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Learning & Development

Published May 2007

Effective Learning Process Outsourcing

 

  Fran Morton

I have a favorite lamp that works fine if I coil its cord in exactly the right direction and plug it in a little off center. Technically, it's not broken, but if I move it one inch, the light won't come on.

Many corporate learning organizations are like my lamp — they work fine if they're not disturbed.

The company is satisfied with the output, employees get trained, courses get developed and the budget gets approved year after year. Then, someone suggests a look at learning process outsourcing (LPO), and all sorts of questions and issues appear. Here's how that has played out in organizations facing different outsourcing needs and challenges.

Multiple Learning Groups, Multiple Budgets

"How can I consider LPO? I have no idea how much the company spends on learning and no good way of finding out."

In this organization, learning was dispersed throughout the operating units and fragmented under many different budgets, delivery models and approaches. Operating executives saw learning as too important to the success of their business to delegate it to anyone outside their direct management control. With no one clearly looking at learning on behalf of the whole company, developing scope and a valid business case for outsourcing seemed too daunting to consider.

Typically, there are two major approaches to this problem:

1. Centralize learning activities first and then approach the market for comprehensive outsourcing. This approach has the advantage of being able to precisely scope the eventual outsourcing but the disadvantage of two rounds of organizational upheaval and potential staff displacements.
2. Pick a major area of learning to outsource now and add to the scope as the project unfolds. This approach can work well, especially if the scope includes the learning management system (LMS) or a consolidation of multiple systems. The process of study, statements of work (SOW) development and due diligence almost always uncover opportunities for scope expansion or areas of additional cost to maintain an artificially restricted scope.

In-House LMS Roadblock

"We would love to get a new LMS. The one we have was developed in-house and no longer has the capacity/capability to meet our changing needs, but IT won't consider it."

This organization had outgrown the original LMS the IT group developed. Learning needs had increased in type and complexity. The LMS couldn't cope, and the learning organization couldn't get the necessary upgrades done because of higher-priority IT projects. In this case, the learning organization needed the capability to register, grant access and bill third parties (vendors or channel partners) for courses. But when it came time to investigate outsourcing the LMS, there was a major obstacle to overcome: an uncooperative IT department that was unwilling to sign on for an LMS project that might displace some of its staff.