Ambient Insight has last month released a report on how the global market for self-paced eLearning products and services will grow through till 2014. It estimates the market had reached US $ 27.1 billion in 2009. The demand is growing at a 5 year compound annual growth rate of 12.8% and will take the world market to US $ 49.6 billion by 2014.
In my last post on eLearning Outsourcing, I mentioned the various advantages of eLearning outsourcing. Most people get the benefits part pretty easily however, identifying whom to outsource to is not as easy. When meeting prospects, I often face this objection – “We have tried outsourcing in the past but have had a real bad experience and (hence) we are not willing to take the risk again“. What they fail to understand is that, in most of the cases, the problem lies much beneath – improper vendor selection.
Some months back I had posted (based on a research report by ValueNotes) about eLearning outsourcing to India doing well and looking to grow handsomely in next 3-4 years. With over 100 clients in 12 countries, Upside Learning has been offering offshore based eLearning outsourcing development services and solutions for 6 years. Last year we were recognized as an emerging leader in training outsourcing. There are many benefits that eLearning outsourcing offers and we feel in this business environment it is important that your firm considers outsourcing as an option – especially if it has never done so. In this and next few posts I intend to cover why to outsource; how to find a vendor; some best practices etc.
Learning Technologies 2010 was a great learning experience. Listening to some good speakers and sharing thoughts & ideas with some equally brilliant attendees was delightful. Earlier I posted my recap of the event (day 1, day 2) mentioning the strong and definite trend towards social, informal, and collaborative learning. While the event is over, the discussions and learning continues in the blogosphere.
I’d been waiting for the results of the Unofficial Salary Survey 2009 after we wrote about it about 6 weeks back. This year the survey got over 100 responses from eLearning professionals in India – up from 54 last year. At such a growth rate this survey has the potential to be a good benchmarking source for Indian eLearning companies.
It seems more and more like this recession will further enhance the position of eLearning amongst various training options an organization could choose from for their learning and development initiatives. In March earlier this year I wrote – ‘while the times are tough, they are on our side’ (by ‘our’ I meant all technology enabled learning solution providers). Then In May I’d posted about the growth of eLearning outsourcing as projected by an India-based research agency – Valuenotes and more recently about how training companies are adopting eLearning using us as their training back-office. All of these lead upto what I have always believed in – that this downturn will lead to renewed growth in eLearning industry. Here’s more to support that thought.
Training companies the world over are changing the way they operate and the services they offer customers. An important one is the inclusion of eLearning (or online training) as part of their core offerings for existing and new customers. Such an offering is not purely driven by a cost-saving strategy on the customer’s part, but is also due to the growing acceptance of eLearning as an effective way of delivering training.
Tony Karrer’s post guided me to this article in CLO magazine by Jay Cross and Clark Quinn, in which they urge CLOs to become Chief Meta-Learning Officers.
When your clients appreciate your work, it does feel good. I was pleasantly surprised to discover this example of client appreciation while browsing the web today…
I have always believed that the present economic slowdown would positively benefit the eLearning industry in the long run. There have been several recent surveys to suggest the same (two of them are mentioned in the latter half of this post) and now, a ValueNotes report released in May 2009 specifically examines the status of the Indian eLearning outsourcing industry and predicts a high rate of growth until 2012, despite the current recession.
