TABLE OF INDEX

Sl No. Particulars Page No

1 Introduction 2-3

2 Pestle Analysis 4-10

3 National Trends in L&D Industry 11-26

4 Global Trends in L&D Industry 27-41

5 Business Models used in L&D Industry 42-53

6 Pricing Logic 54-64

7 Future Projections for L&D Industry 64-75

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 LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT INDUSTRY

A survey of 5,300 middle managers in 180 companies spread across 13 industries shows
employee disconnect with corporate India’s human capital development efforts. A little over
half (55 per cent) of those surveyed felt that their organization’s learning and development
(L&D) interventions were not very relevant or aligned to business. Only 38 per cent said their
company’s L&D strategy was core to the organization strategy. Fifty-five per cent of those
surveyed were happy about the learning and growth opportunities provided by their
organization. Almost 66 per cent identified the lack of ready-to-implement tips and relevance as
the biggest challenge to L&D interventions. What employees wanted from the L&D department
were on-the-job learning opportunities and more emphasis on leadership development efforts
across all levels, according to the survey. A majority of respondents (70 per cent) believed that
their learning interventions were lagging in developing leadership skills. The survey conducted
by Bombay, a talent assessment and talent development firm, is part of effort to develop People
Capital Index, which evaluates organizations based on perceptions of employees on employer’s
training and development initiatives.

Based on the findings, Bombay has come out with a list of best 50 companies in People Capital
Index. Mohit Gundecha, chief executive officer & co-founder of Jombay, said a key takeaway
of this survey was that it provided an insight into what differentiated the best 50 companies in
People Capital Index from other companies. “These companies are enabling their employees,
supporting professional development and genuinely care for their employees,” he added.
However, most respondents highlighted the need to marry L&D with business and
organization’s objective. When asked how much time employees were willing to spend every
day to improve their behavioral competencies, a majority said they could spend 15 to 30
minutes on a regular basis. While almost everyone was keen to have classroom training, a vast
majority showed preference for mobile learning and on-the-job learning. Most respondents said
they rarely practiced what they had been taught. “When employees get lost in daily hustle and
bustle, the adoption fizzles out over time,” said one-third of the respondents. A majority of the
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respondents were of the view that the metrics to track learning needed to change. The success of
L&D initiative should focus on learner’s engagement and on learner’s impact and competency
development, said 83 per cent of the respondents. Over four-fifths of respondents (82 per cent)
said that L&D activities needed to be technology-enabled, and almost one in three said their
preferred learning medium was mobile. “Learning has to be real time, all the time,” the survey
noted.

INTO EMPLOYEES' MINDS

55% employees feel their organization’s L&D interventions are not very relevant or aligned to
business
70% respondents believe that their learning interventions are lagging in developing leadership
skills
38% of respondents say their company’s L&D strategy is core to the organization strategy.
Almost 66% identify the lack of ready-to-implement tips and relevance as the biggest challenge
to L&D interventions
Majority of employees are willing to spend 15 -30 minutes every day to improve their
behavioral competencies

Source: Survey by talent assessment firm Jombay

PESTLE ANALYSIS -LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT INDUSTRY

PESTLE Analysis is a simple, useful and widely-used tool that helps you understand the "big
picture" of your Political, Economic, Socio-Cultural and Technological, Legal and
Environmental aspects. As such, it is used by business leaders worldwide to build their vision
of the future.

PEST analysis includes four factors:

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 Political factors relate to how the government intervenes in the economy. Specifically,
political factors have areas including tax policy, labor law, environmental law, trade
restrictions, tariffs, and political stability. Political factors may also include goods and
services which the government aims to provide or be provided (merit goods) and those that
the government does not want to be provided (demerit goods or merit beds). Furthermore,
governments have a high impact on the health, education, and infrastructure of a nation.
 Economic factors include economic growth, exchange rates, inflation rate, and interest rates.
These factors greatly affect how businesses operate and make decisions. For example,
interest rates affect a firm's cost of capital and therefore to what extent a business grows and
expands. Exchange rates can affect the costs of exporting goods and the supply and price of
imported goods in an economy.
 Social factors include the cultural aspects and health consciousness, population growth rate,
age distribution, career attitudes and emphasis on safety. High trends in social factors affect
the demand for a company's products and how that company operates. For example, the
ageing population may imply a smaller and less-willing workforce (thus increasing the cost
of labor). Furthermore, companies may change various management strategies to adapt to
social trends caused from this (such as recruiting older workers).
 Technological factors include technological aspects like R&D activity, automation,
technology incentives and the rate of technological change. These can determine barriers to
entry, minimum efficient production level and influence the outsourcing decisions.
Furthermore, technological shifts would affect costs, quality, and lead to innovation.

