Taking the plunge


An LCMS is an enterprise-wide software solution, typically installed inside the firewall. Although it will usually be integrated with an LMS, it does not necessarily have to interface with other enterprise software. So how much will an LCMS cost you? Well, according to a survey of vendors conducted in 2001 by brandon-hall.com, if you assume a five-year implementation for 8,000 learners, five servers, and 40 authors, then the average price tag was $537,000 (about $65,000 more than for an LMS). The median price was $430,000, the lowest $150,000 and the highest $1.9 million.

What do you get for this money? Well, you should get an extremely robust and versatile solution, that’s easy to install and integrates well with your existing systems. You may not be so lucky. Amongst its predictions for 2002, elearn magazine quotes Michael Feldstein of Feldstein and Associates Consulting: “Purchasers of Learning Content Management Systems will continue to be disappointed with overpriced, over-hyped, poorly implemented, and poorly documented software that supplies none of the promised benefits.” The reality is probably somewhere between. As with any new market, there is a rush of start-ups, full of good ideas but under-resourced to stay the course. Products are rushed out and early adopters suffer. There will be a shake-out and only the best will survive, either independently or absorbed into the more established LMS vendors. There are good products but you should proceed with care.

Case study: Dow Chemical

start example

Powerful evidence of the potential impact of learning content management was obtained when Dow Chemical announced the result of an independent audit of their e-learning programme by one of the big 5 accounting firms. Annual savings of $34 million were made possible through reductions in the cost of course development using their LCMS, TopClass Publisher, and through reduced delivery costs compared with traditional classroom training. Dow went from spending an average $95 per student/per course on classroom training, to only $11 per student/per course using an LCMS and electronic delivery. And these savings do not include the travel expenses saved through online deployment.

Dow’s need is to provide regulatory compliance training to a workforce of more than 60,000 employees and contractors, based in 32 countries around the world, and in 6 languages. Although some of the content has been obtained off-the-shelf from publishers like NETg, the majority has had to be created from scratch – you won’t find a course in ‘fire extinguisher safety in a benzene plant’ in many course catalogues. For courses with a longer shelf-life, Dow used specialist external contractors, but most content has been created by Dow’s own trainers and subject-experts, using TopClass’ conversion and authoring tools.

The LCMS capabilities of TopClass allow Dow to not only run complete, ‘shrink-wrapped’ courses, but to mix and match learning objects to meet special needs. The system even makes it possible to personalise the learning objects to meet individual requirements. With 5000 course completions a week, it’s not so surprising that Jon Walker, HR IT Director for Dow Chemical, was sounding pleased: "The 20-1 investment return we achieved with TopClass is the highest ROI value stream of any project we have ever done in the IT area at Dow."

end example

Take-up is so far modest. As reported in OnlineLearning Magazine’s 2001 state-of-the-industry report, 18% of organisations had purchased an LCMS as opposed to 45% who already had an LMS. Interestingly, only 16% of those currently without an LCMS said that they planned to purchase one within the next year. What does this tell us? Well, perhaps that there is low demand for an LCMS. On the other hand it could just as well be ignorance about what an LCMS is or confusion about how an LCMS differs from an LMS. Who can blame them? Come the end of 2002, it’s hard to believe that OnlineLearning Magazine will ask the same question. Rather than “do you have an LMS?” or “do you have an LCMS?”, the pertinent issue will be “do you have some form of enterprise learning platform?” and if so, “what features does it contain?”.

Singh: “Sure, the market is confused and in many ways we would be better off without the terms LMS and LCMS. Particularly in the current business climate, the goal should be to provide a learning platform that solves real business problems.” No board is going to be convinced about a concept as nebulous as ’content’. In the end, content is not king, it’s cash.




E-Learning's Greatest Hits
E-learnings Greatest Hits
ISBN: 0954590406
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 198

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