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What Does It Take to Work Successfully with Vendors?
As most organizations embark on their quest to become an e-learning provider, they inevitably turn to an evaluation of vendor capabilities to complement their own internal resources and talents. Five to ten years ago, this was a fairly straightforward endeavor. A limited number of vendors, each with its clearly defined scope of services and products, made it fairly easy for an organization to map its own specific needs to the products available. Content offerings were also limited and focused primarily on technology skills required in a typical Information Technology environment. Learning management systems (LMS) were rudimentary at best, in an environment primarily monopolized by one or two primary vendors. Given their own limited experience in developing e-learning strategies, most vendors did not presume to provide strategic professional services to potential clients; rather, they focused solely on implementation and deployment of services. Clearly, the vendor landscape, as we knew it, has rapidly evolved. As more and more organizations understand the value and appeal of an e-learning migration at some level, the potential e-learning providers recognized the true potential in this fledgling industry. As discussed in Chapter 1, e-learning has experienced exponential growth. However, IDC has also identified that from 2002 until 2006 business skill e-learning content will also grow at remarkable rate of 49 percent, as more vendors use simulations, multimedia, and mentoring to reinforce skill areas that had previously been addressed only through classroom training and mentoring. By 2006, the e-learning services forecast a potential marketplace now populated not only by traditional content and technology providers, but also by most professional services and consulting organizations eager to take advantage of a promising market niche in an otherwise prevalent economic slowdown.
“The e-learning industry is not only in a nascent phase, but is also in a state of some confusion. Much debate exists on the future role of the learning infrastructure players, and on the convergence of e-learning infrastructure software with the other enterprise software categories and vendors-ERP, CRM, and HRM to name a few. What attracts no debate is the continuing criticality of learning content, learning solutions and high-quality learning and knowledge experiences and tools for your employees.”
Greg Priest, Chief Strategy Officer of SkillSoft
The impact of this explosive growth and constantly expanding range of products and services has an enormous impact on the potential buyer.
