Why You Should Outsource eLearning Content Development

To successfully navigate the rapid pace of change, organizations must leverage outsourcing partnerships. In this article, I outline how outsourcing eLearning content development can provide room to meet the changing needs of hybrid workforces.

Why Should Organizations Consider Outsourcing eLearning Content Development?

To successfully handle the changing dynamics of modern businesses with hybrid workforces , firms are finding that effective partnerships are necessary. Considering that we are evolving from in- office teams to virtual ones, a new normal is emerging, where firms leverage hybrid staffing models. It’s clear that a hybrid workplace model is more effective than the traditional model.

Accommodating the changing needs of this type of workforce has added complexity to the L&D function. A shifting model that includes both on-site employees and remote employees highlights the trend toward digitization. There’s an increased demand for innovative digital training options. Employees need information in the flow of work, which can happen almost anywhere. Digital eLearning content best accommodates this need, as users demand more flexible learning options.

All this has widened the scope for L&D teams beyond what a traditional staffing model can handle. No traditional team can possess all the specialized skills and knowledge required for today’s evolving hybrid labor model.

What Are the Advantages of Outsourcing eLearning Content Development to a Strategic Partner?

Outsourcing eLearning content development enables firms to meet the needs of a hybrid workforce and the increasing demands from business stakeholders.

All the things that L&D teams need to do require skills not present on any given traditional team. However, the right eLearning content development partner can bridge this gap.

There are several advantages when outsourcing eLearning content development to strategic partners:

1. Outsourcing eLearning content development to a strategic partner gives firms a virtually infinite bench of talent. There are many specialists out there, hungry to be paid for their skilled labor. Firms no longer must keep specialized skills in-house but can instead outsource these skills as needed. For example, for a project that requires scriptwriting and video development, in-house project managers can hire a skilled scriptwriter and then pass their work to an outsourced eLearning content development team with strong video development skills. More focused skills can be found for short-term tactical work, reducing the need to upskill internal employees.
2. Outsourcing firms already have proven talent; therefore partnerships show immediate positive returns.
3. When working with outsourced partners, it’s easy to set and adhere to quality standards. This gives L&D teams useful flexibility to leave an outsourcing company if they don’t meet promised standards.
4. Outsourcing eLearning content development increases innovation and creativity by bringing in a fresh, outside perspective.
5. Unfortunately, full-time employees (FTEs) aren’t always motivated to work quickly. However, outsourcing firms are motivated to do a great job as quickly as possible so they can move on to the next project. Project time to completion is decreased by outsourcing eLearning content development.
6. The work cycle doesn’t stop when partnering with outsourcing firms. In fact, it’s advantageous to find outsourcing partners that operate in different times zones, giving teams a chance to build content while stakeholders aren’t working. They can then request reviews when stakeholders are working, essentially eliminating wait time. This increases iteration opportunities while reducing time to completion. There are no pauses because while one team is off-cycle, the other is working.
7. Outsourcing eLearning content development provides a flexible cost model wherein firms can find the labor they need at potentially reduced cost from what is available locally.
8. Additionally, companies get more bang for their buck because all they pay for when working with outsourcing partners is labor – they don’t need to worry about paying employees to complete administrative tasks like attending meetings or completing compliance trainings.
9. The hiring process usually takes a long time and is expensive. In an outsourcing model, firms don’t have to worry about hiring talent – the outsourcing partners take care of that.
10. L&D teams can be more scalable, quickly reacting to changing business requirements. By outsourcing eLearning content development, they can easily grow as the need increases and shrinks during down time.
11. L&D teams can be more agile in the types of training solutions they build when engaged with outsourcing partners. They’re no longer limited to the narrow range of expertise within a small team of FTEs.
12. Outsourcing eLearning content development reduces the risk inherent in training rollouts because firms can select partners who have a proven record of content developmentand program implementation.

Making the Call: When to Outsource eLearning Initiatives

Outsourcing of eLearning initiatives is based on multiple different factors that are specifically relevant to a particular organization, and must take into consideration variables such as available resources, timelines, skill requirements etc. Outsourcing of eLearning initiatives can prove to be an excellent solution in the following cases:

Stringent Deadlines

When an organization is dealing with tight deadlines and needs to maintain a low turn around time where they are expected to deliver assets quickly, outsourcing could increase efficiency and speed.

