There are lots of ways to populate your online training course, and each option has pros and cons. In this article, I’ll highlight some convincing reasons why you should buying eLearning content versus developing in-house.
Tap Into External Expertise: 6 Benefits Of Buying Content vs. Developing In-House
Many organizations work with limited budgets and even more limited timelines. They need to get their online training program up and running yesterday. Otherwise, they run the risk of violating compliance regulations, missing out on sales or possibly even losing their top talent. As such, some are turning to pre-built eLearning content to roll out rapidly, rather than developing all their course from the ground up. What are the upsides of buying training courses and do they supersede the cost implications? Let’s look at some of the most notable benefits of buying content from a course catalog versus creating it in-house.
- Direct Cost-Cutting
This seems counter-intuitive because DIY is always cheaper than buying something ready-made, right? That’s kind of the whole point of building your eLearning course from scratch. However, in the case of corporate training, designing in-house eLearning courses requires the purchase of certain tools. These tools may require specific add-ons and plug-ins which increase costs. For example, video and audio content are often preferred over text-based lessons. Meaning that in addition to import/export features, you need hardware to record sound and visuals. Then you need an editing booth to help you put them all together. You might even need to hire a video editor or a sound engineer. Those are all additional expenses you could eliminate by purchasing ready-made content. And don’t forget about the payroll involved. After all, your in-house developers won’t put in the time and effort without being compensated.
- Reduced Staff Management
I’ve already mentioned the need for designated talent. This might be an hourly contractor, a weekly consultant or a full-time hire. These human resources then need to be onboarded, trained and assimilated. Even if you don’t bring in fresh talent, you’ll have to identify the relevant skill-set within your organization. These experts already have corporate duties, and they must weave their new responsibilities into their existing work day. You could give them a raise and a promotion (which many companies aren’t able to do). But the extra tasks eat into their time and energy. These new training duties could easily burn them out. So, the quality and efficiency of managing their current work-load may suffer.
- Enhanced Skill Sets
The people that work for you are good at their specific jobs. It’s why you hired them. But not everyone that’s good at something has the skill-set to teach it. It’s one of the reasons why we take our children to school as opposed to teaching them ourselves. Similarly, third-party content developers are skilled in producing online training materials. They don’t necessarily do those tasks every day but they’re good at teaching others how to do them. As such, your staff can focus on performing their actual tasks whilst leaving the training experts to train a new crop of hires. It’s capitalist specialization at its best. Besides, the ‘external eyes’ of a professional content developer can offer insight and perspective.
- Stress-Free Updates
Just because you work in a particular field doesn’t mean you are knowledgeable of its changes. Take the example of compliance, or technology. To find out what’s new in your business sector you must actively look for it. And you might be so busy utilizing current tech that you don’t spot innovations in your niche. External content providers are all about finding new techniques and building courses around them. And they will let you know as soon as new online training materials are available. Or you can scan their eLearning content catalog periodically to look for new relevant online training material based on your evolving needs. As a result, you can mitigate risks and ensure that your team is always aware of the compliance issues.
- Deeper Customization
It’s logical to assume that buying online training courses is the generic approach. But in some ways it can offer an even more tailored training experience than creating resources from scratch. You are purchasing newer and smaller online courses to strengthen your existing corporate training regime. Thus, you may not be purchasing a comprehensive training kit but content that strengthens the online training program you already have instead. Meaning you can enrich your current L&D program in a faster, more efficient and more effective way than you could manage in-house. After all, content development is a tangent for you. But for them, it’s their specialty.
- Expertise Without Hiring SMEs
Most organizations have to bring in outside Subject Matter Experts when developing content in-house. Then you must ensure they mesh with your team and can actually articulate the ideas. When buying online training content, the vendor takes care of the expertise on your behalf. The tools in the eLearning content catalog are created by professionals who are already knowledgeable about the topic. They’re aware of how to put it into terms your employees can understand. This way they facilitate real-world application instead of pouring as much technical jargon into the design and hoping that something sticks. As a result, you don’t have to enlist the help of SMEs to keep your employees in-the-know. Given that the eLearning content catalog already contains insights from industry insiders.
Bartering skills can be an effective way for separate businesses to promote each other in a mutually beneficial manner. This is the principle behind purchasing your training content. It lets you focus on doing a better job by enhancing your work-related skills. And it’s enabled by allowing professional content providers to do what they do best. What are some other benefits of bought content? It saves you cash on authoring tools and saves you time on content development. There are deeper customization options, especially for moment-of-need training. And because your vendor works on (and markets) new material regularly, you’ll always be up-to-date. Win-win!
Buying online training courses is as easy as perusing the online content catalog and choosing support tools that align with your goals and gaps. Enrich your L&D program for a fraction of the cost of developing it in-house. And tap into the expertise of online training professionals to build skills and improve on-the-job performance.
To know more about the content catalog offered by Adobe Captivate Prime, please write to primecontentadmin@adobe.com.
I’ve purchased content before. It works, but one must absolutely evaluate the content against the overall objectives.
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