Is Custom eLearning Worth the Investment? Your Guide to Make An Informed Decision

In today’s fast-paced world, where every second matters, would you invest your time in something that doesn’t yield results? Most probably not. Efficiency and effectiveness have become the mantras of modern business, and this extends to how you train and develop our teams. As organizations strive to stay competitive, the need for impactful learning solutions has been constantly increasing as learning is no longer a luxury but a necessity. This is where custom eLearning steps in. However, investing in custom eLearning is not a decision to be taken lightly. It can be a significant investment, and its worth depends on various factors, including organizational goals, audience needs, and available resources. This blog explores whether custom eLearning is worth the investment, examining its benefits, the factors to consider before diving in, the development process, and finally, cost-benefit analysis to help you make an informed decision. [Hint: Custom eLearning is absolutely worth the investment.]

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Table of Contents

• What Is Custom eLearning?
• Why Should You Invest in Custom eLearning?
• What Are the Factors to Consider Before Investing in Custom eLearning?
• How to Create Effective Custom eLearning Courses?
• What Is the Cost-Benefit Analysis for Custom eLearning?

What Is Custom eLearning?

Custom eLearning refers to online training courses that are specifically designed to meet the unique learning needs of employees and organizational business goals.

As the saying goes, “If you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to anyone.” While generic courses offer an easy solution for corporate training, they can lack relevance, leading to disengaged learners and lower retention rates.

In contrast, custom eLearning solutions follow a targeted approach where training content is precisely tailored to meet the learning requirements of the employees and enhance productivity and efficiency. All these aspects combine to ensure an effective corporate training program and achieve an overall positive training ROI.

Why Should You Invest in Custom eLearning?

Simply put… for a variety of reasons! Custom eLearning stands out due to its ability to deliver targeted, relevant, and engaging learning experiences. Let’s take a detailed look at the reasons that make investment in custom eLearning worthwhile.

Tailored to Specific Learning Objectives and Learner Needs

Custom eLearning solutions allow you to align the training content precisely with your learning objectives. For instance, your sales team would require different training than a marketing team. Isn’t it? So you can leverage custom eLearning to incorporate domain-specific scenarios, company policies, and real-world applications to deliver high-impact corporate training. This aspect is something that generic, off-the-shelf courses simply cannot match.

Allow me to explain with the help of a simple scenario. Imagine teaching a chef to cook; generic instructions might say, "heat the pan," but custom instructions would specify, "heat the pan to medium-high until a drop of water sizzles."

Better Learner Engagement

Do you agree that one-size-fits-all solutions often fail to captivate learners? Yes, because not every learner shares the same educational background, interests, work experience, and responsibilities. So what can you do to grab the attention of the learners and maintain their interest throughout the learning process? The answer is pretty easy. You can design and develop courses in a way that aligns with their learning habits and interests.

And this is where investing in custom eLearning proves useful. Custom eLearning development incorporates different types of interactive elements, multimedia components, personalized learning, and real-world examples that resonate with the learners and ensure an effective learning experience.

All these elements not only capture the attention of learners but also foster a deeper connection with the training content. For example, when you incorporate real-world scenarios that highlight how the information from training can be used by learners to improve their productivity and performance at work, they are more likely to pay attention and be involved with the training content. The direct relevance of the custom eLearning training program results in motivation to engage in the learning process and participation increases significantly.

Enhanced Knowledge Retention and Better Application

If the information provided in the training can’t be recalled or applied properly when needed, it’s as good as no information. Isn’t it? But your employees can certainly skip this maze of “I know but I can’t remember” with custom eLearning. As custom eLearning solutions are designed to meet specific learning outcomes, they ensure that the content is directly applicable to the learners' roles. This targeted, more personalized approach to learning enhances knowledge retention.

When learners understand how the knowledge shared in the training is relevant in their day-to-day lives, they connect with the content and this association stays for a longer time in their memory. When the employees are presented with some kind of similar situation that they have learned about in the training, they recall the information and act effectively.

For example, a customer service representative who’s undergone corporate training that involved simulated customer interactions tailored to their company's products will be better prepared to handle real-life customer inquiries.

Ensured Brand Consistency

Every organization has its own brand identity, vision, values, and culture. But when you opt for catalog courses, it’s once in a blue moon that you find the perfect course that contains the desired training content and also aligns with your company values and vision. Mostly, with off-the-shelf courses, it’s like shooting in the dark.

