A strategic framework for deciding which learning support operations to delegate, automate, and retain internally
Learning departments within enterprises are facing a challenge of delivering clear results of workforce training and at the same time keeping within their budget limits as to how much the organization will spend to deliver training activities. It's quite frustrating since L&D professionals end up doing administrative activities, working across various technologies and different vendors, which makes their job difficult to manage.
One of the solutions is using Managed Learning Services for the business to gain a competitive advantage and save on costs. Instead of handing the entire responsibility to a vendor and not doing anything else yourself, the business only hands over specific tasks that involve daily learning activities. But learning strategy, leadership, internal governance and priorities of the organization will still be with the business itself.
Basing It on Tasks, Not Vendors
Outsourcing decisions that have really paid off are generally the ones that start with an inventory of current operations. In a word, a business looks at their activities with a view to identifying which ones do not require great investment yet have to be done. And which are those activities, one may ask?
Typically, such activities involve a lot of administrative work and routine tasks (e.g., organizing training events, handling learner requests, learner record-keeping or reporting). On the other hand, a business would want to keep in house such internal affairs which reflect the identity and values of business culture, leadership, or the core knowledge of the business.
In fact, this basic idea is really quite simple: it is that you leave the things that are complex operationally with the vendor and keep the things that are strategic for the organization on your side.
This separation empowers learning and development teams to have a better grip on the internal knowhow, and not be distracted by mundane tasks.
Learning Admins is Perfect for Delegating
In big companies, one can see how learning administration is done, for example, handling different learner requests, managing learner data, instructor support, cancellation requests, and learner data tracking to name a few. These tasks will require a number of learning staff who will be working on these issues day in and day out.
An outsourcing of these processes by a Managed Learning Services Company can result in the delivery of standardized processes and workflows to a point that a company can hardly distinguish between a learning process managed by in-house L&D teams and that managed via Managed L&D Service provider. The effect is reduced workload on internal resources since they are no longer burdened by these administrative functions.
Besides saving internal team time, the ultimate aim of a mature business model is to have a consistent, transparent and scalable operation within learning processes.
Managing Technology and LMS
A complex learning environment is common within enterprises with large numbers of users, multiple user groups, various integration requirements, and a need for regular reports and audits. It is possible that such a system is difficult to manage if the L&D department alone has to do this with no support from technical teams and external vendors.
Maintenance of the LMS, the management of users, creation and maintenance of reports, maintenance of the catalogue, troubleshooting, and support of the platform are all the sorts of tasks that could be outsourced effectively.
Nevertheless, technology decisions at a strategic level must be closely aligned with the overall business objectives. It is the internal people who should define the learner experiences that are desired, the kind of data to be collected, the security standards that are to be respected, and the roadmap for technology development. On the other hand, it is to the external experts to handle the execution that is the best fit to the internal strategies and operational plans.
Outsourcing Content and Learning Delievery is a Win-Win
Content operations and delivery are another field of the L&D process where the use of external resources can really be of a great benefit to the company. Enterprises may have a need to quickly localize content, make adjustments, provide help to writers, or coordinate trainers at one time or another, or deploy an entire training session for a large number of people, and that is quite a demand that the company cannot meet permanently with its own people.
Making use of external help, such as Managed Learning Services, enables the company to gain an advantage from specialized support in times when the demand is high or changes frequently. One can imagine the advantage brought by having a group of highly skilled and experienced specialists at one's disposal, especially during events such as launching new products, undergoing a complete regulatory change, mergers, introduction of new technology or reskilling of staff at company level.
However, what should one focus mainly upon? Quality control. Organizations need to put in place precise guidelines to check if learning materials are of high educational value, compliant with accessibility standards, in-line with brand guidelines, and that the subject-matter is accurately reflected. They should, too, make sure that the materials are stimulating and that the learning methods and materials are well matched.
Analytics and Performance Reporting
Learning analytics have become a vital factor in making business strategy decisions by top management. However, collecting data and not transforming it to useful insight is like having gold coins but not being able to mint or use them.
An external team of experts could handle the development of dashboards, the consolidation of data, the automation of reporting, participation analysis, and operations of learning, metrics. Internal L&D leaders still will be charged with the interpretation of what that insight means in the context of the organization's talent pool and broader strategy.
Such a partnership will ideally look much beyond the realm of report creation and the tracking of who attended the training and will get into capability development, learner behavior, operational efficiency, and business relevance.
What Should Remain In-House?
Outsourcing should not affect all the tasks that an L&D team can be involved in. It is advisable for businesses to keep internal control over strategic aspects of a workforce plan, governance of learning and development, leadership priorities, considerations on culture for an organization, and decisions on how to disclose business knowledge that is a key to the organization.
The business will be able to work together with external vendors instead of giving all the jobs to the vendors. In fact, the company will be doing the main job by itself only after having made a selection of what needs to be done in-house, while giving the rest to the vendors.
A good example is Infopro Learning who has worked very well to combine their own highly specialized learning capabilities with that of enterprise L＆D teams when they had a need but were not able to do it themselves because of a lack of resources while at the same time being a provider of scale learning solutions that are pretty complex.
Creating the Right Mode of Outsourcing
One of the most powerful elements is to build strategies for Managing Learning Services that include segmentation as the starting point. This means grouping different activities based on how strategic it is, their complexity, whether they can be scaled up or not, and whether the internal capability of the company is suitable for handling that activity.
Then define a clear set of service-level agreements which should cover quality of services, delivery within time limit, level of customer satisfaction and service, performance, technology, how accurate is the reporting and other areas where the company requires the external company to continuously improve.
In the end, when done properly, the whole idea is not about getting rid of the responsibilities that internal teams are responsible for, but about reaping the best of all worlds by having the business teams focussing on strategy and business impact while the partners deal with complexity and efficiency with their operations.
If it is planned well, a Managed Learning Services solution has got great potential in turning an L&D department from being mainly occupied with administration and support to that of an organization with very flexible, scalable, and important strategic capabilities.
