Your organization most likely already has successful training classroom programs in place. And now you’ve taken the decision to implement eLearning after having done extensive research on the many benefits it offers. You probably also have a fair understanding of what it takes for your eLearning initiatives to succeed and are now faced with the inevitable decision of whether to build or buy custom courseware.

You probably have begun to put together a team for developing courseware and have plans to invest in buying the required content authoring tools for rapid courseware development. Or perhaps you are considering hiring an experienced team for handling your instructional design requirements, even if it is a longer and more difficult route towards implementation of eLearning. Or you could take a seemingly easy way out and invest in huge libraries of catalogue courses. However, the danger is that after you invest heavily into this bewildering collection of ready-made courses, you find that no one is really interested in going through them (this situation is the equivalent of giving a learner the keys to a 10,000 book library when all he wants is a specific book that addresses his need now!)

If cost and time-to-market of your eLearning courses is not an important consideration, you can build your team and get started with course development after a couple of trials and errors. However, if yours is a typical requirement, your employees all over the globe needed that training yesterday. Is there a way to optimize the time-to-market your eLearning solution, without going nuts trying to do it all yourself or buying truckloads of off-the-shelf courses that no one will use?

Here are 3 reasons why outsourcing your custom courseware requirement could be the best solution.

1. Get into a higher gear from the word go: If you want to jumpstart the rollout of your eLearning initiative, it is a good idea to leverage successful vendor partnerships. This is especially useful if you want to start your eLearning with a big bang, generate the required excitement that will drive learner adoption and begin to create a climate that encourages eLearning. By quickly deploying a solution, you can also help get long term management and leadership buy-in for this solution.

2. Leverage your expertise and let your vendor leverage theirs’: You know your business and your business goals better than anyone else. You have already done the research to align your training initiatives with your business goals, after doing an extensive mapping of competencies required for ideal performance in each functional area. Based on this, you also know exactly what areas of training are required and for whom. Keep ownership of the training needs analysis in your hands and leverage the expertise of a reliable custom courseware development company with a proven track record to help you build courses that will engage and train your employees most effectively. By doing this, you can save a tremendous amount of effort and resources, not to mention your training dollars. The advantage of engaging the services of a learning solutions company is that they have already gone through the learning curve long back and have now reached a level of mastery in their core specialization.

3. Hit several roads running: If you are getting started with eLearning for the first time, you have to take certain decisions around setting up the required IT infrastructure, setting up the required technology AND get started with custom courseware simultaneously. If you also are looking at deploying an LMS, it helps if you engage the services of learning solutions companies that have considerable expertise not only in the custom courseware end of the solution, but in deploying and implementing LMSs as well. You can successfully make use of their expertise in these various pieces of the eLearning solution. This will free you up to concentrate on what you are best at – your business.

If you want to outsource your eLearning requirement, we’d love to hear from you!

Related posts:

1. Do you Build or Buy? Questions in the eLearning Context
2. Introduction to Outsourcing in the eLearning Context
3. Criteria Influencing the Build or Outsource Decision in eLearning Development

The make-or-buy decision, as defined in the Encyclopedia of Management, is the act of making a strategic choice between producing an item internally (in-house) or buying it externally (from an outside supplier). The buy side of the decision is also referred to as outsourcing.

Let us begin by looking at the various areas of outsourcing in the eLearning context. Most outsourcing of an eLearning solution falls into one of the three areas: Content, Technology, and Services.

Content here not only includes broad business and technology content such as online courses in Leadership, HR or soft skills and courses on application training, but also includes deeper vertical content solutions in competency areas such as product, process, and sales training in specialized industries.

However, I’d like to share a caveat here for the technology related area: When trying to get technology requirements in place, do not settle for solutions that have an LMS component attached to a regular ERP application. Such solutions, though seemingly attractive, can quickly become an administration and maintenance nightmare.

