Strategic Partners vs. Shared Services: Who’s Driving Real L&D Change?

What defines Strategic Partners?

Think of Strategic Partners as your company’s inner circle. These teams are deeply embedded within the business, working hand-in-hand with other departments to ensure L&D is directly tied to organizational goals.

They don’t just react to requests—they proactively influence business strategies and measure success based on real business outcomes. These departments drive change, mandating and implementing new programs.

For example, a strategic partner in an L&D department might develop a leadership program with specific KPIs tied to improving retention rates or employee engagement. Their success is measured by their direct impact on the business, such as increased sales or faster onboarding times. This approach can support compliance programs and drive internal initiatives.

What defines Shared Services?

On the other hand, Shared Services teams operate in a more reactive capacity. They’re the go-to for business needs, responding to requests with learning solutions tailored to specific problems. However, they focus on delivering on-demand services rather than creating broad strategic impact.

Shared Services departments typically measure their effectiveness with metrics such as learner satisfaction, content completion rates, and usage statistics. While these metrics are helpful, they don’t always show a clear connection to big-picture business goals.

These programs are often used to maintain adherence to compliance standards across different divisions within an organization, ensuring the foundational elements of L&D are in place.

Driving organizational growth and efficiency

Here’s the critical difference: Strategic Partners help the business move forward in a measurable way, while Shared Services keep the lights on by ensuring that training and other essential services are available and running smoothly.

Both are critical, but strategic partners tend to be the ones that really drive growth and efficiency because they are more aligned with long-term business goals. If your L&D department wants to make a real impact, it needs to think and operate like a strategic partner, constantly aligning with the business’s overall strategy.

Measuring Impact: Strategic Partners vs. Shared Services

Our recent Measuring the Business Impact of Learning report reveals some striking differences between Strategic Partners and Shared Services when measuring L&D’s impact. The data shows a clear advantage for Strategic Partners in their ability to measure and demonstrate the business impact of learning.

• Measurement Capability: A significant majority (79%) of Strategic Partners agreed or strongly agreed that their L&D team could measure learning's impact. This finding starkly contrasts with Shared Services, where only 42% reported the same level of capability.

• Defining Success Metrics: 62% of Strategic Partners define success metrics before designing programs, compared to just 38% of Shared Services. Even more telling, while only 4% of Strategic Partners don't define success metrics, this figure jumps to 19% for Shared Services.

• Evaluation Approach: Strategic Partners consistently measure factors such as business impact, job performance improvement, and ROI. On the other hand, Shared Services are more likely to rely on simpler metrics, such as learner satisfaction and content utilization (if they even rely on evaluation metrics).
• Use of Data Analytics: 75% of Strategic Partners utilize data to identify skill gaps, compared to only 31% of Shared Services. About 1 in 4 Strategic Partners (24%) use advanced data analysis techniques, with some (10%) even using predictive and prescriptive analytics.

These findings highlight the significant advantage that Strategic Partners have in making smarter choices about their training and development programs based on data-driven insights.

Here’s the critical difference: Strategic Partners help the business move forward in a measurable way, while Shared Services keep the lights on by ensuring that training and other essential services are available and running smoothly.

Both are critical, but strategic partners tend to be the ones that really drive growth and efficiency because they are more aligned with long-term business goals. If your L&D department wants to make a real impact, it needs to think and operate like a strategic partner, constantly aligning with the business’s overall strategy.

Common traits of strategically aligned L&D teams

So, what do the most strategically aligned L&D teams have in common? Here are three key traits:

1. They have a budget: Not just any budget—an L&D budget that’s tied to achieving specific business outcomes. This allows them to invest in the right resources, whether it’s new technology, external expertise, or high-impact programs.
2. They embed business KPIs into learning design: Instead of focusing on learning for learning’s sake, they ensure that every program is built with clear business objectives in mind.
3. They employ data analysts: Having team members who can track and interpret data ensures that the impact of L&D efforts is visible and measurable. This data-driven approach allows for more strategic decision-making and showcases the department's contribution to the business.

Best practices from Strategic Partners

Want to learn from the best? Here are a few examples of what successful Strategic Partners are doing right:

• Customizing learning programs to address specific business challenges. For instance, they’re creating leadership development programs tailored to improving decision-making in a fast-growing company.
• Embedding L&D into performance management systems, ensuring that learning initiatives are closely tied to employee performance and growth.
• Collaborating closely with C-level execs to ensure training initiatives align with overall business strategies. This ensures L&D becomes an integral part of organizational success rather than a separate function.

Up Next: Why L&D must align with the business

By shifting from a reactive Shared Services model to a proactive Strategic Partner approach—supported by tools like Watershed—your L&D department can become a crucial driver of business success, aligning learning initiatives with strategic objectives and demonstrating clear ROI.

Join us for the next post in this series as we explore more findings from our report and focus on the importance of L&D aligning with the business.