9 WAYS TO TRIM TRAINING COSTS

Mohana Radhakrishnan
The Economic Times

When sweeping budget cuts are made by companies, training is one of the first to feel the heat. Training organisations must have the ability to eliminate waste and embrace operational efficiency. Almost all training professionals have to justify the value of training to their management. Over the last few months, Expertus, which helps business growth through maximising training investment, has delved into the subject of costs in training organisations. Here are nine ways to trim the training operational expense. Consolidate learning technologies: Invest in delivery platform management technology, authoring systems technologies and learning management system (LMS). Every organisation wants to optimise or consolidate learning technologies. By reducing the number of systems and simplifying infrastructure, there will be fewer system support requirements, less maintenance, fewer upgrades, and fewer resource requirements.

Convert ILT to e-Learning: One of the key strategies organisations are considering is converting instructor-led training to e-learning. The obvious gains here are reduction in travel, facility, equipment, and trainer costs. E-learning can be available 24/7, but organisations don’t have to deliver all their content as classic e-learning modules.

Optimise learning technology support and administration:
This refers to the administrative work going on within the training group. Software as a service plays an integral role here. Organisations today don’t have to buy, implement and manage learning technology, now that a growing number of LMS providers offer their software as a hosted service. Organisations can also consider third-party companies that host and help manage learning systems.

Centralise services: Learning systems in an organisations is distributed and totally inefficient. That’s because there are multiple people in multiple groups completing the same tasks. Various groups within an organisation have different processes. But often, these process differences are driven more by structures or challenges within their skill set or lack of bandwidth.

Improve vendor management: Benefits are obvious if some type of vendor management programme is implemented. Most of them are accomplished by simply reducing the number of vendors.

Optimise learning operations: The real keys to improving business processes are audits and documentation. A process audit helps determine exactly how a process is being done, and how differently each person is doing it. Once the audit is complete, it’s important to document the internal process.

Reporting produce less data, more intelligence: In terms of reporting, cost and activity measurement is valid in few regards. But many leaders struggle in this area, feeling they’re bringing to the executive table data that has limited strategic value. One strategy is to work with the various business groups because most of them can provide some valuable data on their group’s performance.

Optimise training resources: Optimise the utilisation of classrooms, instructors, course material and equipment.

Run your training organisation like a business: It’s critical to identify your training organisation’s core skills and determine the true value to the company. If your value is not found in administration services or in technology management, it might be a good idea to shed that work or find ways to streamline it.

(The author is vice-president, Client Services, Expertus)