Outsourcing Increase in 2010?

Whether companies are doing it or not, examining the outsourcing of training can provide a vital snapshot of where corporate learning and development are today.

Every other month, IDC surveys Chief Learning Officer’s Business Intelligence Board (BIB) on a variety of topics to measure the attitudes, issues and interests of senior training executives. This month’s topic is training outsourcing, and the following article will discuss the survey responses of 209 BIB members. The findings and interpretations below should interest both companies that do not currently outsource and those that do, because the answers can provide benchmarking information in regard to how companies conduct training as compared to their peers.

It is commonly recognized that companies need effective training programs in order to transfer knowledge and skills to employees, customers and partners, to retain employees and to improve speed to proficiency. Training programs can be grown organically over time, developed in-house, outsourced to a training provider or implemented using some combination of in-house and external expertise. The decision to outsource rests mainly on whether the needed volume and quality of training can be supported by internal staff. Overall, those enterprises that outsource training are satisfied with the services they receive and plan to increase or maintain current spending levels for 2010. Nearly half of enterprises use outside providers to fulfill some aspect of their training function, primarily outsourcing content development, training delivery and LMS.

Training Outsourcing Synonymous With Using External Training Provider
IDC defines training outsourcing as the ongoing transfer of the management and execution of one or more complete training processes to an external services provider. However, it is clear from the survey results over the past several years that this is not the current use of the term by the marketplace. The types of training activities being purchased suggest enterprises use the term training outsourcing synonymously with using external training providers. For the purpose of this article, we will adopt this broader usage of training outsourcing for our analysis.