Suited and booted


The growth of commercial e-learning from a small fragmented cottage industry into today’s much larger fragmented cottage industry has evolved around two models – Bespoke and Off The Shelf. Peter Phillips examines ‘The Business of Bespoke.’


Life was simple in the early days of e-learning, before anyone had even invented the term. There was no such thing as SCORM or AICC to worry about, as there were no learning management systems (LMS).


Courses were mostly purchased for individual use, albeit often paid for by employers, or for company ‘learning centres’, usually a spare PC in the corner. Unicorn’s first courseware for example - An Introduction to Business Finance - was delivered on five floppy disks in a box.


Companies faced the same dilemmas as now. Off the Shelf (OTS) companies pondered if they should divert into bespoke, while bespoke companies, eyeing up repeatable licence revenue, toyed with launching their own generic titles. You could do a bit of both, and many of us did, but they are different business models and difficult to mix successfully.


The business of bespoke


There were few entry barriers in the bespoke market. You just needed a PC, a box of floppies, and a suitable authoring tool. And that is still true today, apart from the floppies. Arguably the barriers are lower than ever.


Easy entry makes for plenty of competition, but also tends to drive down margins and, in the longer term, that constrains growth. Over the past decade better communications


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have exposed providers to global competition, most notably from India, resulting in further downward pressure on prices. Many UK bespoke companies have tried to use this to their advantage, setting up offshore development centres.


Unfortunately potential cost savings are rarely fully realised as the reduced direct costs can be outweighed by additional management costs in ensuring quality, creativity and cultural relevance are not compromised.


If you quoted on the basis of cost savings you can’t realise, margins are squeezed further.


The rise of rapid development


Even in the early days, there were some excellent authoring tools around. Anyone remember TenCore? Then came Iconauthor, Authorware, Toolbook and Flash. But all these required a degree of technical programming skill to use them effectively.


The rise of rapid development tools that don’t require coding skills such as the PowerPoint Add-ins from Articulate and iSpring, have lowered entry barriers further. But there is still one important constraint on new entrants - instructional design skills.


Anyone with experience of this industry knows these skilled resources are a key limit on profitable growth, although that has not always been a sufficient deterrent.


We have all winced at examples of “Click Next 150 times then answer three badly written questions”.


It’s never been easy to find good instructional designers who understand the subject matter, the principles of effective learning and have


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