Professional Relations And Educational Programs Category Procurement Intelligence Report

The market for Development and Training and its sub-segments such as Professional Relations And Educational Programs are at an interesting intersection. 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.

Some suppliers are using advanced technologies such as AR/VR in their learning programs and methods. This has the potential to enhance the learning experience, but category managers need to be aware of the higher cost and technological capabilities of the vendor to properly integrate these technologies in the right context.

Trends like these and many others discussed in this report are necessitating a relook at the way Professional Relations And Educational Programs is procured and the procurement cost saving opportunities that exist.

It has become imperative for category managers to remain as agile as possible in terms of their procurement practices. However, it is not always easy to quickly spot and implement alternative practices in a category like Professional Relations And Educational Programs. To help quick decision making, this report advises on several procurement best practices that have worked well for category managers.

For example, Blended learning solutions are a mix of instructor-led learning and web-based learning. These solutions aid buyers to reduce training implementation costs and enhance the effectiveness of training. Hence, buyers must collaborate with service providers that offer blended training solutions.

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.

Buyers must engage with service providers that offer bundled and unbundled services. Unbundling of services allows buyers to select the best-fit services as per organizational requirements. In addition, it allows buyers to outsource services such as content development and learning technologies to dedicated players that can offer cost-effective training services compared with traditional training service providers.

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