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E-learning: The Second Innings
Times Ascent, March 25, 2010

Technology is a strange animal. You don’t know when it will bite and when it will lie docile and passive. As an entrepreneur for the last ten years, I have seen the twist and turn of technology and been both hurt and rewarded too. Yet another instance of Technology playing the maverick is E-learning.

The twelve months of 2009 told a sordid tale of ravaged businesses, vanishing growth and a maniacal drive towards cost reduction. As each department in the enterprise embarked on Mission Cost Reduction, Human Resources came to the fore to drive E-learning. Training was a huge cost in the Enterprise. The cost of flying employees from so many far flung locations to a central location was prohibitive. Add to that the loss of productive sales/support/production time and you know the answer.

Cut to 2010. In India, Corporates are pressing the buzzer for a three year high-rise in top lines aligning with the 9% plus GDP growth of the world’s second largest economy. Hiring is feverish and happening in many remote parts of the country and they join in at random dates. The Learning and Development Head is the bounty for the CEO. He/she wants fantastic training imparted to the sales staff but at next to no cost. Class room training is passé. Can we leverage the Internet the CEO asks? Voila! E-learning is the answer.

So it’s boom time for E-learning. Self paced training it is, so your top sales guys can be at their work desk till 5 pm when the market closes and then train on their laptop. No worry about faculty and their quality. The multimedia course with Level 3 interactivity and graphics is more enticing than any Instructor. There are quizzes and assessments for those who go by scores and grades. Certificates can be issued by the E-learning courseware for those who cleared the required percentile. Managers can track the progress of their reports.

The E-learning market (products and services) reached $12.7 Billion by 2009 and is forecast to reach $50 Billion by 2014 a compound annual growth rate of 12.7% over the next five years. North America continues to be the largest market for Electronic Learning. Asia with a breathtaking compound annual growth rate of 33.5% over the next five years will edge out Europe by 2014 to take the second slot.

But does these mean huge investments for Corporates in the short run? Or is there a silver lining, thanks to Technology.

Ten years back, the early adopters of E-learning bought expensive Learning Management Systems (LMS) – the framework where the courses reside, which tracks all the users, bookmarks their pages and dishes out assessments. But those Corporates paid out hefty bucks for the LMS – several thousands of dollars to firms who made a living out of the LMS.

But this is not all. Firms need to train their employees but they can outsource training completely thanks to E-learning. You can get an E-learning firm to host the LMS themselves so that you do not have to grapple with installing a LMS, running it and maintaining it. The E-learning firm can make the courses out of your content and put them on the LMS. So your employees can train themselves and the L&D Head can outsource training and focus on the outcomes of good training! The CFO will jump at this because he can shift his costs from CAPEX to OPEX. Pay a monthly fee based on how many employee hours of training you consumed.

A lot of talk is going on about Cloud Computing. But one of the first domains that will take advantage of the Cloud is E-learning. Some of Corporate training can be productized. Leadership skills, Soft Skills, Financial Products, Negotiation skills, Customer Service, Sales Management, Technical courseware such as Java and .Net are some of those. Very soon competent firms will offer such packaged programs on the Cloud. Corporates can then buy them paying by the number of courses used and number of employees trained.

So to sum it all up – the future of E-learning is growth and more growth! I am confident we will see a big score in the second knock.

Online Link to Interview: http://www.timesascent.in/article/83/201003252010032514263246757f19ac0

The article also appeared in on April 16, 2010

Online Link to Interview: http://sify.com/finance/boom-time-for-e-learning-news-editors+picks-keqqi9ieiia.html