In search of the perfect e-learning buyer

by Clive Shepherd


For most training managers, the buying of goods and services is relatively routine: purchases are made on a drip-feed basis throughout the year to many suppliers and in relatively small amounts. However large the overall budget, most of the transactions are small and for short periods. E-learning has changed all that. Whether you are purchasing a learning management system, buying licenses to off-the-shelf content or commissioning bespoke development, the contracts into which you will be entering will be for large amounts and will have an impact over long periods. Buying e-learning is a skill that all training managers will need. In this article, Clive Shepherd talks to buyers and sellers to find out what it is that makes the perfect e-learning buyer.

Contents
The big picture
What buyers say
Ask the suppliers
Skilling up
Vodafone: Along the right lines
Be an expert e-learning buyer
Resources

The big picture

E-learning presents many new challenges for the training manager: cutting through the hype to find out just how useful it might be for your organisation; determining how to integrate it with your existing training efforts; gaining the commitment of trainers, managers and learners to your first major e-learning initiative and then securing the necessary funds. All of this is necessary just to get you to first base. Then the fun begins, because to reach that next base you have to choose the suppliers that you are going to work with to build your e-learning infrastructure and then populate that with engaging and effective content.

It sounds easy enough, but e-learning is a new industry with a very large number of suppliers, from major corporations to the smallest cottage industries, all promising to save you a great deal of money and provide all the solutions you need from a single source. Sorting through these to separate fact from fiction is not trivial.

At the same time, you may well be entering a new realm in terms of strategic and financial decision-making. Traditionally, the buying process for trainers is relatively short term and involves relatively small amounts – you drip-feed short-term contracts to obtain the services you require to meet needs here and now. With e-learning the situation is somewhat different.

First of all you may need to establish a platform with which to manage your e-learning efforts and to track the results. This platform is likely to be enterprise-wide to provide access to all your employees, and must integrate with all your existing systems. These do not come cheap and they are not installed in a matter of a few weeks.

Then you may need to commission the development of bespoke content that meets your specific training needs. Here the costs are all up-front and not insubstantial – the savings come down the road. And if you decide to buy your content off-the-shelf, you are again likely to be contracting for a year at a time and for relatively major amounts. This is not what you expected when you agreed to become training manager. It means you have to spend an increasing amount of time in the offices of those rather difficult people in IT and Finance.
Becoming a skilled e-learning buyer is a requirement for any training manager in the 21st century. But what does this mean in practice. We go in search of the perfect e-learning buyer.

What buyers say

Andy Wooler is Manager of Learning Management Systems for insurers Royal and Sun Alliance. His task was to purchase an e-learning platform that could be used throughout the organisation. What skills did he require to carry out this task effectively? “First of all, you need a good understanding of the business in which you are operating, because it’s easy to buy products that end up not meeting your needs. You also need to know your way around the various technical standards out there, such as AICC and SCORM, to make sure everything works together. We had to re-engineer a load of content that was incompatible with our platform, so I’d recommend only working with suppliers who have a good record in that area.” Andy put prospective suppliers through their paces by asking them each to come into the organisation for a week, install their system and show it working. “The process was incredibly helpful. We were able to see who could really deliver on their promises and those systems for which we would always be waiting for the next version. In the end we chose Saba, who were looking to build a partnership, not just sell us some software.”

Maria Coles, Learning and Development Manager at Debenhams, had a different problem. She wanted a complete solution to tackle the company’s induction needs, a contract that was eventually placed with BYG Systems. “It’s important to know your way round e-learning, so I’d recommend any training manager to go to seminars and acquire some technical and market knowledge. Also, do some benchmarking in your own industry to find out what your competitors are doing. We chose a company who took a real interest in Debenhams. Before tendering, they came to see us to explore how we worked and what we needed. It also helped that they had experience in the retail sector.”

The need for induction training was also the driving force behind an e-learning initiative at Skipton Building Society. Linda Grant is the Training Manager: “Our objective was to find an organisation who wanted to work with us in partnership, from a blank sheet of paper. Too many suppliers want to work with what they’ve already got rather than shape something exactly to your needs. Other suppliers tried to sell us off-the-shelf packages which cost more than it would take to build something from scratch. That’s clearly ridiculous. I’d recommend training managers working to tight budgets to look for suppliers with whom you can have a shared objective, perhaps someone who is looking to gain experience in your area of business or who wants to retain rights to modify the programme and sell it on to other companies. That way, you get a better deal and the supplier furthers their business interests.”

Royal Bank of Scotland is perhaps the UK’s most experienced e-learning purchaser. Now, with more than 100,000 staff around the world, the company is entering the next major phase in its e-learning programme. Dave Buglass is Head of e-Learning: “Based on our experience, I can offer five tips for identifying the right supplier. First of all, they need to have skilled people fulfilling all roles, whether that’s creatives, scriptwriters, programmers or project managers; they must have a strong 'customer service' approach, actively listening to their client and proactively anticipating our needs; then they have robust quality assurance processes to ensure they get it ‘right first time’; they deal with problems quickly, efficiently and calmly; and lastly, good suppliers deliver - on time, within budget and to specification.”

Ask the suppliers

Buying would be a pretty lonely occupation if there weren’t any sellers. And who better to paint the picture of the perfect buyer than those who spend their time peddling the future, the e-learning suppliers themselves.

