The modern training and enablement tech stack
There’s a tool for that. (And that, that, and that.)
Compare four different tools
And choose the right one to match your project and meet your goal.
The "too long; didn't read"
Learning Management Systems and Knowledge Bases
Are good for increasing general knowledge (about your market, customer, company, product, or service).
Work Instructions Tools and Digital Adoption Platforms
Are good for increasing software knowledge (and helping people do their actual jobs).
Learning Management System (LMS)
An LMS is a software tool designed to help create, deliver, and report on training courses and programs.
- Improving soft skills through upskilling and reskilling
- Sharing video content
- Testing competency
- Research shows people don’t like long videos
- It lacks continuous reinforcement
- It’s difficult for users to find answers later
Knowledge Base
A Knowledge Base is a digital repository of information about products, services, departments, or topics.
- Storing evergreen, text-based reference material
- Creating a single source of truth
- Encouraging internal or external audiences to self-serve
- It’s hard to search and find answers quickly
- People don’t like text-heavy wikis and documentation
- Users constantly have to switch tabs and contexts
Work Instructions Tool
A Work Instructions Tool is a screen capture technology that creates step-by-step guides and software SOPs (as you click).
- Creating how-to guides with screenshots quickly
- Avoiding tedious manual writing and formatting
- Moving away from walls of text and long videos
- Creators need a Knowledge Base to store content
- Users have to read and memorize the content
- It’s tough to measure adoption and ROI
Digital Adoption Platform (DAP)
A DAP sits on top of another product, app, or site and uses tooltips to guide users through specific tasks.
- Driving process adoption for software training and rollouts
- Embedding instructions in the tools where people work
- Measuring process adoption and ROI
- It’s hard for process experts to create walkthroughs
- IT/Security teams have to deploy code for every app
- It doesn’t work well for multi-app business processes
Working on a software project?
Using an LMS, Knowledge Base, or Work Instructions Tool to train people on software just doesn’t work. No one wants to read and watch boring content, search for answers, or memorize dozens of procedures.
You need a Digital Adoption Platform—the only tool purpose-built for internal software training and rollouts.
With a DAP, you can:
Make software easier to learn
Minimize change for end users
Accelerate process adoption
Decrease mistakes and interruptions
Reduce training and support costs
Increase mental energy for more strategic work
Transform new hire time-to-ramp
Drive higher software return on investment
This way of thinking about software training is called Real-Time Enablement.
The trouble with most Digital Adoption Platforms
workflow builders
operate
integrate
deploy
for every app
to buy
Enter a more modern DAP:
Tango's Software Knowledge Layer
Tango's Software Knowledge Layer is a new kind of DAP that’s equally easy to use for process experts and their end users.
Benefits for
process experts
Benefits for
end users
Set up
Use to create content
(without jQuery, CSS,
or HTML!)
Integrate with other tools
Roll out and measure
Find
Follow
Trust
Apply
Tango combines the ideal creator experience of a Work Instructions Tool with the ideal user experience of a DAP—and creates the ultimate internal software training tool.
Instructions
Tool
Adoption
Platform
Three signs you need Tango
Sooner rather than later.
How to get stakeholder buy-in for Tango
If your boss and co-workers aren't experts on the training and enablement tech stack, here are some questions to expect (and ways to answer them with ease).
Frequently asked questions
Tango is a new kind of Digital Adoption Platform that makes business software user-savvy so employees don't have to be tech-savvy. It brings together the biggest benefits of a Work Instructions Tool (👋, click-to-create documentation) and a Digital Adoption Platform (👋, higher software process adoption).
Tango plays well with Learning Management Systems and Knowledge Bases, since they’re built for different purposes:
- 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.
- Tango is great for creating step-by-step how-to guides, increasing software process adoption, and embedding knowledge directly in the tools where people work.
Tango is in a league of its own. 😁 But if you’re okay with an apples to oranges comparison, you can think about Tango alongside other Digital Adoption Platforms (WalkMe, Whatfix, Pendo, etc.).
You would not! You’d be rounding out your training and enablement tech stack with a tool designed specifically to teach people how to use software (and quickly adopt SOPs that improve business outcomes). Your Learning Management System would continue to be your best bet for developing and evaluating soft skills. P.S. It’s easy to embed and link to any Tango content you’d like from your LMS.
Both Tango and Scribe can help you create step-by-step guides quickly and easily. But in the grand scheme of things, the two tools are more different than they are alike. Learn more here.
100% normal—because Digital Adoption Platforms and Knowledge Bases serve separate needs and drive different outcomes. Here’s the TL;DR:
- Purpose-built for software training and rollouts
- Best at increasing process adoption (especially for evolving SOPs)
- Ideal for delivering the right information, in the right place, at the right time
- Designed to centralize general knowledge
- Suited for storing evergreen, text-based reference material
- Made for teams who want a single source of truth (and are willing to search for what they need)
If you have a Digital Adoption Platform or a Work Instructions Tool, Tango can replace both. 💪🏽 And if you and your team are using manual screenshot tools and video capture software (and wrestling with formatting in PowerPoint, Word, and Google Docs), you can save A LOT of time with Tango. Take it from Nick Berry, Sales Operations Manager at Better Agency.
Don’t think that alone will get your manager’s attention? What Tango really does is give you a safety net for all the other software you’ve invested in—by ensuring your most important processes are accessible and streamlined for everyone. Software is the gateway to most knowledge workers’ (actual) jobs. Without a way to teach everyone how to navigate new technology and successfully adopt processes in your company’s most important tools, it’s hard to show ROI on your tech stack—or tie training and enablement efforts to business outcomes.
Your LMS, Knowledge Base, and Work Instructions Tool are great for *some* things. But if you’re training people on software, you need a Digital Adoption Platform.
Nothing frustrates a busy employee quite like:
⏳ A 10-minute video
😵💫 A PDF with 2,000 too many words
🔗 A link to an outdated support article or Wiki page
🙄 A link to another Knowledge Base, when the first one didn’t help
👀 A request to memorizing (constantly evolving) software procedures
🙅 More training, resource folders, and context switching
🔄 A “swivel chair culture” where they’re expected to “just ask for help”
With Tango, you can:
- Convince people that all knowledge isn’t created equal and doesn’t have the same business impact
- Forget the software training workshops, lengthy how-to videos, and wordy PDFs
- Curate highly applicable, trustworthy information (and ditch the rest)
- Use cropped and annotated screenshots to show people exactly what to do and where to click
- Deliver expertise in-context, at the moment of need, so people can return to doing what they do best
Guide Me is an interactive walkthrough that shows users performing a software process exactly what to do and where to click, without ever leaving their screen. With Guide Me, you can help people get unstuck in their moment of need, deliver curated insights from experts, crowdsource improvements, optimize your workflows, and use analytics to provide personalized help to everyone who needs it.
Click-to-Create is a beloved Work Instructions Tool feature that makes it easy to create and share beautiful how-to guides with perfectly cropped and annotated screenshots. With Click-to-Create, you can save hours documenting workflows on any website, SaaS app, or desktop software, update individual steps without redoing your whole process, protect sensitive data with advanced blur features, ensure data safety with SOC 2 compliance, customize guides to suit your brand, leverage multiple ways to share, sync to multiple Knowledge Bases with one click, and much more!
Once everyone knows what you know—that Tango can be used for digital transformation, not just documentation—it may be helpful to get in touch with your security team, your systems administrators, and the teams that own your LMS and Knowledge Base.
