Convergys,Business Case, Outsource, Learning

Measure Twice, Cut Once: Constructing the Business Case for Outsourced Learning

The need for corporate training and development has never been more vital as it is today.  Globalization, mergers, acquisitions and mandates to generate new revenue streams have created growth opportunities, which in turn, are requiring more training for more people on more topics in more places.  Concurrently, corporate training and HR departments are fielding top-level directives to develop existing talent and deliver meaningful strategic benefits to the organization.

Regardless of a company’s commitment to learning, these increased initiatives as well as increased costs, invite C-level scrutiny of training budgets and resources.  According to recent research published by the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD), learning leaders are hard-pressed to develop the metrics that can demonstrate tangible returns on their investments and the value of their training initiatives to corporate goals and the business bottom line. ¹

Increasingly, organizations are opting to outsource all or a portion of the learning function.  Doing so helps drive lowered costs, identifies alternate means of designing and delivering global learning initiatives, improves operational efficiencies, and focuses internal training talent resources on activities that add strategic value to organizational objectives.  Clearly, the time has come for most organizations to consider outsourcing the learning function.

The value of outsourced learning
Within the last decade, outsourcing has become standard fare across many business functions to reduce costs and improve efficiencies.  According to researchers at Yankee Group and other industry analysts, learning outsourcing is expected to grow by 19% over the next two years alongside a larger trend in HR outsourcing as companies look to more closely integrate their HR and learning processes. 

There are several reasons to take a closer look at outsourcing the learning function, either selectively or in its entirety.  Reports show that as much as 80 percent of training takes place in decentralized business units, meaning technology, content, vendors and positions for learning department employees are redundant and duplicated many times across the enterprise.  This leads to significant inefficiencies and higher learning costs as well as the loss of combined buying power for more leverage with vendors. 

Outsourced learning providers bring extensive consulting expertise that drives the transformational process.  Organizations gain improved access to industry best practices, as well as analytics that help link learning to increases in revenue and decreases in expenditures.  In highly regulated industries such as pharmaceuticals and financial services, outsourcing providers are often better equipped and have specific expertise to manage the requirements and rigid process adherence required to predictably remain compliant across their customer base, and mitigate risk and reduce the likelihood of litigation-related costs. 

What’s in it for you?
Outsourcing aspects of your organization’s learning function provides you with a readily available breadth of experience and capabilities that far surpass anything most in-house training functions can build and deliver, particularly across a global enterprise.  For some organizations, outsourcing provides the platform to accomplish strategic learning objectives that are impossible to support in-house due to bandwidth or skill-set constraints. 

By using an outsourced learning solution, the corporate learning function gains access to expertise in administration and operations, content sourcing and vendor management, technology hosting, and reporting and analytics.  Coupled with proven learning implementation techniques and best practices, you gain one solution that centralizes appropriate aspects of the learning function and monitors the training budget against business performance.

Outsourced learning also drives centralization of the training function and ensures consistent messaging across regions and course materials.  Centralization lowers expenses through elimination of redundancies, promotes brand consistency across the enterprise, drives process consistency, adherence and compliance, promotes visibility into learning costs and benefits through aggregate reporting and common metrics, and allows for specialization and excellence for aspects of the learning function.

When it comes to making a business case for outsourced learning, the message is fairly clear – outsourcing can align the learning function with your organization’s strategic objectives, deliver more high-quality training to more employees, mitigate the risk of compliance violations, and provide measurable ways to assess the impact of training on revenue growth and market share. 

The $64,000 Question: Is outsourced learning a “good fit” for your organization?
While there is no magic formula available to help you decide if outsourcing is right for your organization, there are steps you can follow to determine which aspects of your learning function should be outsourced.

Start with a diagnostic approach that analyzes areas within your organization that would benefit most from outsourcing and deliver the greatest ROI.  Learning experts from an outsourcing provider can assess your current learning programs, activities and spending.  They can examine components of the learning function, including alignment and governance, content sourcing, technology hosting, learning delivery, operations and administration and learning analytics, and benchmark your performance in these functional areas against industry standards. 

A full-scan learning diagnostic provides a starting point to evaluate whether the adoption of a selective or comprehensive outsourced learning approach will help you to closely align learning with corporate strategy and expected outcomes.  The result: greater control over your learning investments and better learning delivery to your workforce.

¹ ASTD 2006 State of the Industry in Leading Enterprises Report

About the author
Recognized as one of the Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals, Marianne Langlois is the vice president, Learning Services for Convergys Learning Solutions, a premier provider of comprehensive global learning solutions and a segment of the Convergys Employee Care business unit, holding responsibility for its U.S. and global Learning Solutions businesses.  Convergys Learning Solutions has provided outsourced learning services to Fortune 1000 clients for over 12 years, and through its acquisition of DigitalThink in 2004, is now the global leader in custom e-learning and outsourced learning solutions.

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