How Groundplan's Academy Reduced Repetitive Training Freeing Trainers to Focus on Complex, Trade-Specific Workflows

Introduction

Groundplan builds takeoff and estimating software for construction contractors. Their entire training model was built around live training. But with 200+ new customers onboarding every month, their 2-person training team could not keep up.

Here's how Groundplan built a self-serve academy to reduce repetitive training calls and onboard new customers without increasing headcount.

Why Groundplan Relied on Live Training

Groundplan's core customer base are electricians, plumbers, and concreters — many of them making the shift from planning construction jobs with pen and paper to a software. That's why Groundplan relied on live training — their customers preferred calling a trainer directly and being walked through the platform.

Today, live training is free for every customer — something no competitor offers. It’s not only increased retention but also brought in the next business for Groundplan. As Gareth puts it: "Customers that are trained become sticky."

When Scaling Live Training Became Unmanageable

With 200+ customers onboarding every month, their 2-person training team started feeling the burden:

• Maxed-out training sessions: The team was already averaging 45-50 sessions a month. There was simply no capacity to absorb 200 new customers monthly.

• Time-zone mismatch: Customers in UK, and Europe had no way to access live training as both trainers lived outside their time zones.

• Repetitive support questions: The support team was busy answering the same basic product questions over and over.

As Gemma puts it: “There's only two of us, and only so many hours in the day that we can train."

Why the Previous Approaches Failed

To tackle the increasing training load, Groundplan tried two approaches, but both were highly reactive in nature.

Help Guides with GIFs: Their help center relied on text-heavy articles and GIFs for visual guidance. But GIFs couldn't be paused — making them hard to learn from. Worse, they were expensive and time-consuming to create and maintain, pulling the training team away from real support work.

One-off Video Recordings: When a customer asked something hard to explain over chat, Gemma would record a quick video on Zoom, Google Meet, or Loom and send it over. It answered one question for one customer, and was never used again.

Neither approach scaled. Beyond the individual problems, there was no central place for customers to learn the product on their own — which meant even the basics required a live training call.

Finding the Right Solution

Rex, one of Groundplan's co-founders, evaluated LMS platforms to set up a customer training academy, and found most were too complex and expensive for a lean team. Groundplan didn't need an enterprise LMS. They needed something easy enough for a trainer with no video editing background to pick up and build from scratch. Then he found Trainn.

We didn't want one software to make videos and another to host the course. We just wanted to do it all within the same platform.

Gareth Morris

General Manager, Groundplan

For a 2-person team already stretched thin, that simplicity wasn't a nice-to-have. It was the only way this was ever going to work.

How Groundplan Uses Trainn Today

Today, Trainn is a core part of Groundplan's training and support infrastructure. Gemma and Caz (trainers) use Trainn to:

• Create short product training videos — covering Groundplan's core software workflows.

• Build and host the Groundplan Academy — videos are hosted as lessons within specific courses, accessible anytime, from anywhere.

Everything in one place meant no switching between tools — one platform to create, host, and distribute.

Paying customers are now directed to the Groundplan Academy first — where they learn the product basics at their own pace. When they do book a session with Gemma or Caz (trainers), they arrive with specific workflow questions rather than basic product discovery.

Whatever customers need, we've got a way to support them now. If they like reading through documents, there’s the help guide. If they want to be led through a simpler process, there’s the academy. If they want to get into the real trick stuff — live training.

Gareth Morris

General Manager, Groundplan

The Impact at Scale

Groundplan created 26 courses, 710 lessons, and 214 videos in 19 months. The results were clear across training, support, and revenue.

Scaled training without adding headcount: The academy handles foundational product training — reducing repetitive walkthroughs, freeing the training team to focus on the complex, trade-specific workflows that drive real product adoption.

Trainn allows us to continue to grow the customer database without having to add more support people. It just reduces the need to hire more staff.

Gareth Morris

General Manager, Groundplan

Reduced support tickets: Courses eliminated entire categories of support queries — saving the support team from fielding the same repetitive product questions every day.

Faster video maintenance: When Groundplan's UI changes, Gemma simply replaces a single clip — instead of re-recording from scratch, saving hours every time the product evolves.

Content Reuse: Today, the same video is used across the academy, help guide, support chat, onboarding emails, and internal training. Every time an update is made, it reflects across all channels automatically — without manually changing them.

(Example of a training video created by Gemma using Trainn)

An Unexpected Win: Video-Led Expansion Revenue

Count Assist is Groundplan's AI-powered measurement add-on — a paid feature on top of the core subscription.

Before the academy, customers had to rely on a support call or a live session to understand what Count Assist did.

After the academy launched, Gemma created a 9-minute course on Count Assist and embedded it in their in-app help center. Customers now discover it on their own, watch it, understand the value — and come back to support asking for Count Assist to be enabled.

Count Assist was the very first course that I created, and it has been amazing for our support team. It's reduced those support questions, it's reduced our screen shares. All we're getting through support now is — can I turn on Count Assist?

Gemma Bougen

Trainer, Groundplan

No one planned this. A nine-minute course built to reduce support tickets became a self-serve expansion revenue channel.

What’s Next

Groundplan's next move is bringing training inside the product itself with Trainn's In-App Tutorials — short videos embedded directly in the interface, guiding customers without them ever leaving the app.

"The in-app tutorials will be a game-changer for us," says Gareth. "Pointing out new features, guiding customers right where they are."