Earlier this year, we hosted our second annual small business event, Playbook 2021! The first day of which, titled Insider Summit, featured exclusive sessions for our customers and community of Certified Consultants.

In one of those Insider Summit sessions, CEO Chris Ronzio and CMO Jonathan Ronzio spoke candidly about what problems Trainual is aiming to solve for small businesses in future years, and shed light on a few moves the company might make to get there.

And while the brothers didn't formally list out upcoming features, they did share our company's high-level goals for helping small businesses reach their potential.

Because we want you to stay aligned with where Trainual is headed so that you can get excited about how we can help your business. And when new Trainual features start rolling out, you’ll be ready to jump on board!

👉 Want to see all the Playbook 2021 sessions? Get the replays sent straight to your inbox!

1. Connecting the onboarding process

We're aiming to make your onboarding process, from hiring to training, as seamless as possible.

Wouldn't it be great if you could adapt the role description you used for hiring as the starting point for training documentation? We think so too.

“When you hire someone, you post a job description. And in just a few bullet points, describe what [the candidate] needs to do,” Chris explained. “So, we're working to connect those experiences to make [the transition] from hiring to training totally seamless.”

Today we already make it easy and intuitive to document individual responsibilities for each role—the same kind you may be using in a job description. In the future, this will feel more automated.

2. Make roles more personal

The roles and responsibilities builder is brand new as of September 2021, but we're already working hard to improve it. Because we want to make roles as personalized as the individual in them.

“When you have the ability to personalize roles, you can really scale people,” Jonathan explained. Meaning seamlessly connecting the people in your business, to what they do in the business.

We want Trainual to make scaling your employees easier and more efficient than ever before. Because when each person is doing what they do best, they can make the biggest impact on your business. 

It’s already easy to update roles and assign responsibilities in Trainual. But your team transforms as your business does and Trainual aims to easily facilitate that.

3. Operational knowledge insurance

What is operational knowledge insurance? It's documentation that ensures the know-how for the how-to doesn't exit the company at the same time as the person who did it.

In other words, reassurance that if someone is sick, someone quits, or is fired, another employee can fill in either temporarily or permanently without too much of a hiccup in your business operations. Or if you just want to keep scaling a specific role, you're not dependent on one individual to train everyone new—the system can.

“As a business owner, you’re always trying to point your compass toward getting organized,” Jonathan explained. And organization matters when you need documentation for when employees pivot their roles or when they say goodbye to your business.

So, how do your ensure you're protecting the need-to-knows before someone needs to go? And how do we facilitate those transitions within Trainual? We’re working hard on solving exactly that! 

That way, you can keep every employee aligned with the answers they need to take over new roles. All your company knowledge can be kept safe during any offboarding shuffles.

And, as a result, you can stop wasting time re-documenting what should already be in your company's Trainual.

4. Answers when you need them

It's hard to remember life before instantly Googling something when you needed or wanted to. And yet, it's still difficult and time-consuming for most small business employees to find the info they need to do their job every single day.

Trainual already has a Slack integration, an iOS and Android app, and a Chrome extension. But Chris wants you to know, "that's just the beginning of helping you find answers wherever you are." 

Your team wants to get the knowledge they need and get back to what they do faster. We want to make access to all your company knowledge, policies, and SOPs reachable with a few simple actions. 

This might mean revamping the search functionality inside Trainual for a more robust and intuitive experience. This might even mean tapping into Voice assistants. The future is exciting!

5. Trainual will mirror your business

Our goal is to make Trainual more aligned with what’s actually happening in your business operations. So, whether you're starting, scaling, franchising, or selling, it becomes your secret weapon. Because it truly is your business playbook.

You may have noticed the big changes to our product navigation—now structured to reflect your Company, your People, your Policies, and your Processes. Well that's just the beginning of how Trainual is transforming to mirror how small business actually works.

Trainual started as the place to “get your business out of your brain®." And with remote work becoming more common than ever before, it's never been more important to have a system that allows you to onboard, train, and support your team from anywhere in the world.

According to Chris, “Trainual is the digital version of your company.” And we want Trainual to be the gateway to understanding who your business is and what your team does.

Or, in other words, something that goes beyond just the place for documenting processes and delegating work responsibilities. 

Instead, we want Trainual to show anyone you want to just how your small business does what it does. From investors to advisors to customers - when they access Trainual, they’ll find out about your company, your people, and your product. 

Anyone you give access should be able to go into your Trainual and understand what your business does best.  

Like Jonathan said, “Trainual is not just where your business is at today. It's where your business is going.” And our team is making sure Trainual is the tool to help facilitate your evolution (no matter what that looks like).

Because even though we've introduced a lot of new features recently, we're still looking to grow and produce the best business playbook software. And at the end of the day, we're all working hard at Trainual to build the tool that solves small-business problems for small-business owners the best.