asana, Basecamp, Monday.com, Clickup, and Notion.
Here are the main functions of Project Management Systems:
Think of your Project Management System as the tool that houses your to-dos — whereas Trainual houses your how-tos. While working on projects, an employee can reference the Project Management System to see the specific tasks they need to accomplish and then head to Trainual to see how to do it.
Let’s say you’re a member of leadership and it’s time to submit quarterly reviews for your team members. You create a project task for yourself to remember to do this — and subtasks that remind you about each member of your team that you need to submit a review for. Then, you assign a deadline to these subtasks so you’ll get it all done by the deadline your organization has set for you.
You decide to get started. But wait — how do you conduct an employee review, again? Which system do you use? What does it entail and what do you need to include in your review? Those answers are all stored in Trainual — your one-stop shop for process need-to-knows.
Integrating Trainual with an HRIS, CRM, and Project Management System will help your businesses leverage the strengths of each, creating a system that propels business operations forward — by not only maximizing efficiency and productivity, but also fostering a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.
TLDR:
And while each software serves a distinct and vital role in enhancing organizational productivity, they all revolve around Trainual. The one system that overlaps with the others — providing the blueprint that ensures that the other systems are used correctly and in the most efficient ways.
Need a Trainual account? Get a demo.
March 28, 2024
As your business grows and evolves, you’ll continue to need more tools that automate human resources (HR), customer experience, and project management functions. After all, you’ll reach a point where things like payroll, customer information tracking, and task planning just can’t be done on paper anymore.
Business leaders on the hunt for streamlined department practices often beeline it to these four tools: a Human Resources Information System (HRIS), a Customer Relationship Management System (CRM), a Project Management System, and a Performance Management System. And once they find the winning software in each of those categories, they think they’re totally covered. Sound familiar?
The only problem: Company training and important documentation (like policies, processes, and other business need-to-knows) can’t go in any of these systems. And failing to acknowledge (or prioritize) the need a separate tool for this (like — ahem — Trainual) can lead to inconsistent training, knowledge gaps, and costly mistakes.
Here’s a complete overview of why you need HRISs, CRMs, Project Management Systems, and (most importantly) Trainual — the all-in-one onboarding and training tool that works together to systematize your business operations:
First, let’s talk about the software that connects all the others: Trainual. The source of truth for how and why you use all of your other systems.
Trainual is a comprehensive tool for company knowledge storage and training, allowing you to do the following:
Now, let’s get into the other three systems and how Trainual fills in the gaps of each one.
HRISs aid small to medium businesses in digitizing HR functions — helping them track employee information and maintain compliance. Some examples of popular HRISs are Workday, Bamboo HR, Gusto, and Zenefits.
In short, HRISs allow HR departments to securely store, organize, and retrieve documents and information electronically. Reducing paperwork, improving data accuracy, and ensuring compliance with data privacy and security regulations.
Here are the top ways organizations use HRISs:
So, we’ve learned that HRISs allow the HR team to collect and provide individualized documentation. In other words, each team member’s personal information (like their SSN, date of birth, and so on) is automatically inputted into the forms they fill out (and often sign). However, they don’t provide a space to document general policies and processes that aren’t individualized for each team member (like Trainual).
Here’s why you need both: We’ll use the example of employee benefits. When a new hire starts, you need to give them all the information they need about the benefits you offer and what they qualify for according to their classification. That’s where Trainual comes in.
You can document everything from what medical insurance options you offer — and what the heck coinsurance is — to how to enroll in health insurance using your HRIS (and how long you have after your hire date to do so).
👉 Check out this Company Perks & Benefits training example made with Trainual.
Your HR team will cry tears of joy when they aren’t blasted with benefits questions, and your employees will be able to exercise their benefits options with total confidence. Win-win.
And yes — some HRISs do have tools for knowledge sharing. But there’s one problem: Information sharing with an HRIS does not include the accountability piece. You can share best practices and policies with your team, but there’s no way to know if they’re actually looking at them. There’s no tracking who’s seen what or who agrees to follow your guidelines.
Plus, there’s no way to search for answers with an HRIS. When you use your HRIS to store company information, your team could spend hours sorting through their assigned training looking for the answer to their specific question. When you use Trainual, you can type a question about your company in the search bar and your answer will surface, right alongside the full policy or process that contains the answer to your question.
Performance management systems aid in the assessment and improvement of (you guessed it) employee performance. A couple of examples are Lattice and BambooHR.
Here are just a few of the things they do:
Let’s say that you put everything your team needs to know about your company’s strategic direction in Trainual. Then, you outline your employees’ responsibilities (both individual and role-based responsibilities) so everyone knows who’s in charge of what. But, you also need a place to actually hold your employees accountable for making decisions that complement your strategic direction and for executing their responsibilities.
That’s where your performance management system comes in. Your performance management system is what you’ll use to actually set goals for the responsibilities your employees own, as well as evaluate their performance as they strive to meet their goals.
CRMs manage interactions and relationships with customers and prospects through optimization of sales, marketing, and customer service processes. Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, and Pipedrive are some examples of CRMs you may have heard of.
Here’s how they work: CRMs gather prospect and customer data (like contact information, purchase history, communication history, social media interactions, support requests, and so on) from various sources, like emails, calls, and social media. When all that information is in one place, it’s easy to do things like:
Let’s circle back around to how CRMs primarily focus on managing external (customer and prospect) relationships. This is different from Trainual, which manages internal (employee) documentation for onboarding and training. But here’s why both are important.
If you need information about a certain customer, you’ll head to your CRM — where you’ll find a wide range of customer information, like how to contact them, interaction history, inquiries, purchase history, and so on. But what do you do with that information? Head to Trainual to find out how to actually sell to and care for your customers using the data in your CRM — including strategies on how to engage prospects and customers and other need-to-knows like your target customer persona.
Project Management Systems help plan, execute, monitor, and control project-based work from start to finish. Project Management Systems you’ve probably heard of are Asana, Basecamp, Monday.com, Clickup, and Notion.
Here are the main functions of Project Management Systems:
Think of your Project Management System as the tool that houses your to-dos — whereas Trainual houses your how-tos. While working on projects, an employee can reference the Project Management System to see the specific tasks they need to accomplish and then head to Trainual to see how to do it.
Let’s say you’re a member of leadership and it’s time to submit quarterly reviews for your team members. You create a project task for yourself to remember to do this — and subtasks that remind you about each member of your team that you need to submit a review for. Then, you assign a deadline to these subtasks so you’ll get it all done by the deadline your organization has set for you.
You decide to get started. But wait — how do you conduct an employee review, again? Which system do you use? What does it entail and what do you need to include in your review? Those answers are all stored in Trainual — your one-stop shop for process need-to-knows.
Integrating Trainual with an HRIS, CRM, and Project Management System will help your businesses leverage the strengths of each, creating a system that propels business operations forward — by not only maximizing efficiency and productivity, but also fostering a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.
TLDR:
And while each software serves a distinct and vital role in enhancing organizational productivity, they all revolve around Trainual. The one system that overlaps with the others — providing the blueprint that ensures that the other systems are used correctly and in the most efficient ways.
Need a Trainual account? Get a demo.
March 28, 2024
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