Why Outsourcing Custom eLearning Development Is Essential For Your Organization
Michael Allen, the well-known author says, “There are no refunds; learners cannot get their time back if we waste it.” This is why training should be aligned with learners’ specific needs. Custom eLearning ensure this. Custom eLearning courses have content that is carefully curated to address learning objectives, which fill the performance gaps of learners. The process of custom eLearning development includes the collaboration of different skill sets such as instructional designers, authoring tool experts, subject matter experts, and a lot of careful planning and project management to facilitate the development of learner-centric courses. This article highlights 3 benefits of outsourcing custom eLearning development.
3 Good Reasons To Outsource Custom eLearning Development
1. Complement The Strengths Of Your In-House Team
If you already have an in-house team for eLearning development, what’s the need to talk about outsourcing? It is because your in-house team may be too small to contain the spillover of rolling out many courses and meet the set deadlines. Outsourcing can come to your aid because you can always outsource just part of the custom eLearning development and leverage your in-house team’s talents, instead of outsourcing the whole development process. If needed, you can outsource the entire design and development. This also makes business sense of if you are new to eLearning, and don’t have an in-house team. Experienced eLearning vendors will help you develop high-quality, instructionally-sound courses rapidly with the help of authoring tools. Once you know what’s involved, you will have some ideas on how to manage your in-house team and make a realistic business case for setting up an in-house design and development team. You can get started with a few resources such as a few authoring tool experts. When you save time with outsourcing, you also save a lot of costs, and get to concentrate on your core business and strengths.
2. Enjoy Benefits Without Compromising On Quality
A benefit you have with in-house eLearning development is that the quality of courses is under your control, but the costs can spiral. When you outsource, you can be assured to cut down the costs without compromising on the quality, provided you choose a good outsourcing partner. The cost, time, and quality of eLearning is taken care by experienced professionals.
Your vendor will be able to suggest the best solution based on your training needs and training types, apart from the following benefits:
- Outsourcing comes with the advantage of highly skilled and trained instructional designers who add value to the learning using different instructional design strategies, keeping in mind the adult learning principles.
- The process of custom eLearning development is made rapid with the use of authoring tools such as Articulate Storyline, Lectora Online, Adobe Captivate, iSpring, and dominKnow, and vendors will have a huge pool of experts in using these rapid authoring tools.
- Vendors will leverage the features of authoring tools such as inbuilt interactivities and templates to save cost and time in development.
- A vendor with strong project management processes will ensure the quality of courses within the budget and timelines.
All these aspects will ensure you get quality output, within your stipulated timelines and cost.
3. Ensure Delivery Of Courses Within The Timelines
Most of the eLearning courses today have a short shelf-life owing to the many changes taking place in your industry/domain. Outsourcing makes sense when the need is to roll out new courses at the speed of need. Consider other scenarios when courses need to be developed quickly or updated with new content.
- If there is a change in the top management, the video by the former CEO will have to be changed in your new hire onboarding course.
- If your company acquires another company, courses will need to be updated with your standards, branding, and content as relevant.
- When a company expands to a new territory, additional rules and regulations need to be included in compliance courses.
Outsourcing eLearning development will make it easy to develop courses that require major content and/or instructional updates quickly. Sometimes, however, a course on product training might have a few updates due to product enhancements. In situations like these, it makes sense to use your in-house team, for the updates.
Another advantage outsourcing offers is the ability to leverage differences in time zones between your organization and an overseas vendor.
Download the eBook The Ultimate Guide To Outsource Custom eLearning to see how effective Custom eLearning can be for your overall development. Learn what the three good reasons are to outsource custom eLearning development.
If you are looking for more insights on outsourcing custom eLearning, join this webinar and explore how to maximize your ROI on outsourcing along with tips and workarounds to make the collaboration a bed of roses. The interactive session (peppered with polls and ice breakers) covers the pros and cons of outsourcing custom eLearning, the parts that can be outsourced, and the prep work. Get a heads up on the unseen hiccups you might face and means to overcome them. RK Prasad, the CEO and Co-Founder, CommLab India will simplify the journey of selecting the right vendor, getting SMEs onboard, and more.