Learning Management Systems Category Procurement Intelligence Report

Development and Training market around the world is undergoing rapid transitions that have a massive potential to influence the way companies strategize for Learning Management Systems procurement and the cost they have to incur. 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.

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.

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.

Learning Management Systems procurement best practices are moving towards a level of sophistication which is typically seen in traditional procurement categories. Category managers now have an attractive opportunity to adapt the best practices seen within this category as well as those being leveraged in other non-related categories. This report summarizes the best practices picked from across multiple categories that could work well for category managers involved with Learning Management Systems procurement strategy.

For example, Buyers can collaborate with their suppliers based on a reward-sharing basis. This can be done by providing special recognition to them at the annual meetings of buyers for high performance or mentioning their brand name on own websites.

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.

Buyers need to adopt renegotiation strategies with existing service providers to receive better quotes and discounts. Negotiation can take place based on the supplier's previous performance, performance of employees after the completion of L&D program or technology adoption by suppliers.

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