Lack of In-house Expertise

Certain projects require specialized resources and skills that the organization does not have access to in-house, in which case, it would be viable to outsource the requirement to an external company or individual

Cost- effective

Having individuals with specialized skills as a part of full- time staff is, in most cases, more expensive than outsourcing requirements for specific projects. Hence, outsourcing could be beneficial to the financials of the company.

Access to specialized skills

As mentioned before, certain projects require highly specific skills, resources, or technologies that the organization just does not have access to internally, in which case, outsourcing could prove to be a great solution.

Scalability

Since outsourcing is based on the volume and complexity of projects, it is easy to scale resources up or down accordingly.

Although outsourcing can be lucrative, there are considerations such as loss of control, quality concerns, communication challenges.

What Tasks Can Be Outsourced in eLearning Design and Development?

For L&D tasks to be outsourced efficiently, the right partners and vendors who have the right amount of expertise and track record must be solicited. Some tasks that can effectively outsourced are:

1. Content Production
2. Translation and Localization
3. LMS Implementation and management
4. Instructional design
5. Multimedia production

How Should Organizations Embrace the Strength of Outsourcing Partnerships?

Companies operate in a world of finite resources. It’s highly competitive to find and retain top talent. Today’s world is different than it was when employees had to sit near each other to collaborate. Modern communication tools have essentially eliminated geographic distances. Individuals can work together regardless of their geographical locations. Those firms who embrace this change will succeed. Those who resist will fall behind.

This new paradigm is particularly optimized for knowledge work. L&D professionals should analyze how to leverage the new paradigm of employer and employee relationships, organization, and virtual connectivity to utilize a larger talent pool. There are many advantages to outsourcing if it is executed well and the right things are outsourced. Some of which are:

1. Leverage outsourcing to gain a higher ROI: To gain access to specialized skills and technologies that an organization does not have internally, would enable them to heighten the quality and extent of the deliverables they are capable of producing while maximizing their gains financially and the services they can offer.
2. Better achieve business objectives: Outsourcing allows organizations to form strategic partnerships with other vendors and individuals that add value in ways that help them better achieve their pre-established business objectives.
3. Drive innovation: One of the most lucrative advantages outsourcing can bring to an organization, is to foster innovation via collaboration with highly skilled individuals and technologies. This allows the organization to significantly up its offerings, be viewed as a pioneer, and as a result make more revenue.

Companies that don’t embrace outsourcing are faced with several problems:

1. They employ large teams made up of specialists with a few project managers and one or two generalists.
   • Project managers and generalists become a bottleneck for efficiency and effectiveness. They can limit creativity and innovation due to the lack of skills and ability to expand beyond their team’s skill set.
   • They employ large teams made of mostly generalists with few specialists or project managers. Work quality may degrade to superficial learning solutions.
2. Hungry for the best talent but limited to a small geographic region, business leaders develop a limited vision and stunt the impact employee developmenthas on customer performance and business success.

In each case, the current (and outdated) way of approaching labor slows innovation and productivity such that new knowledge work companies who have embraced an outsourcing model will overtake and out-compete those who don’t.

Framework for Selecting the Right Outsourcing Partner

Selecting a strategic partner could arguably be the most important aspect of outsourcing since it defines the experience and the output of the outsourced deliverables. Moreover, it also affects the quality and standard of the work the organization stands for.

Having a good framework in place will help the organization navigate this entire process better. A possible framework that can be implemented is as follows:

1. Define your requirements: Clearly ascertain and relay the requirements the organization has and the full scope of the deliverables needed from the external partners.
2. Identify potential partners: Find strategic partners that complement your way of working, match the quality of work, and fill the skill gap in the internal team.
3. Ascertain expertise and experience: Ensure the partners have relevant experience and expertise in the field.
4. Review infrastructure and reputation: Make sure the partner organization has the infrastructure and resources to see to the requirement.
5. Establish a trial period or trial project: To be certain of this collaboration, establish a trial period or a project where each party can gauge whether or not this would be an advantageous decision.

