Custom training content is an important part of a quality training experience. With that said, despite the long production cycle of custom training content, hiring a dedicated resource is not a feasible undertaking in many companies.
Not to forget, thinking trusting just one instructional designer to create a complete training curriculum is not fair.
Thanks to these challenges, outsourcing the development of training content has become an increasingly popular trend, and for good reason.
Outsourcing the development of training content enables businesses to deliver quality training experiences without having to go through the hassle of developing quality training content. Outsourcing is a cheaper and faster alternative to developing training content in-house.
With that said, despite outsourcing elearning development, it is smart for businesses to invest in a quality content authoring tool.
A content authoring tool will help you keep up with the evolving training needs of your organization, while also minimizing your dependence on a third party training content vendor.
Here are just a few of the abilities you will have with a quality content authoring tool:
Ability To Update Existing Training Content
Training is not rigid or permanent, and neither is the content you will use for training. Once a content vendor delivers the training content to you, it is highly probable that a few months down the line, you will need to update the training content in order to keep it relevant.
If there are any significant changes, it makes sense to go back to your training content vendor and ask them for updated training content. However, for minute changes, dealing with a training vendor may use more time (and money) than what you are expecting to save.
A content authoring tool will allow you to make small updates to the training content quickly and independently.
Ability To Create Sensitive Training Content In-House
One of the biggest concerns surrounding outsourcing the development of training content is data integrity. This problem can be solved with a content authoring tool.
Simply outsource the non-sensitive parts of your training and develop the rest in-house with a content authoring tool.
The best elearning authoring tools offer a variety of features that you can employ to create training content that is just as high quality as the content provided to you by a third party vendor.
Ability To Address Temporary Training Needs
Temporary training needs to arise quickly. However, in most cases, temporary training content is easy to put together. In such a scenario, coordinating with an elearning content vendor can turn out to be time-consuming and unnecessarily expensive.
Instead of having to pay for training content for temporary needs, businesses can have their in-house learning and development team develop it with the help of a content authoring tool.
Ability To Replicate Course Quality In The Future
As your organization and its training needs grow, depending on a third party company for your training content needs will not be feasible in the future.
If, in such a scenario, your organization has already been using a content authoring tool, starting the in-house production of training content will not be much of a challenge. Your learning and development team will already be familiar with the software and its abilities.
Conclusion
For any business process that is outsourced, businesses usually want to reach a point where they can conduct the process within the organization, reducing and eventually eliminating the need for depending on an external partner. In the case of producing quality training content, a content authoring tool is a critical component of enabling your organization to independently create elearning content for its training needs.