Whereas custom eLearning allows you to infuse unique, specific elements of your brand identity and culture into the training programs. And if you’re thinking why all this fuss, does it even matter? Let me tell you… it does. In fact, it matters a lot.

By using consistent branding, messaging, and tone of voice, you can ensure that all employees, regardless of location, receive the same brand-aligned experience. This consistency helps build a unified organizational culture and ensures that employees understand and embody the company's values and mission.

Improved Cost Efficiency

These words couldn’t be more true! While the initial investment (what you pay) in custom eLearning can be higher than off-the-shelf eLearning solutions, your focus should be on value. For custom eLearning solutions, the potential for cost savings in the long term is significant. Here’s how.

Custom eLearning cuts down the expenses related to classroom training and reduces the need for repeated training sessions.

Moreover, as the training content is specific and relevant, it reduces the time employees spend on training, allowing them to return to their roles more quickly and effectively. Wait! There’s more.

Given the rapid pace of the business world and quick changes in industry trends, training material can become outdated quite fast. But when you have invested time and money in curating the content that is mostly aligned with your organizational needs and values, you can make the required adjustments to the existing custom eLearning courses instead of having to create everything from scratch. This saves your time and money while also ensuring that your employees stay up-to-date with the latest trends and knowledge relevant to their roles and responsibilities.

What Are the Factors to Consider Before Investing in Custom eLearning?

Well, the points mentioned in the previous section definitely build a strong case for investing in custom eLearning. Right? But before you jump head first in the world of custom eLearning, there are several factors that must be considered to ensure the investment aligns well with your training goals and resources.

So here’s a quick glance at the factors to consider before investing in custom eLearning.

Now let’s learn about each aspect in detail.

Organizational Goals and Objectives

Having a clear idea about the learning objectives and key goals of the corporate training is the basic step to begin with. Once you’re sorted with this part, then try to understand how can custom eLearning support these goals and objectives. Understanding the strategic direction of the organization plays an integral role in determining whether custom eLearning is the right fit or not.

For instance, if the goal is to drive innovation and leadership within the company, investing in custom eLearning programs that focus on leadership development and creative problem-solving might be the answer.

Target Audience and Their Learning Preferences

Employees are the backbone of an effective, successful business. Therefore, paying attention to their learning needs and preferences must be the center of attention when you’re considering investing in custom eLearning for corporate training. So try to gather information that offers insights on skill gaps, common learning styles, etc. Knowing your target audience will help you in designing and developing effective custom eLearning courses.

For example, younger employees in the company might prefer mobile learning with gamified elements, while employees with a higher level of experience might value detailed case studies and simulations. So by tailoring the learning experience to the audience's preferences, you can enhance learner engagement and the overall effectiveness of your training program.

Existing eLearning Infrastructure and Resources

You might not really like it but considering this factor is the key to making an informed decision. That’s right! When you plan on investing in custom eLearning solutions, always answer this question first, “Does my organization have the necessary infrastructure to support custom eLearning?”

The necessary infrastructure here includes digital technology platforms, eLearning authoring tools, learning management systems (LMS), and technical support. Apart from these elements, also consider the availability of in-house expertise that is required to bring your custom eLearning courses to life. This includes instructional designers, eLearning developers, and subject matter experts (SMEs). If the answer is no, don’t lose hope. You can always enjoy the benefits of custom eLearning by considering the option of outsourcing your custom eLearning.

A word of caution here is that make sure you choose the right eLearning outsourcing partner. If you need some help with this, check out the video below.

The video above shares 5 tips that will help you select the right eLearning outsourcing vendor for your custom eLearning solutions.

Coming back to why assessing the existing infrastructure and resources is important, it’s because this aspect helps you realize how prepared you are to develop, implement, and maintain custom eLearning solutions.

Training Budget

Custom eLearning is an investment, and like any investment, it requires careful budgeting. You must plan the amount of money you’re willing to spend in order to go ahead with custom eLearning in contrast to the sum required to ensure high-quality, engaging, and effective custom eLearning solutions. To evaluate the total costs involved in custom eLearning, consider design, development, implementation, and maintenance.

Training ROI Expectations

If your budget indicates a green signal for custom eLearning, congratulations! Now it’s time to put in some extra thought and gather clarity on how will you define the success of your custom eLearning training program. Like, will success be measured by improved employee performance, increased sales, enhanced customer satisfaction, or any other factor? Setting clear outcomes for training ROI enables you to measure the effectiveness of the approach in quantitative terms.

