eLearning outsourcing has become a popular trend in the corporate sector. This blog shares the key benefits and the drawbacks that you must consider while outsourcing your eLearning courses.
With rapid eLearning now in demand, companies across various industries are quickly adopting online courses as an essential part of their employee training programs. However, organizations have two options to develop eLearning courses that are efficient and enhance productivity. Designing and developing your eLearning in-house is the first thing to do. The second is to hire specialists for eLearning outsourcing. The second option is recommended as it offers a host of benefits. Let’s look at these benefits as we dive deeper into the mysteries of the corporate world.
Is outsourcing eLearning beneficial?
The 8 benefits of outsourcing eLearning in corporate training:
- Expert Solutions
- Time-saving
- Competitive Edge
- Broader Scope
- Cost Effective
- Enhanced Productivity
- Reduced Risks
- Simplified Management
So, if you’re hesitant thinking about how a third-party provider will interpret your company’s teams, products, and services, get ready to smile. But first, let’s talk about outsourcing eLearning.
Why is Outsourcing on the Rise?
The two major drivers behind the rise of eLearning outsourcing since the pandemic began have been remote workspaces and digitalization. Outsourcing has become a smart way for organizations to focus on their core business activities, cut costs, and innovate. Today, most businesses typically outsource their administrative, research, accounting, security, and design work.
However, corporate training is the latest function to jump aboard the eLearning outsourcing bandwagon. Most companies don’t have the tools and expertise needed to adopt innovative technologies and business practices. By outsourcing eLearning design and development, organizations can upskill their employees and achieve their business goals faster.
→ Training Manager’s Handbook to Rapid eLearning Development
The 8 Benefits of Outsourcing eLearning for Corporate Training
If you’re intrigued by the prospect of eLearning outsourcing, check out some of the major benefits it offers modern businesses:
1. Expert Solutions
Your team of subject-matter experts possess the skills you need. However, not every organization is that fortunate. Corporate teams have mostly limited knowledge of eLearning design and development. Plus, hiring an in-house team simply adds to your expenditure because of additional resources, space requirements, and dedicated rapid eLearning sessions.
By outsourcing eLearning, you get a team of experienced instructional designers, tools experts, translators, multimedia developers, and audio narrators, to name a few. All these skilled professionals combine their abilities to create, develop, and support high-quality rapid eLearning courses.
Your eLearning outsourcing partner possess the specialized tools and skills to explore different businesses, products, cultures, and topics. Therefore, they can create rapid eLearning courses tailored to your use case as well as your employees’ learning curve.
2. Time-saving
By outsourcing eLearning design and development to trained professionals with a proven track record, you can decimate the time required to train employees. However, you must provide them with a detailed brief encompassing your company’s products and services, existing infrastructure, and the essential rapid eLearning skills you need to develop your employee training programs.
3. Competitive Edge
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, we’ve been seeing companies battle for survival, especially those that had to revamp their business model and adopt remote technologies to ensure continuity. eLearning outsourcing brings innovative solutions like gamification, mobile adoption, automation, and augmented reality.
This helps your organization stay connected to the latest trends and developments as well as stay ahead in the race. You need to proactively prepare your employees for what’s next.
4. Broader Scope
Depending on the size of your organization, you have multiple needs for rapid eLearning, especially if you manage remote employees on a global scale. Therefore, you’ll have to deal with several learning barriers, such as culture, languages, and regional regulations.
An eLearning outsourcing partner can diversify your rapid eLearning courses according to your learners’ demographics to meet localized needs. Since they’re tasked solely with training, they can employ other strategies such as conducting surveys to identify what needs improving. This way, they can better your courses and get results.
A Practical Guide to Outsourcing E-Learning Design & Development
Tips and Best Practices for an Effective Outsourcing Journey
- eLearning Elements that can be Outsourced
- Tasks Before Outsourcing
- Tips for Selecting the Right eLearning Vendor
- Ways to Support your Vendor
5. Cost-Effective
Cost savings are one of the most evident benefits of outsourcing eLearning. You can avoid recruiting, hiring, and managing instructors and save on unnecessary and temporary technology. By expediting the training process, you can also help eliminate the need for probationary or short-term, contract-based hiring to fill the skills gap.
6. Enhanced Productivity
Regular training helps employees stay sharp, which also helps your business remain competitive and profitable. Unfortunately, most businesses have neither the time nor the resources to develop new rapid eLearning courses or even organize training sessions regularly. Here, outsourcing eLearning enables continual learning while also ensuring your business operates as usual.
7. Reduced Risks
No matter how advanced or sophisticated, technology will always remain susceptible to failure. So, when designing a rapid eLearning solution in-house, you’ll have to accept the responsibility of coding errors, faulty equipment, compatibility issues, and security threats.
By outsourcing eLearning, you’re transferring the risk of failure to a third-party solutions providers and making them accountable to get results. However, since eLearning design and development companies are the experts, the risk involved is much less since they have the technology in place to minimize any liability.
8. Simplified Management
Outsourcing eLearning to specialists is like hiring a project manager or contractor. They break down the learning process into key milestones or realistic targets and simplify the management process. This way, senior managers can work on the business strategy knowing their employee training needs are being taken care of by experienced professionals.
Potential Drawbacks of eLearning Outsourcing
Of course, no solution is perfect. Outsourcing eLearning can have drawbacks depending on several factors including the quality of implementation, internal resistance, and demographic barriers, to name a few. Here are some of the potential drawbacks of eLearning outsourcing:
1. Ineffective Communication
For rapid eLearning to be effective, you need an experienced vendor with the right expertise and tools to get results. You need to outsource eLearning to a team capable of adapting to your specific needs.
Many modern organizations offer remote workspaces that follow an asynchronous communication model. Therefore, it could be challenging to get everyone to interact simultaneously and exchange ideas and information on an eLearning platform.
2. Compromised Quality
Not every rapid eLearning solutions provider would possess the tools and expertise you demand. If you don’t do your homework, then the solution will render your training ineffective. Therefore, you need to research and choose an eLearning outsourcing partner with the interpretation of training needs that matches your organization.
3. Unexpected Delays
Like any business, rapid eLearning solutions providers aren’t free from disruptions or disasters. Therefore, there’s always a slight chance of delays caused by unexpected circumstances. For instance, the development team could face a security threat that has compromised their data integrity. They might also have a reputation for missing deadlines.
In either case, you must be proactive and gain insights into the eLearning design and development process. This helps you ensure your eLearning outsourcing partner can develop your training solution in a timely manner.
Parting Thoughts
Outsourcing has become the norm in every field of the digital age we live in. eLearning outsourcing is rapidly gaining momentum owing to the rise of innovative technologies and business practices. Now, you can proactively hire experts to learn about your training objectives and close the skills gap. This enables your growth as well as future-proofs your business.
An established eLearning partner will help you overcome all the challenges associated with eLearning design and development, such as instructional design, technology, communication, and deployment. So, if you’re looking to simplify the process of upskilling employees, hire the best rapid eLearning partners to make the transition easy.
Now that you have looked at the benefits and drawbacks of outsourcing eLearning, reach for this eBook to gain insights on how to outsource your eLearning projects successfully. Download the free eBook now!
