E-Learning 1.0

Buy Versus Build: A Battle of Needs
By Laura M. Francis with Randy Emelo

It's the question that haunts the dreams of every training professional, the one that gives adults nervous-stomach butterflies as though it were the first day of school. Buy versus build, the perpetual dilemma for people who are implementing e-learning.

Buy typically means purchasing off-the-shelf e-learning products that are mass-produced. Such products contain generic content not developed specifically for one organization or user population. Off-the-shelf products are also usually "plug and play," which means that their technology can be implemented without conflicting with current systems.

Build typically means creating an e-learning product from the ground up. That includes determining learning objectives, writing content, creating graphics, and crafting the design. Building also must include testing the product, by such means as pilot sessions, to ensure that it functions as anticipated.

In addition to buying off-the-shelf e-learning products or building them from the ground up, you can also customize e-learning by making cosmetic changes to a program's content and graphics, so it appears to be built just for you. I put that process under the build umbrella since the product must be modified, but customizing typically requires fewer resources and a smaller degree of commitment than starting from scratch.

Although the decision to buy or build may seem daunting, it can be boiled down into three factors to consider: needs, resources, and uniqueness. (See Buy v. Build Flowchart.)

Needs

Begin by identifying your needs, which are critical to helping you narrow your focus and determine the features most important to you. To pinpoint your needs, ask yourself these questions:

• What organizational objectives must I meet?
• What skills do I want to build?
• What information do I want to pass along in order to improve knowledge?
• What behaviors do I want to support and enhance?

You'll rarely be able to meet all of the needs you discover; therefore, you must prioritize them. Match your most pressing needs to the learning objectives of the program. For example, if you have a strong need for improved communication skills, look for a product with one or more learning objectives that meet that need. Such objectives might read, "discover three types of basic communication" or "develop a communication-based action plan for addressing an employee's poor work habits."

Resources

This factor is one that most people wish they could avoid thinking about. However, examining your resources is critical. If resources means just money to you, think again. Although money does play an important role, two other pieces of the puzzle need to be considered as well: time and personnel.

Time. When considered in terms of buying or building e-learning, time takes into account the following:

• how long you have to make your decision
• how long you have to develop an e-learning product, including testing time if necessary
• how long you have to roll out or implement the product within the organization.

To understand the importance of time resources in the buy versus build decision, consider this scenario. You're given unlimited funds for your e-learning purchase, but only a three- to six-month timeframe to review, purchase, and roll out the e-learning product. In this case, time will be the deciding factor in your choice of buying or building. By analyzing your own situation against the three variables above, you can accurately determine the importance of time in your decision.

Personnel. Another often-overlooked resource factor is personnel. That includes people needed for both implementation and support of e-learning; each group plays an integral role in your decision. As you analyze your resources, you must determine whether you have not only the personnel to implement the e-learning product within the organization (you'll need an advocate or champion to push the initiative within the company), but also whether you have the needed number of technical support staff available (for example, IT and administrative support people). If you don't have the personnel you anticipate needing, you must identify where you can obtain the required support as well as how much that support will cost, which brings us to the third resource.

Money. Both a limited and an unlimited budget can influence your choice of buying versus building. When considering your budget, you must look at the short-term and long-term benefits of the overall investment--that includes analyzing the effects of not implementing any e-learning and in turn not developing the skills, knowledge, and behaviors you identified as needs. When building, you may incur a large, up-front, one-time fee, but the investment may be lower over time. (The product will be your exclusive property once it's paid for in full.) A built product will typically need to serve at least 500 users in order to qualify as a good investment.

When buying e-learning, you must calculate how much money you anticipate paying over the life of the product, which is typically 12 to 24 months for off-the-shelf products. For example, you may think you're spending less for off-the-shelf e-learning, but you need to take into account annual renewal and maintenance fees as well as costs for upgrades or add-ons that may become available. Those hidden expenses may end up costing you more over the life of the product than you had anticipated or budgeted.

To combat rising costs, identify and document both your company's and the supplier's role and responsibilities. That can help you pinpoint added fees up front. For example, identify who will provide technical support. If it's the supplier, determine whether that's included in the purchase price, how much it will cost if it's not included (is it a flat monthly or yearly rate or do you have to pay per request?), and how long the support will be available.

Uniqueness

The third factor to consider when deciding whether to buy or build e-learning is uniqueness. Are you using e-learning to teach a proprietary business process or skill? Do you need the e-learning product to cover general skills or subjects (for example, conducting annual reviews) or more targeted information (for example, giving effective feedback to hostile, resistant, and ambivalent employees)? Can you find distinct connections between seemingly mismatched off-the-shelf products and your needs (such as an off-the-shelf communication product that you can pair with your effective feedback initiative)? Does either your industry or corporate culture (or perhaps both) preclude a generic e-learning product? Answering those questions can help you determine the degree of uniqueness you need from e-learning products.

If you're transferring a proprietary business process or skill (such as patented information for a pharmaceutical company) into an e-learning program for employees, you'll typically need to custom-build a product. You may consider customizing one that already exists, but generally a proprietary business process is so unique that no existing products will meet your needs.

If your content needs are more generic, you can still customize an off-the-shelf product to give it the feel and flare of your organization. That could include making such simple changes as putting the company's logo in the header or slightly revising the wording to match organizational language. Ultimately, you must decide how willing you are to forego originality for quicker delivery time.

Drumming up support

Once you've analyzed needs, resources, and uniqueness, you should also consider a supplemental decision factor: the support or buy-in you can expect from people within the organization. Although this factor may not affect your decision to buy or build directly, it will certainly affect how people within the organization receive your decision. Necessary support falls into three categories:

• support of upper-level management and executives
• support of like-level colleagues
• support of end users.

Management. The need for support from upper-level management and executives is easily apparent; they have the power to feed your idea to the lions or cut you a check with lots of zeros on it. Becuase this group has so much influence, people often spend all their time "selling" them and forget the other two important groups whose support they need.

Colleagues. This group constitutes your peers, those people you must interact with on a daily basis. Their basic level of influence with upper-level management and executives can affect the outcome of your initiative, so it's important to gain their support. People in this group need to understand your goals for the e-learning product, how you plan to pay for it (especially since your budget may include funds they sought for their own uses), who will use it, and how their own jobs will be affected by the initiative.

End Users. This group is the oft-forgotten low man on the totem pole. They have the hidden power to scuttle your entire plan by refusing to use the product, which will convince your colleagues and executives that the investment was wasted. End users may not intentionally sabotage the initiative; their resistance may stem from not understanding why they have to use the product or resenting not being part of the decision-making process (whether or not their opinion would've influenced your decision). Or they may resist because the product doesn't meet their needs. Don't downplay the importance of this group--their support is critical.

Although it's not always possible to get the support of all those individuals, open and direct communication with each of them can help your e-learning implementation succeed, whether you buy or build. Armed with the information in this article you should be able to choose wisely--and sleep at night.

Published:January 2002