Potential Challenges and Risks

Life is not without its challenges and risks and neither is custom eLearning. However, taking into account the potential challenges and risks and brainstorming the possible solutions or ways to mitigate the challenges is how you should proceed. Not every solution might turn out as per your expectation but you’ll be more prepared and have the confidence to be face-to-face with challenges and not give up if things get difficult.

A few common challenges can be scope creep, content becoming outdated, not finding the right custom eLearning outsourcing vendor, etc. To give you an idea, scope creep is where the project expands beyond the original plan, resulting in increased costs and timelines. Well, taking these challenges into consideration, you must have a clear plan and strategy in place to mitigate these risks and ensure that the custom eLearning solution remains relevant and effective over time.

Once you’ve analyzed the factors discussed in this section and are now taking a step forward in your journey of leveraging custom eLearning for corporate training, allow me to give you an idea about what goes into creating impactful, memorable custom eLearning courses.

How to Create Effective Custom eLearning Courses?

Creating custom eLearning courses is a multi-step process that requires careful planning, execution, and ongoing management. The infographic below offers a glance at all the steps followed by a closer look at each step.

Conduct Needs Assessment

To start with the process of custom eLearning, conduct a thorough training needs analysis. This involves understanding your organization's goals, employees’ learning needs, and finally, the desired outcome of the training program. Remember that the insights gained from this evaluation will form the foundation of your custom eLearning solutions and guide the design and development process. So make sure you have enough data and the results aren’t skewed.

Create and Curate Content

Once you’ve identified the training needs and charted out the learning objectives, the next step is to curate content that aligns with these learning objectives. Well, the good part about custom eLearning is that you don’t necessarily have to start from scratch. You can use your existing training materials which can be in the form of handouts, worksheets, lectures, PPT slides, etc.

At the same time, it’s crucial to make custom eLearning content is engaging, interactive, and tailored to the audience's needs and preferences. So focus on selecting the right instructional design strategy and custom training format to facilitate an overall immersive and effective learning experience. It can be in the form of videos, interactive modules, gamified courses, or a mix-and-match.

It’s important to note that no training course is complete without assessments. Therefore, make sure that you augment the impact of your training modules with the help of relevant, engaging eLearning assessments.

Select the Right Custom eLearning Platform

From eLearning authoring tools for creating custom eLearning courses to learning management systems (LMS) for delivering the training material to learners, the role of the right technology cannot be emphasized enough. While there are a variety of options available in today’s market, it’s always advised to do thorough research before making the final decision.

You can consider factors like user-friendliness, multimedia content library, pre-built templates, interactivities, compliance with accessibility standards, and more. In fact, arranging these factors in order of priority will help you narrow down your search and choose the most suitable tool for your training requirements.

Conduct Testing and Quality Assurance

“Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.”

I read this quote by Philip Stanhope, a few months back and it has stayed with me ever since. Whether it’s life in general or custom eLearning solutions, this quote maintains its essence. Well, sticking to the context of custom eLearning, it's of utmost importance that you test the training material before launching.

Thorough testing will help you ensure that the courses function correctly and meet the learning objectives. In case of any issues or errors, you can try to fix them so that your learners enjoy a smooth and hassle-free learning experience.

Testing involves reviewing the content, functionality, and usability of the eLearning program.

Ensure Regular Feedback and Updates

Once the custom eLearning solution is tested and approved, it is ready for launch. At this step, you deploy the custom eLearning program on your organization's LMS or other platforms and make it accessible to the learners. Now you’d think that your work is done, but don’t be mistaken. It has actually begun in the real sense.

Post-launch, it's important to check the program's performance. This can be done through learning analytics or gathering feedback from learners. Based on the analysis, you can make necessary improvements in the content. Continuous modifications ensure that your custom eLearning solutions stay relevant, effective, and aligned with the organization's and learners’ evolving needs.

What Is the Cost-Benefit Analysis for Custom eLearning?

Investing in custom eLearning requires a careful analysis of the costs and benefits to determine its value. Here’s a quick look at the cost-benefit analysis for custom eLearning so you can be confident in your choice of investment.

To Sum It Up!

In the words of Benjamin Franklin, "An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." Custom eLearning is an investment in knowledge that, when done right, can yield substantial dividends for both learners and organizations. So, is custom eLearning worth the investment? For organizations committed to providing targeted, relevant, and engaging learning experiences, the answer is a resounding yes. If you wish to take your custom eLearning solutions to the next level, consider integrating them with artificial intelligence (AI). Read our eBook to know how AI is redefining the corporate training landscape to empower L&D teams. Download now!