When it comes to content, most organizations make the mistake of purchasing a huge library of catalogue courses and deploying these across the organization en masse. This scenario is equivalent to giving employees the keys to a library and asking them to go and pick whatever books work for them. Most learners find it overwhelming to be offered so many options. And besides, each business is unique, so the off the shelf solutions sometimes may not fit your business context perfectly.

While it is true that there are some good off-the-shelf solutions for a few areas of your need, most training requirements need tailor-made solutions. This is where custom courseware can come to your rescue. Next, it is a matter of deciding whether to develop this custom courseware in-house or outsource this requirement to eLearning companies whose core competence is the design and development of courseware.

Related posts:

1. Do you Build or Buy? Questions in the eLearning Context
2. Common Objections to Outsourcing eLearning
3. Choosing between Off-the-Shelf and Custom Content

If you are planning to develop an eLearning solution, based on the kind of courses you need, you will have to evaluate whether your training need can be best met by ready-to-use or off-the-shelf content – or whether you need customized content. Let’s define these terms.

Ready-to-Use Courses: is off the shelf courseware that can help meet some part of your organization’s learning needs. These courses are deployed from the LMS.

Custom Courseware: is organization-specific content. You can use authoring tools to build internal capability of designing and developing your own custom courseware or outsource it to eLearning specialists.

Based on the deployment option you choose, you can decide if you want to develop this content in-house or whether to outsource it to content development vendors. Alternatively, while examining your existing ILT materials, you might want to see which of the courses are best suited for a blended learning approach and proceed accordingly.

Related posts:

1. Do you Build or Buy? Questions in the eLearning Context
2. Are you Ready for eLearning? – Do you have CONTENT?
3. Defining the Initial Scope of an eLearning Solution

If you are planning on using eLearning as part of your organization’s overall enterprise-wide training strategy, and wondering if you should outsource courseware design and development or build that skill-set in-house, welcome to a world of decisions! Professionals from almost every domain have grappled with the Build Vs Buy decision at some point or the other in some area or the other. There is no right or wrong answer of course, but only a matter of figuring out what works best for you given your unique business context with its specific demands. A safe guideline for staying on track is that whatever option you decide on, make sure it demonstrates a clear ROI.

A few questions to help you get started on the path to an informed decision:

• What is the scope of your eLearning solution? Is it only asynchronous courseware; is it synchronous events as well?
• Do you have the underlying technology in place to support your eLearning solution? Think of an LMS, meeting software etc.
• How do you decide on courseware requirements – off- the- shelf or custom courseware? What kind of content do you need – across what domains or verticals?
• Do you have in-house competence for course design and development? If no, does it make sense to develop this skill-set? What time lines are you looking at? Would you rather outsource the function to successful eLearning providers? Or both? How feasible is each option, given the various constraints you are working under?
• Do you need your content and technology initiatives to proceed side-by-side? How much effort can your resources spare? How does your decision map to your organization’s future needs?
• Is the product that you are planning to buy or build of strategic value to your organization’s bottom-line performance?
• Which of the two options (developing in-house Vs outsourcing) is more likely lead to a more superior product – courseware in this context?
• Have you done a cost-benefit analysis for building eLearning solutions Vs buying them? What about the hidden costs, such as longer time-to-market (in case of building courseware in-house)
• What kind of a learning curve are we looking at for training the internal team? Is this competence readily available outside of the organization?
• How do you evaluate the Build or Buy decision by studying various decision-making criteria?
• What outsourcing capabilities do you need to consider for long–term partnerships with you?
• How do you establish a successful outsourcing partnership?

I’ve covered just a few questions you need to ask before you can take a decision either way. Do add to this list.

Related posts:

1. Common Objections to Outsourcing eLearning
2. Choosing between Off-the-Shelf and Custom Content

In order to offer comprehensive technology-based learning solutions to corporate customers, CommLab and Learning Net have come together in a synergistic partnership, after almost a decade-long business association.

