The concept of eLearning continues to grow in popularity, as does the global digital learning business. More and more companies worldwide are developing their custom eLearning solutions by partnering with vendors in the corporate training industry.One of the biggest challenges associated with building a custom eLearning solution is determining its cost and budget.
You may spend slightly more than expected while finalizing the components of customized training content. However, you may note that custom eLearning solutions promise a high return on investment while considering their long-term benefits.
This article discusses the cost benefits of investing in custom eLearning.
Factors that influence the cost of developing custom eLearning content
Unlike over-the-shelf solutions, the cost of developing custom eLearning content depends on several factors discussed below.
Complexity or level of customization
The latest corporate training courses feature many interactive and engaging elements to motivate employees. Personalized experiences in corporate training not only result in the effective dissemination of information but also help considerably improve the performance of employees. The willingness of the company to invest in a highly customized learning experience for their employees plays a crucial role in determining the cost of developing custom eLearning content. The higher the complexity or level of customization required in the content, the costlier the finished product.
Vendor rates
In most cases, you would need to hire an external vendor or a developer to build your custom eLearning solution. The cost of developing the platform will vary greatly depending on your decision to either outsource the task or use an in-house team.
While an in-house team may seem to cost lesser, you may need to clearly define the roles and responsibilities of the developer, the complexity of the solution, and the technical requirements. It may result in bringing additional specialists on board, thereby increasing overall costs. On the other hand, an external vendor would be able to provide all the necessary technical expertise and support in one place.
Type of content
Today, there is a wide variety of content types in the market. For example, content may be in the form of presentations, graphics, text, images, videos, games, and animations. You can pick your preferred content type for your custom eLearning solution based on the desired level of engagement of the employees. The more complicated the content, the higher the cost of development of the platform.
Why should you consider paying the development cost?
Custom eLearning solutions enable the integration of various technologies based on your training requirements. To achieve a highly personalized experience, you would need to put together a dedicated team to develop training materials and courseware.
You would also take subject matter experts on board to ensure the relevance, accuracy, and effectiveness of the training modules. Similarly, your decisions on interactive and engaging components, gamification tech, multimedia, and LMS, would add to the cost of developing the custom eLearning experience. On compounding, the final payable price may be higher depending on your requirements.
Customization in eLearning solutions allows you to reassess and plan your budget and make the necessary adjustments to your requirements, thereby giving you the flexibility to develop effective training for your employees without messing up your training budget.
Long-term benefits
While the short-term benefits and drawbacks may tempt you to arrive at conclusions on whether or not to choose a custom eLearning solution for your business, it is advisable to consider their long-term benefits.
The long-term benefits of introducing custom eLearning solutions to your business include:
Makes training more effective and efficient
Since a custom eLearning solution is developed in constant consultation with the team members, it greatly reduces the time required to familiarize the organization’s internal teams with the training content. It also takes less time to implement and, subsequently, less time to show a positive impact on the organization’s training outcomes.
Further, a custom eLearning solution ensures that the organization is sharing the same content, training materials, and information throughout different departments irrespective of the number of teams or locations, thus reducing the chances of misinterpretation or the need for re-training.
Motivated Staff
Personalization of training offers opportunities to design user-friendly, interactive training materials for employees which combine their learning with physical or mental engagement, thereby keeping them motivated.
Voluntary participation of employees in their professional development also helps with better information retention for a longer duration and instant applicability of new knowledge on real-life problems.
Cost Savings
Custom eLearning solution offers the opportunity for the upgradation of the training content instead of investing in purchasing brand-new content when an update is required. The same is not true in the case of off-the-shelf solutions, as they are not flexible or customizable.
Consider the return on investment
While the initial costs may seem high, custom eLearning solutions offer an increased return on investment in the long run. The employees will remain enthusiastic and motivated to develop their knowledge and skills with the help of training content designed specifically for them, thus improving their performance and productivity.
To calculate the return on investment, consider the following factors:
- Identify the company goals with which you wish to align the custom eLearning content.
- List down long-term objectives and define key indicators to measure the performance of the custom eLearning content.
- Calculate the savings/ earnings resulting from the above.
- Subtract the savings from the actual cost.
Usually, the actual cost is much lesser than the long-term return on your investment in custom eLearning content.
Conclusion
Custom eLearning content is an ideal way to fulfill your business goals. Further, it will be worthwhile to onboard external vendors who provide end-to-end solutions to your organization’s training requirements. While the short-term outcomes of such an investment may seem too high, the long-term benefits will outweigh all the initial challenges of introducing personalized eLearning to your organization.
