Ask the suppliers

Buying would be a pretty lonely occupation if there weren’t any sellers. And who better to paint the picture of the perfect buyer than those who spend their time peddling the future, the e-learning suppliers themselves.

Andy Key is Chief Operating Officer for LINE Communications, providers of bespoke content and consultancy services. Andy believes that a successful supplier/buyer relationship is like a good marriage: “First of all you must understand what you want, which, as a client means really knowing what your business needs are. Then you need to understand your partner, what capabilities they have and how they do things. Lastly you need to give it time and be prepared to put in the time to make it work.” The mind boggles.

Andy complains that the tendering process can often get out of hand: “The time and resources that tendering is taking could easily eat up any cost savings for the customer. From the supplier’s point of view the situation is worse. We reckon it costs 10-15% of the contract value to submit a proposal. If the customer requests 8-10 companies to tender then the equivalent of the whole contract value is being spent before the job even starts. These costs don’t just get lost – they have to be passed back to customers in future projects. Our recommendation is to build long-term relationships with a few suppliers, as Volvo has done with us.”

Saffron Interactive is a provider of bespoke e-learning content. Hanif Sazen, the Chief Executive, also has clear ideas on what makes for a successful relationship: “For an organisation like Saffron, a successful project is one that is both profitable and has provided benefit to the client. This helps us to stay in business and to secure repeat business. So, a good buyer from our perspective is one that understands the learning outcomes that he or she is looking for and then is able to articulate these. We can then work on how to measure these outcomes and how to meet them.”

“We come across buyers who make decisions based purely on technology or multimedia. These projects can be easy to win, but it is very difficult to show value as the buyer does not provide the project with a clear direction, based on value. These projects may get sign off, but the training is then very rarely used - a poor outcome for the buyer as well as the supplier.”

For suppliers of off-the-shelf content such as SkillSoft, the benefits of addressing a real business problem are just as great. Kay Baldwin-Evans is Director, Marketing: “The ideal buyer is looking to solve a real business need; the project has clear objectives. Unfortunately, some customers don’t really know what they want or why – the end result is all too often a load of products that don’t get used. Buyers should also be careful to ensure that, even if there is a clear business need, that e-learning is an appropriate solution, alone or in combination with other methods.”

“It’s also vital that the buyer has support from the IT department, before they start the buying process. IT doesn’t like to be brought in at the last minute and certainly not after the decision has been made. And most importantly, the ideal buyer has support at senior management level – the higher the better. That way the project will have sufficient momentum to overcome the inevitable obstacles. It is also more likely to have a realistic budget.”