The Management of both companies believes that this partnership will be mutually beneficial and will also greatly benefit customers of both organizations.

Learning.net is a software services company that offers learning management systems to organizations of all sizes. These services complement the custom courseware services and catalog courses that CommLab offers to address corporate training need across the world in a much better, faster and more economical manner than before.

About Learning Net

Learning.net is totally focused on software services, hosting software solutions to their corporate customers. Trellis, the company LMS/ LCMS provides a very cost-effective solution for smaller learning communities. The Trellis family of products – TrellisManage, TrellisAuthor, TrellisTalk – offer an opportunity for larger organizations to customize a learning management system to their unique needs at the cost of what others offer off-the-shelf.

For more information, please contact info@learning.net

About CommLab India

CommLab India is a custom e-learning solutions company based in India. Since 2000, it has been providing state-of-the-art e-learning services to organizations across the world in the areas of Custom Courseware, Catalogue Courses and Learning Technology. Some of its reputed clients are BC Hydro, George Washington University, Kawasaki and Deloitte. They are preferred vendors to some Fortune 500 companies such as Alcoa, Uniliver and Pepco Holding Inc.

For more information, please contact info@commlabindia.com

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1. 150% Growth for CommLab India in 2010-2011
2. CommLab India Implements Six Sigma!
3. Commlab India Partners with Elearning for Kids

With busy work schedules and advanced technology such as internet, people want everything at a click of the mouse—whether it’s paying bills, communicating with people, shopping and now, even learning. When I think of learning, the first thing that comes to my mind is e-learning.

E-learning is witnessing a boom in every industry and field. With Web-based training, individuals and professional needn’t have to follow the hectic schedules of day-to-day classroom learning, but can work and learn at their own pace. People are beginning to appreciate this flexible, convenient and affordable mode of learning. In fact, there are innumerable reasons why Web-based training is more effective and efficient than the traditional instructor-led training.

E-Learning definitely yields additional benefits including flexible learning i.e., learning is self-paced, accessible anytime, anywhere, around the globe, apart from being highly interactive, available at an optimum cost, and most important, it provides quality learning. But what goes into designing a good e-learning course?

Let’s talk about the basics of designing a course.

Understand the target audience: Firstly, you need to understand the training needs and the nature of the target audience.

Informative content with interactive features: The key parameters for making a good e-learning course include informative content and interactive features such as Rich Streaming Media, simulations and online assessments.

Learner-centric: The design philosophy should always focus on the learner, i.e., it ought to be learner-centric. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and Instructional Designers (IDs) play a vital role in designing effective and engaging e-learning courses. SMEs provide the actual content required for a course that makes it informative and instructional designers make the course interesting and engaging.

Reduced process time: Instructional designers should be capable of reducing the process time and optimize utilization of various resources. They play a pivotal role in the smooth transition of the entire design and development process. A rich learning content and a visually engaging course make for the best pedagogy for increasing learners’ attention and motivating them to learn more.

Whether you’re a novice or an expert, off-the-shelf courses are a great way of enriching knowledge and addressing the training requirements of both individuals and employees. Today, thousands of companies across the globe are offering comprehensive range catalog courses.

CommLab India is a custom courseware solutions and learning technology services company. I am delighted to report that now it’s offering catalog courses on career-enhancing subjects like Lean Manufacturing, Legal & Work Compliance, Authoring Tools, Business Writing and many more.

From first hand experience, I can confidently state that this library of e-learning courses will definitely meet the online training requirements of individuals and organizations. They bring you the complete collection of engaging and interactive courses with features like assessments, case studies and media-rich simulations.

I will elaborate my views in the subsequent post.

Happy learning!

Asma Zaineb

Sr. Executive – Business Development

Related posts:

1. Push Or Pull, Which Is The Best Form Of Learning?
2. Ways to Make an E-learning Course Meaningful
3. A Summary of 80 responses in LinkedIn to “Learning Styles and Instructional Design, do they go hand in hand?”