Why innovation and how to innovate ?
Companies, who seek learning solutions to get help in either solving their business problems or meeting their growth aspirations, expect their employees to become more effective and productive by using such solutions. But, how much money are they willing to spend on learning? Usually, annual budget in any customer organization for learning and training of its employees ranges from 1,500 to 2,000 USD per employee. A global organization with its operations spread across countries and continents can have up to 18,000 to 22,000 employees. Several examples can be found from sectors like finance, insurance, etc. There may be (and in most cases, will be) a network of business partners who are involved in the
Does this mean that for a 20,000 strong organization, the annual budget for all learning and training activities goes up to 40 MUSD? I don’t think so. Sounds unrealistic. Such a big organization will always try to achieve economies of scale and reduce their learning spend per employee. Further, such organizations will in all probability have several expense avenues hiding in their hierarchical structure eating into the available budget. To add to that, there would be multiple consultants and service providers engaged with the organization trying to address their learning needs. This can potentially leave an individual learning service provider with a pie of around 4-6 MUSD!! Do the numbers look encouraging now? May be for some, may be not for others like me! J
Is it possible to provide a comprehensive learning solution in this much money and achieve measurable business impact to a 20,000 strong organization having workforce operating out of more than 80 countries and speaking, say, 30 different languages?
This could be a big question faced by the organization and a bigger challenge faced by the learning service providers! I as a service provider want to deliver most effective learning solution to the customer within budget and at the same time want to ensure my own growth by increasing my revenue productivity. How to crack this one?
Innovate! I strongly feel so.
I can think of three facets to innovate in this scenario.
· One, innovate to address customer’s learning needs within the available budget. Innovate on the learning technology and learning processes to give most effective learning solution. And, of course, ensure that solution provided is end to end and meets that identified learning needs which align with the business problems or growth aspirations.
· Second, innovate to address customer’s learning needs within the available budget and still maintain revenue productivity. Innovate on the solution offering and ways of solution delivery so as to have transaction based pricing models. And, of course, ensure that solution provided is end to end and meets that identified learning needs which map to business needs.
· Third, understand the real business pain points, pick one and innovate to provide a learning based point solution (not the end to end solution). Such a point solution needs to be quick, effective and should impact a larger user base who will be the end customers of the organization. Needless to say, this must have transaction based pricing!
I will talk more about the third facet in my next blogs.