Andy Key is Chief Operating Officer for LINE Communications, providers of bespoke content and consultancy services. Andy believes that a successful supplier/buyer relationship is like a good marriage: “First of all you must understand what you want, which, as a client means really knowing what your business needs are. Then you need to understand your partner, what capabilities they have and how they do things. Lastly you need to give it time and be prepared to put in the time to make it work.” The mind boggles.

Andy complains that the tendering process can often get out of hand: “The time and resources that tendering is taking could easily eat up any cost savings for the customer. From the suppliers point of view the situation is worse. We reckon it costs 10-15% of the contract value to submit a proposal. If the customer requests 8-10 companies to tender then the equivalent of the whole contract value is being spent before the job even starts. These costs don’t just get lost – they have to be passed back to customers in future projects. Our recommendation is to build long-term relationships with a few suppliers, as Volvo has done with us.”

Saffron Interactive is a provider of bespoke e-learning content. Hanif Sazen, the Chief Executive, also has clear ideas on what makes for a successful relationship: “For an organisation like Saffron, a successful project is one that is both profitable and has provided benefit to the client. This helps us to stay in business and to secure repeat business. So, a good buyer from our perspective is one that understands the learning outcomes that he or she is looking for and then is able to articulate these. We can then work on how to measure these outcomes and how to meet them.”

“We come across buyers who make decisions based purely on technology or multimedia. These projects can be easy to win, but it is very difficult to show value as the buyer does not provide the project with a clear direction, based on value. These projects may get sign off, but the training is then very rarely used - a poor outcome for the buyer as well as the supplier.”

For suppliers of off-the-shelf content such as SkillSoft, the benefits of addressing a real business problem are just as great. Kay Baldwin-Evans is Director, Marketing: “The ideal buyer is looking to solve a real business need; the project has clear objectives. Unfortunately, some customers don’t really know what they want or why – the end result is all too often a load of products that don’t get used. Buyers should also be careful to ensure that, even if there is a clear business need, that e-learning is an appropriate solution, alone or in combination with other methods.

“It’s also vital that the buyer has support from the IT department, before they start the buying process. IT doesn’t like to be brought in at the last minute and certainly not after the decision has been made. And most importantly, the ideal buyer has support at senior management level – the higher the better. That way the project will have sufficient momentum to overcome the inevitable obstacles. It is also more likely to have a realistic budget.”

Skilling up

To meet the needs of the business and to build successful relationships with e-learning suppliers, it is clear that training managers need to both up their profile and increase their understanding of what e-learning can offer. Adrian Snook is Director of Corporate Development for The Training Foundation, which for the past year has been providing this training in the Manager track of their Certified e-Learning Professional programme: “E-learning is becoming a core competency for training managers. Managers may use consultants in the early days to help them out, but they cannot afford to be without those skills in the long run. It’s important that e-learning is not separated out from the rest of training and addressed only by the more technical members of the training department – everyone needs to be involved. In fact I’d go further and suggest that all members of the procurement team be put through some form of e-learning primer.”

Snook points out how times are changing for trainers: “Training managers are used to spending in relatively small amounts. E-learning tends to be front-loaded, which means big spending up-front to make even bigger savings down the line – the sums are greater and so are the risks. Training managers are having to deal with multiple stakeholders, including finance, IT and the purchasing department. These people don’t always share the same goals, and certainly not the same vocabulary. Trainers need the expertise to make sure they get what they want and the organisation needs. All too often a vague invitation to tender is responded to by suppliers who offer to build completely different things at very different prices. You end up comparing apples with oranges. Another danger is that more qualitative issues such as instructional design get shuffled down the list at the expense of technical specifications and financial issues. Don’t forget that, in the end, the goal is learning, not compliance with standards or getting the best price.”

In the advertising industry they say that clients get the marketing they deserve. To get the e-learning that your organisation deserves means knowing what you want, knowing what’s possible and being able to build partnerships with people who can turn possibilities into realities. There’s a challenge.

Case study: Vodafone - along the right lines

Vodafone is the world’s largest mobile phone company, with businesses around the world that have grown at a breathtaking rate. Helping this organisation to grow cohesively, sharing knowledge and learning together, is a massive challenge for any training manager. Gordon Bull is Director of Vodafone Global Campus, the name for the e-learning and knowledge management initiative that has been launched to co-ordinate all training and development efforts around the world.

How did Gordon go about finding a supplier who could match up to Vodafone’s requirements? “At this early stage in our experience of e-learning, we realised we needed specialist help, so we used the services of a small consulting firm to help us conduct a detailed needs analysis and review the suppliers currently in the market. Surprisingly, we found some of the suppliers to be extremely arrogant. What we were looking for was a company prepared to work with us in the long term, with whom we could build a relationship.”

Vodafone chose Click2Learn’s Aspen Suite as the platform on which to base the Global Campus. Chris Wells is Corporate Solutions Director for Click2Learn: “The ideal customer from our point of view is someone who views the relationship as a genuine partnership, who understands that both parties have needs and aspirations that need to be met through working together. It helps if both parties are absolutely honest about what they want and what they can deliver – that way you can co-operate on finding solutions that suit you both.”
Wells continues: “The ideal e-learning buyer is well-connected into their own organisation, they understand the real business needs. Encouragingly, we’re finding that this is increasingly common with our training customers, and very much so with Vodafone.” It’s still early days for the Global Campus, but the foundations for success have been laid, with a successful partnership between customer and supplier.

Be an expert e-learning buyer

Resources

Institute of IT Training: Code of Practice for e-Learning Providers
www.iitt.org.uk
 
The Training Foundation: Certified e-Learning Professional
www.trainingfoundation.com