Factors to Consider While Working with a Strategic Partner

Some factors to consider while choosing a strategic partner are as follows:

1. Strengths and capabilities of the partner: Expertise and experience the partnered company offers
2. Alignment with organizational goals: In line with the bottom line of the organization
3. Ability to communicate and collaborate efficiently: Sense of timeliness and ability to relay information in a professional manner
4. Cultural fit and value alignment: If the partner company is on the same page in terms of values and cultural nuances

How Can Organizations Overcome Potential Challenges of Outsourcing eLearning Content Development?

Company culture may shy away from using outsourcing partners. Employees may feel threatened. Trust is often an issue, especially at first. IT and HR departments are sometimes hesitant to operate with outsourced partnerships. However, once they see the immediate benefits of working with contract partners, those fears soon dissolve.

Sometimes, companies worry that they’ll lose their close-knit family team feeling. But outsourcing partners quickly become extensions to permanent team components, tools that extend their capabilities to build effective eLearning content.

Some in-house L&D professionals will need to shift from being content developers to project managers. While this may worry some FTEs, it creates an environment in which L&D teams can be more agile, quickly responding to stakeholder requests and hybrid employee needs. Those L&D professionals learn to become solution designers, not just content developers.

4 Compelling Case Studies of Creating Value Through Outsourcing

Case Study 1

Business challenge: One of India’s leading educational institutions that offers medical education and training programs wanted to digitise  the MBBS curriculum of year 1 and year.

The key challenges they were facing included:

• Lack of time for medical students to take fulltime training, thereby giving way to the need for core medical content in just-in-time mobile first access format.
• Limited time and scope for students to absorb the extensive concepts and learning materials.

Our solution:

EI adopted agile learning development practices to respond to these challenges. Specifically, we:

• Established standards and guidelines: Baseline standards were set by creating robust checklists across instructional design, visual design, and quality assurance domains.
• Set-up a dedicated team: A dedicated team consisting of 40+ instructional and visual designers worked on the scripts created in Articulate Rise followed by visual design. Peer reviews were conducted to ensure user-centricity and adherence to checklists.
• Ensured consistency: Consistency and user experience was checked in the  quality assurance phase. The modules were then released to the app deployment team in a staggered yet seamless manner.

Impact: 950 modules (86 hours of eLearning) were designed and developed in 4 months. They were successfully adopted by the learners which is evident from their grades as well as the overall pass percentage in the semester as compared to previous years.

Case Study 2

Business challenge: The customer is a global leader in the customer experience (CX) industry, providing services to 750+ of the world’s leading and digital-first brands with a team of 170,000 associates spread  across 45 countries across the globe.

The key challenges they were facing included:

• Skilling a global workforce on new processes
• The new processes needed to be adopted by the workforce within in 2 months.
• Accuracy levels in adoption of the new processes had to be in the range of 96-98%

Our solution:

EI adopted agile learning development practices to respond to these challenges. Specifically, we:

• Developed a prototype: Based on a standard module shared as a sample by the customer, 1 module was created as a prototype. Feedback received on it helped create baseline checklists for developers and QA specialists.
• Assigned a dedicated team: A dedicated team of 6 designers/developers across Storyline, Vyond and Rise were assigned to work on the modules. Peer reviews were conducted to ensure user-centricity and adherence to checklists.
• Deployed a batch delivery mechanism: 3 QA specialists collaborated to ensure consistency and error-free deliveries. The modules were released in a staggered manner (batches of 5 modules each).

Impact: 17 hours of content across 100 modules in Articulate Rise (including Rise templates, Storyline blocks and Vyond videos) were designed, developed, and deployed in 1.5 months. The modules were well received by the learners. The initial success rate with the adoption of the  new process was in the range of 93% -95% which increased to 97% in the  second month.

Case Study 3

Business challenge: A leading insurance service provider approached EI to design and develop a skilling solution for its sales team to overcome the key challenges they were facing.

These challenges included:

• New Licensed Agents (NLAs): Drop in their activity levels and high attrition rate.
• NLA Supervisor: Knowledge and skill gaps. Lack of role clarity
• Sales Heads: Meeting targets. Attitude towards profession

Our solution:

Phase I

• We conducted focused discussions with business stakeholders as well as L&D stakeholders to understand the key challenges that they were facing.
• On the basis of the discussions, we ascertained the business challenges as well as learning challenges that our solution should focus upon. These included:
  • Reduced time to competence both in terms of product knowledge as well as selling skills for NLAs.
  • Enhanced sales productivity for NLAs over a defined time horizon
  • Fall in NLAs attrition.
  • Continuous learning and engagement for NLAs
• To ensure that a focused learning pathway is designed for NLAs, key business metrics were identified and the current performance for each of them was baselined.

