Using Single Source Publishing to Get You Through a Recession
By Dawn Poulos

Corporate learning historically has been the low hanging fruit of budget cuts during a recession, and the current economic downturn so far appears to be no exception. CLOs are being asked to trim staff and freeze hiring, technology suppliers report delayed or cancelled contracts for learning systems and infrastructure items, and informal poll results all point towards curtailed spending.  

But how did we get to this point? Doesn’t every best-in-class company claim that its greatest asset is its people? Isn’t corporate training responsible for the development of this human capital? As such, it seems that the contribution of the training organization should be obvious to the long-term success of a business and, therefore, crucial in retaining high value employees. Training should be the go-to resource for providing performance improvement options to enhance efficiency during a period of having to do more with less.  

The root of the problem lies in that many training organizations fail to realize that the profit-and-loss calculations or return-on-investment concepts used to justify other departments’ existence are also applicable to them. Unlike other functions in which there are sustainable and repeatable techniques that drive value and minimize expenses, there are few obvious and permanent cost-cutting results to be gained through training, short of slashing the number of courses developed. 

Let’s delve into this point more deeply. The tendency of most learning organizations is to create content for many learning purposes using multiple tools. This creates redundancy in the development of learning materials created for different delivery formats. According to research compiled by Brandon-Hall, it takes 34 hours of development work to create one hour of instructor-led training, including design, lesson plans, handouts, PowerPoint slides, and so forth. In addition, it typically takes an additional 33 hours to convert only the PowerPoint slides from this instructor-led training into e-learning courseware. Is it any wonder that training is viewed by most corporate executives as simply a cost center? 

Enter single sourcing

The silver lining emerging from the recession cloud is the trend towards single sourcing. Single sourcing is defined as taking one production pass on training content and publishing it through multiple formats.  Done correctly, it has the potential to end many of the poor practices prevalent in creating learning--as it has successfully done in other areas such as publishing and technical documentation.

By its very name, single sourcing eschews the concept of designing and storing content separately for each individual output format. Instead, it advocates designing content for reusability so that a single content production pass enables the synergistic combination of all learning information into a single location for publication to any current or future delivery channel. 

Using single source techniques, content authors are no longer concerned that the output of the content they are writing may be a web page of an online course. Instead, they are tasked with neutralizing content context so it can be used across multiple audiences. Moreover, single sourcing requires content to take on a more formalized structure than it has in the past in order to support multiple delivery formats and provide on-demand learning. In general, this means that many lengthy documents need to be broken into much smaller, more granular elements of learning content.

As such, single sourcing requires more up-front planning—and more than a small dose of change management. But the rewards can be significant.

Content synchronization

The biggest driver of single sourcing has been the insurmountable challenges associated with having to manage and maintain hundreds of versions of the same content—the result of redundant development. Updating training currently means many modifications to multiple files. As the volume of content increases, so does the time and expense it takes to update it. The alternatives are to throw more bodies at the problem or live with content that is out-of-date and inconsistent across blended learning products until all updates are completed. 

Conversely, a single source approach creates an environment where a single content change triggers the automatic synchronization of outputs where that content appears. As the volume of learning solutions and content increases, the cost of updates remains minor. In other words, a sustainable, repeatable process typically produces permanent cost-cutting results.

On-demand customization

Most training organizations create derivative versions of their training to meet the needs of various audiences based on such factors as job function, geography, brand needs, product configurations, and so forth. The dilemma for training organizations is that while these customized courses are the best way to meet the needs of individual learners, they also require substantial resources to create and therefore are the first items hit by budget cuts.

Because single sourcing takes a context-free, granular approach to developing content, it sets the foundation for an environment where end users can create and customize their own learning experience. Or to put it another way, reusable content developed during the initial development pass hopefully can be assembled on-the-fly based on user input and delivered through the most convenient channel. 

This creates a business model that is of undeniable value to the C-suite: a single investment in a self-service web application that can yield any number of customized courses to meet the critical learning on-demand needs of employees.  

Future proofing

Single sourcing not only demands designing for reusability, it also means storing for reusability in an open platform-agnostic XML format in order to be effectively reused for tomorrow’s tools. Only a few years ago, instructor-led training was the singular channel for learning. Now that many technologies are second nature, training organizations can waste no time recreating their plethora of legacy content for the web.  Considering the estimated 200 hours of development work for every hour of e-learning, this is a significant investment.

Moreover, as emerging technologies stabilize, smart training organizations will be able to leverage their legacy content almost immediately through these new delivery channels. The rest will be throwing another 200 hours of development work for every hour of training and enforcing the profound disconnect between the training department and top tier executives.