Ditch the Admin Headaches: How External Management Helps You Scale Training Without Losing Control

If you’re in the business of customer training, chances are you’ve faced a familiar pain: you need external teams to manage their own learners, but you can’t risk giving them full admin access. So what happens? Your internal team ends up buried under a pile of manual enrollment requests, license swaps, and status checks—eating up hours that should be spent on more strategic work.

Skilljar by Gainsight's new External Management feature was built to break that cycle. Now, you can hand off training management to your partners, resellers, or customers—without handing over the keys to your whole platform.

Give Them the Tools—Not the Full Toolbox

At the heart of this feature is a new role: the Student Manager. These users can enroll learners, reassign licenses, and track progress—all within their own branded Academy experience. They get just enough control to manage training on their end, and you maintain oversight without the overhead.

No full dashboard access. No internal bottlenecks. Just the right level of autonomy, where it counts.

Why We Built It (Spoiler: Because Doing It Manually Is a No Fun)

We work with enterprise customers who rely on training as a revenue stream—and we kept seeing the same friction points. Admins were stuck manually tracking license usage. Partners couldn’t self-manage learners. Permissions were all or nothing. It wasn’t scalable, and it definitely wasn’t sustainable.

External Management was designed to solve those problems head-on. It gives your external stakeholders the tools they need to manage training efficiently, while keeping your internal team focused on what matters most.

What It Looks Like in Action

You can now assign external users as Student Managers. They manage their own slice of the Academy—enrolling users, reassigning licenses, and tracking progress.

Now with License Packages, Student Managers will also be able to reallocate licenses as employees come and go—eliminating the need for internal intervention.

This means you can sell training in bulk, empower external teams to manage access themselves, and scale without burning out your internal team.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

By shifting learner management to the people closest to the learners, you remove a major friction point in your training operations. That means more revenue potential (because training is easier to sell and deliver), less manual work for your internal team, and more control over who can access what.

Security is baked in—Student Managers only see and manage their assigned users. Your data stays safe, and your partners feel empowered, not micromanaged.

How Celigo Turned a Training Pain Point into a Sales Win

A prospect evaluating Celigo was in the final stages of their platform evaluation when a key question came up:

‍"How can our managers track whether their admins are actually completing training?"

That’s where External Management stepped in—and helped seal the deal.

Here’s how it played out:

• The Challenge:
  The customer had no reliable way to track admin training. Progress was shared verbally or manually logged in spreadsheets—hardly scalable.
• What They Needed:
  The ability for local managers to assign courses or learning paths and check completion status without pinging the central training team.
• What Made the Difference:
  During the sales process, Celigo’s LMS Administrator, Mattie Mayfield, introduced External Management as the solution.

“With External Management, your managers can assign training paths directly and track progress in real time—no spreadsheets, no waiting on reports.”
– Mattie Mayfield, LMS Administrator, Celigo

• The Impact:
  The feature hit home immediately. The prospect saw how it would:
  • Empower local managers to own training outcomes
  • Eliminate the constant back-and-forth for updates
  • Provide full visibility into training completion—all from within the branded Academy

“It gave them exactly what they were asking for—and more. That moment really helped move the conversation forward.”
– Mattie Mayfield

• Final Outcome:
  The clarity and autonomy offered by External Management helped Celigo demonstrate real value. It wasn’t just a feature—it was a painkiller, and it made a measurable impact in the final sales conversation.

Want In?

If you’re looking to monetize training, scale operations, or simply cut the admin chaos—this is for you. Ready to chat? We're here to get you started.