A Global Industry Analysts, Inc. (GIA) had predicted that the revenue of the eLearning industry would reach $107 Billion in 2015. And that happened. According to the Market Research Report of OrbisResearch.com, the eLearning industry will reach $275.10 Billion by 2022. Since eLearning has proved to be the best method of training, this will also come true.
How Will You Choose The Right eLearning Development Company For You?
It can be challenging to select the right one that matches your training requirements and goals. The software of the company can be well programmed and they may have all the good skills. But will the company help you achieve your goals and be competent enough to become your valuable associate? It requires good research when you are looking for a custom eLearning development company.
5 Tips To Choose The Right eLearning Development Company
In this blog, we have described five proven tips to help you.
- Do you really need it?
- Choosing the right eLearning development company
- Prepare for it
- Cleverly design your course and be clear regarding your needs
- Be involved
1. Do you really need it?
Before you proceed to outsource your custom eLearning platform creation, you should figure out the actual need and purpose for the same. You should have a clear idea, do you really need it?
So, if the contents of your training program have limited topics and your budget is low, you can leave the advancement of outsourcing. You can assign such content creation work to your high-tech employees. It may be possible that the outcome or the result may not be as eloquent and advanced as professional experts can produce. But something is better than not doing the job.
Big companies where budget is not the issue can arrange a separate online training department. They can afford to keep content creation in-house.
The government companies and the companies handling sensitive data, where secrecy is the protocol, should keep their training and content creation in-house. It means they have all their data under close guard.
I need your attention here. If your case does not fall under any of the above-said categories, outsourcing partial or the entire training program with a renowned eLearning development company will make perfect sense. The benefit is, you will get professional and faster results without diverting your existing resources from your core business.
Custom eLearning solutions provided by Knovator make content creation easy and effortless. You can easily incorporate any PowerPoint or word documents that you were using earlier to train your staff or students.
2. Choosing The Right eLearning Development Company
The IT Industries is flooded with many eLearning development companies. It is obvious you may get confused and scratch your head when trying to pick the right one. The fact is that all the eLearning development companies are not the same. Flashy web pages and advertisements can not help you in determining which one is right for you. But fortunately, few of them are more professional and trustworthy than the others.
Something very interesting for you is there are ways to find them.
First is the traditional way. You can ask around. Maybe your business associates are already working with some eLearning development company. They may recommend you. Discuss in detail their experience with them with regards to outsourcing their training modules. You can also ask to see their modules and can check whether they meet your quality criteria.
The second is to search the wide web. Check eLearning news, blogs, and reviews of the companies. Also, know the current affairs in the industry.
Ignore paid commercial-style content. Focus on actual or end-user experiences in the comment sections and discussion forum. Keep in mind that positive comments could be furtive advertisements for the company, and negative comments could have been made purposely by the rival companies.
You should also ensure that the eLearning development company serves as a kind of endorsement for your firm.
When you have shortlisted a few of the firms, it is time to see their portfolio. Ask for a quotation based on your custom needs. If you have a large business and want to make multiple orders, it is advisable to ask for a trial base platform with a small payment.
3. Prepare For It
Once you pick the right eLearning development company for you and the company starts working on your order, there is an important step you need to follow.
You are required to search, arrange, annotate and prepare your raw material. It can be PDFs, PowerPoint presentations and Word Documents completed with titles, tags and descriptions. You can also prepare printed manuals or hand-written notes. That has to be scanned and converted into digital form later.
Precisely note what needs to be in your training courses. You are the one who has access to your documents. So you should prepare all the files and information. Review the same then, forward it to the development company.
Conduct informal or semi-informal training. It can be online or offline. The purpose is, you will get more practical training stuff.
At last, you need to make a catalogue of all the files related to the training course and hand it over to the eLearning developer team.
4. Cleverly Design Your Course And Be Clear Regarding Your Needs
It should be crystal clear in your mind what should be in your training course and what to discuss with your eLearning consultants. Discuss what you require and what should be the desired outcome. Corporate training can be abstract. It works better when it is focused and result oriented.
Keep senior employees to work with them. This will clear all the doubts, and the developer will get a clear vision of what they need to convey.
If you want them to create a customized training course, talk them through all the necessary steps and procedures your employees need to know. It includes day to day work as well as how to deal with emergencies. Also, describe the basic workflow.
Instruct them regarding name branding rules, logos and colours they should use in their final deliverables.
You need to know a clear timeline, including milestones and sign-offs and a final price for the whole endeavour.
5. Be involved
It does not mean your job is over once you hand over all the raw materials and course requirements to the outsourcing experts.
To ensure the best possible outcome, be involved and stay connected with the whole process.
Work with the eLearning developers to make sure everything is running in a good flow. Also, check if the contents provided by them match your requirements.
Here it does not mean that you breathe down their neck. It doesn’t mean that you need to manage eLearning developers all the time. Please do not do that. They are experts in their work. You only need to provide them with the information they need and check the development flow is going in the right way. It means to say it should be like an active tie-up.
Professional eLearning development companies will keep you in the loop in order to ensure agreement at the final delivery.
The eLearning development company should have used some collaboration platform to share documents, read early drafts, make comments and even discuss the course creation process in real-time when needed.
Finally, it should be a long-term relationship with an eLearning development company that understands your needs and caters for them faster, and you can trust their work.
Conclusion
In this blog, we have discussed that companies preferring to focus on their core business or with fewer tech skills can outsource their eLearning training program.
Also, we have discussed that you are required to search, arrange, annotate and prepare raw materials for training, picking the right custom eLearning development company and work with them as an active tie-up.