Phase II

Based on the inputs from Phase I, we formulated our solution.

• The solution approach was based on the Monitor – Train – Mentor – Support model.
• As the NLAs were constantly on the move, a mobile learning app was developed. The app was integrated with an NLAs’ business performance tracking system, according to which  kept content (MLUs, games, simulations) was being pushed, while also considering  their business performance.
• The app also had a mechanism in place for NLAs to provide feedback about the quality of the learning content as well as the mechanism for them to be assessed on what they learnt.
• The app supplied performance analytics to the NLAs’ supervisor. The supervisor used the analytics for NLAs’ goal setting, mentoring, and tracking as well as to provide feedback to enhance quality as well as coverage of training content.

The app was integrated with the  NLAs’ business performance tracking systems and accordingly kept pushing content (MLUs, games, simulations) on the basis of their business performance.

Impact:

Constant tracking of business metrics and learner metrics facilitated the appropriate learning interventions for the NLAs. This led to a significant improvement in the business metrics over a period of 9- 12 months

Case Study 4

Business challenge: A major  oil and gas company recognized the necessity to equip its workforce with the knowledge and skills essential for navigating the complexities of electric vehicle charging point network development.

Specifically, the following challenges were experienced by the organization:

Rapid Evolution of e-Mobility: The dynamic evolution within the e-mobility sector presented an ongoing challenge of keeping the workforce abreast with the latest advancements and regulatory changes. This pace of transformation demanded a proactive approach to ensure employees remained at the forefront of industry developments.

Growth of Electric Vehicle Charging Points (EV CPs) The surge in demand for EV CPs underscored the necessity for specialized skills in EV network development. The challenge was to equip the workforce with the expertise to strategically position the organization in a competitive landscape of growing EV CPs.

Expansion into New Markets and Industries: The organization’s expansion into diverse markets posed the challenge of adapting to new and/or unique market conditions. There was a need to prepare the workforce to navigate these new territories efficiently and contribute effectively to the varied demands of different industries.

Our solution:

The interactive content within gamified learning went beyond traditional presentations, allowing learners to actively engage with theoretical concepts. The design ensured that theoretical knowledge is not only conveyed but also retained through interactive participation. 
Here are some unique and innovative features that were used in the program:

• Gamification principles/elements: An introductory video was incorporated to inform learners about the mission of the game, i.e., to become the first organization to set up the highest number of EV charging stations in the hypothetical Electri-city by earning the required credits.

• Role selection: The role-centric approach adds a layer of realism, making the learning experience more relatable and applicable to  the target audience.

• Progress Bar/Credits: The top bar of the course was designed to accommodate the progress bar and the credits earned within each module. These features helped learners track how far they were in each module and the number of credits needed to be earned to unlock the next module which led to focused learning. This is particularly useful for games of such duration and also adds to the user experience.

• Futuristic avatar/Graphics: The introduction of Evie as a futuristic guide, along with thematic graphics, contributes to the program’s success by maintaining thematic consistency. Evie adds an interactive element, enhancing the learning experience and ensuring the achievement of the best results. Her attire evokes enthusiasm and positivity with the target audience, who are heavily enamored by the organization’s corporate tie-ups with Nissan’s Formula E team.

 Application-oriented quizzes: By using creativity, relatability, and interactivity, the learning program transformed complex concepts into an engaging educational journey, making the acquisition of knowledge both enjoyable and impactful.

Impact:

The impact of the learning program was appraised through a comprehensive evaluation, focusing on key performance indicators (KPIs) to gauge its prowess in the program’s competency and skill development. The evaluative framework encompassed a dual lens of quantitative and qualitative metrics, to assess the program’s effectiveness in fostering employee growth and proficiency.

The learning program led to improvements in the efficiency of the EV network development, strategic decision-making aligned with organizational goals, and the seamless integration of e-mobility strategies into new markets and industries.

Parting Thoughts

Outsourcing eLearning content development has many advantages. I hope this article provides the insights needed to understand how solid partnerships with eLearning content developers can enhance the productivity and effectiveness of L&D teams.