Managing Costs for Custom Courses | Built to Learn: The Inside Story of How Rockwell Collins Became a True Learning Organization

It was during this time that our team also implemented a custom development process to manage our budget. Most vendors make their money on templates ”building a format for the look and feel of every page of a custom course. To control costs and maintain quality, our team developed a required template-management system that limited the number of templates developers were able to make for each course. For the first course, they were allowed to build thirty templates, fifteen more for the second, and fifteen more for the third. Ultimately they have sixty templates to work with, and the cost goes down with each course. We initially paid $38,000 per course hour , and we reduced that price to $23,000, which is extremely atypical for a custom-designed course.

By starting early, our team was able to more than meet the Year Two goals before our established deadlines, and the department stayed within budget. In the first year we were expected to submit our budget on a quarterly basis to prove that the training department was on track, but by Year Two we were so successful that doing so was no longer required.

Last year, when the vice president of HR stood up at the annual meeting to justify the work being done by our department, the CEO cut him off. He said he'd already heard enough about the great things the learning and development team had done for the company from the rest of the executive staff, so he didn't need it recapped for him. We haven't had to prove our budget since then.

YOU ARE READY FOR STEP 9 IF YOU:

Have gone live. The safest and most effective way to launch technology-based learning is to do it quietly so that you can clean up the bugs before too many people have sampled your wares.
Have marketed the project at every level of the company, from management meetings to lunchroom chats. Marketing is your primary job now. Take it seriously. Every time you sell your project, you establish buy-in and interest from the masses.
Have begun to attack your goals. The sooner you achieve them, the more respect you will earn from organizational leaders .
Have stood up to the naysayers. Don't be beaten down by those who don't support you. Face them, show them that you will not back down, and celebrate those who support you.
Have started working on phase two of your project. There will be no rest for a while. Even as you achieve your primary goals, you must always look ahead to what else needs to be accomplished.