Elearning Category Procurement Intelligence Report

A changing ecosystem within the Development and Training market also affects the procurement process, cost dynamics and supplier attractiveness for the buyers of Elearning. Several important sectors of the global economy, such as BFSI, Healthcare and Manufacturing are facing serious shortage of adequately skilled workforce. Companies are trying to fill this gap by re-skilling their existing employees in new skills. Similarly, rapid penetration of new technologies across industries (e.g. big data, AI, blockchain, or even data analytics tools) is necessitating re-skilling of employees so that they understand and leverage these technologies to work more efficiently. These factors have improved the demand outlook for L&D services in developed economies and will soon impact the developing economies as well.

Although companies are providing more learning opportunities and resources to employees, actual percentage of employees who have seriously completed such learning activities in still very low. Some of the reasons responsible for this trend are a 'one training fits all' approach, lack of personalization, engagement and demonstration of benefits in an employee's current work profile. Companies as well as L&D suppliers have realized these challenges and are coming up with solutions such as gamification and L&D delivery through multiple platforms.

Integration of the latest technology in learning requires significant investments and therefore procurement costs are expected to rise for learning modules based on advanced technologies. In the long run, buyers could see stable pricing as suppliers recover their technology cost.

Sometimes, procurement functions are unable to timely alter their practices while responding to market conditions. Industry experts acknowledge that periodically reviewing procurement best practices and adopting learnings from across procurement categories can help procurement teams respond to market needs in a more agile way. This report combines our experience of other categories with Elearning procurement insights and hand picks best practices that can work for category managers delving in this market.

For example, Buyers should engage with service providers that offer interactive training solutions such as gamification, VR, and interactive videos to simulate real-world applications. These solutions are known to improve the effectiveness of learning programs.

Category managers should evaluate the RFQ's from service providers against the industry benchmarks as this helps buyers to gain a better understanding of the market prices and save costs.

Buyers must collaborate with service providers that offer mobile learning solutions, which help in accessing the training material from any location. This will aid employees from departments such as sales, which may not be able to attend all training sessions conducted onsite and achieving better ROI on L&D.

Elearning procurement managers also need to proactively identify and mitigate potential risks that can arise in the supply chain or contracts for Elearning procurement. Some examples include: