E-Learning Portals--Who Needs Them?
By Cornelia C. Weggen

In efforts to categorize and divide portals into B2C, B2B, B2E, horizontal, vertical, and diagonal portals, industry watchers often fail to raise the question of whether and how e-learning portals might create value for organizations. Portals promise many benefits to corporate buyers, but organizations should consider the pros and cons before rushing in.

Excitement over the potential of the Internet to transform traditional corporate training has inspired the creation of a flood of New Economy companies, all of which are rushing to claim territory on the electronic frontier. As these companies busy themselves creating a new e-learning industry, a subcategory of e-learning portals has emerged to aggregate these products. Last year, approximately 100 portals opened their doors claiming to be the primary destination for online learning.

Corporate buyers are enthusiastic about the emergence of e-learning portals, according to the Masie Center, ranking them second among all new e-learning implementations in corporate America. However, conversations with corporate buyers indicate that their understanding of the various players and offerings is remarkably unsophisticated. Limited product knowledge, low market transparency, and an overwhelming number of products and services offered by hundreds of small startups represent serious challenges for buyers. Adding to the problem are concerns that some e-learning vendors may not be around a year from now.

So-called e-learning gurus, analysts, and the press have created a huge amount of hype around e-learning portals, and that has served to fuel corporations' excitement about this emerging training segment. In their effort to categorize and divide portals into B2C, B2B, B2E, horizontal, vertical, or even diagonal portals, however, these industry watchers have often failed to raise the question of whether and how a portal might create value for an organization. A portal solution promises many benefits to corporate buyers, but a number of drawbacks should be taken into consideration before rushing in.

The pros and cons

Overall, portals can help deliver learning to a geographically dispersed workforce effectively. This lean training solution is particularly well-suited for small and medium-size businesses that don't have the need or resources for full-scale custom course development, learning management software, or a large implementation.

On the flip side, potential buyers need to be aware that the sheer number of course offerings and vendors a portal typically handles often leaves little room to monitor courseware quality closely. Engaging multimedia content is key to the success of e-learning. All too often, though, companies still have to learn the difference between e-learning and e-reading the hard way.

What might be even more critical is the fact that portals rarely present a strategic solution. Workforce development and e-learning should be part of a company's overall business strategy. Planning and executing a successful e-learning strategy involves organizational and individual needs assessment, skills gap analysis, goal setting, and curriculum design based on the previously identified needs. Upon completing the program, an e-learning vendor should support regular reinforcement of the course material, performance tracking and evaluation, testing, and training effectiveness analysis (ROI). Many portals offer a light version of e-learning--limited to no customizations, learner management, or other value-added services--and they'll have a hard time serving the complex needs of large corporations.

Here's a pro and con look at e-learning portals:

E-LEARNING PORTALS
PROS	CONS
Consolidated access to a large variety of aggregated content Independence from one content vendor Immediate access to learning due to minimized deployment time No large up-front technology and software acquisition costs No cumbersome implementation behind firewalls Flexible, convenient, and fast access to learning from multiple locations Low or no maintenance costs No congestion or overload of network infrastructure Reduced in-house IT demands Overall cost lower than for customized e-learning solutions	Course quality may vary with the multitude of vendors Nonstrategic solution Limited options for customization Often lack evaluation tools, learning management, and other value-added services Security issues of storing sensitive employee data outside the organization High-speed Internet access needed to support media-rich courseware Little specialized content in vertical areas May offer limited technical and instructor support and bear certain execution risks No direct control over hosted content and data Broad market acceptance still uncertain
Source: WR Hambrecht + Company

If the decision has already been made to go with a portal solution, training directors need to identify a vendor that's competent, experienced, and able to deliver exactly what the organization needs. The right dot.com partner can mean the difference between success and failure. The vast majority of e-learning portal providers are small start-up businesses with unproven business models, which, in a best-case scenario, won't generate cash for two or three years. How can corporate buyers know which of the hundreds of portals will be the survivors?

Among the criteria developed and described in "Corporate E-Learning: Exploring a New Frontier" are first-mover advantage, brand leadership, management experience, global reach, and scalability in terms of research and development, delivery technology, and distribution. Most important, the report identifies ownership of engaging, highly interactive content as a key differentiator among competitors. The leaders in the e-learning market will be players integrating quality content, robust learning management systems, and a suite of value-added services.

What exactly does that mean for the portal market? In the short term, portals will enhance their offerings with more features and services to respond to customer demands and to differentiate themselves from competitors. Most needed are tools facilitating course selection and evaluation for buyers; corporate customers are overwhelmed and confused by the number of players and offerings. Helping clients identify specific content and its quality will likely be a more crucial role for portals than aggregating a large number of courses.

Helping clients identify specific content and its quality will likely be a more crucial role for portals than aggregating a large number of courses.

Another important component e-learning portals will need to provide is learning management software. Portals distributing content offer only half of what customers want. Expect portals to increasingly add such technology components as learning management systems, authoring tools, live collaboration software, and knowledge management capabilities to their product mix. The smartest players will round off their offerings with services that include skills gap analysis, e-learning consulting, portal customization, online mentoring, request-for-proposal (RFP) capabilities, community hosting, and comprehensive technical support.

The perfect portal doesn't exist yet, but players that have already aggregated a critical mass of course offerings and, in Hambrecht's view, are closest to providing a complete e-learning solution are Click2learn.com, Learn2.com, KnowledgePlanet.com, THINQ (formerly TrainingNet), Headlight.com, and eMind.

New portal entrants and existing players will devise more diverse business models and offer more value-added services and tools. This year, expect to see intense competition combined with increased consolidation. More competition is healthy, but only so many Amazon.coms can and will survive. And, as with Amazon, first movers with established brand names should enjoy a competitive advantage. Within the next 12 to 18 months, the learning portal war may well be over, leaving customers with a handful of "super portals" to serve most of their needs.

Published: September 2000