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 The table below lists some possible factors that could indicate important environmental
influences for a business under the PESTLE headings:
Political / Legal Economic Social Technological

- Environmental - Economic - Income distribution - Government

regulation and growth spending on research
protection

- Taxation - Monetary policy - Demographics - Government and

industry focus on
technological effort

- International trade - Government - Labor / social - New discoveries

regulation spending mobility and development

- Consumer protection - Policy towards - Lifestyle changes - Speed of technology

unemployment transfer

- Employment law - Taxation - Attitudes to work - Rates of

and leisure technological
obsolescence

- Government - Exchange rates - Education - Energy use and

organization / attitude costs

- Competition regulation - Inflation - Fashions and fads - Changes in material

sciences

- Stage of the - Health & welfare - Impact of changes

business cycle in Information
technology

- Economic - Living conditions - Internet!

"mood" -

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 consumer
confidence

POLITICAL FACTORS

 Government of India has understood this fact and has initiated its 'skill India' project with
an ambitious target of imparting skill training 500 million people by 2022
 Adequate funding has been leveraged through its MSME and Mudra schemes.
 The Government aims to increase this training capacity to 15 mn/year by setting up new
1,500 vocational training institutes (ITI/ITCs).
 It also involves 50,000 skills development centers to be promoted in the PPP
 India’s corporate spend on training is <2% of employee spends while most advanced
countries spends anywhere between 10 to 15% on the same
 Education sector gets ₹94,854 crore, research gets leg up
 Development of Skills: (I) Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) is a scheme
to provide short-term training to one crore persons (75 lakh fresh training and 25 lakh
RPL) during 2016-2020 across the sectors in the country. (ii) SANKALP - A World Bank
supported project with an objective to enhance system capacity and effectiveness to
increased access to improved quality and market relevant skills training, (iii) Jan
Shiskhan Sansthan provides grants-in-aid to reputed National Institutes including NGO
for conducting short-term training programme in various trades (iv) International co-
operation programme provides support for key international/national engagement for
strengthening the skilling eco-system on pan India basis (v) National Skill Development

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 Fund was set up in 2009 by the Government of India for raising funds from Government
and non-Government Sectors for skill development in the country.
 Strengthening of Skill Institutions: Under this scheme grants-in-aid is provided to
National Instructional Media Institute (NIMI) which is executing agency for
Development of Instructional Media Packages (IMPs) for course under Craftsmen
Training Scheme (CTS) and Skill Development Initiative Scheme for Modular
Employable skills (MES), and to Central Staff Training and Research Institute (CSTARI)
which conducts staff training courses and carries out research for the Qualitative and
Quantitative improvement of Vocational Training. This scheme also aims at setting up of
four Indian Institute of Skills (centers of excellence) one each at Mumbai & Ahmadabad
under PPP model and two at Kanpur, one under PPP model and the other fully funded by
Central Government on the lines of Institute of Technical Education (ITE) Singapore.
 Apprenticeship and Trainings. Organize, conduct and impart vocational/apprenticeship
training throughout the country, upgrading training infrastructure, opening of new
Training Institutes, supporting State Government for Skill Development &
Apprenticeship training and linking industries to train for gainful employment.
 National Board for Skill Certifications. National Board for Skill Certification was
established as an autonomous professional Board to conduct examinations, assessments
and award national level certificates in compliance with National Skill Qualifications
Framework for Skill development courses in the country.
 Scheme of Polytechnics’. This is a centrally Sponsored Scheme aimed at providing
strategic funding to state higher and technical institutions. States will develop
comprehensive state higher education plans that utilize an interconnected strategy to
address issues of expansion, equity and excellence together. Central funding will be
linked to academic, administrative and financial reforms of state higher education. This
also includes the provision for support to polytechnics.

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ECONOMIC FACTORS
 Market Size: India has the world’s largest population of about 500 million in the age
bracket of 5-24 years and this provides a great opportunity for the education sector. The
learning and development industry in India are estimated at US$ 91.7 billion in FY18 and
is expected to reach US$ 101.1 billion in FY19.
 Number of colleges and universities in India reached 39,050 and 903, respectively in
2017-18. India had 36.64 million students enrolled in higher education in 2017-18. Gross
Enrolment Ratio in higher education reached 25.8 per cent in 2017-18.
 The country has become the second largest market for e-learning after the US. The sector
is expected to reach US$ 1.96 billion by 2021 with around 9.5 million users.
 The total amount of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflow into the education sector in
India stood at US$ 2.47 billion from April 2000 to March 2019, according to data
released by Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT)
 Of all the startups in India, 3,500 are catering to the education space. These startups
received close to US$ 700 million funding in 2018.
 The Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India is also planning to
raise around Rs 1 lakh crore (US$ 15.52 billion) from private companies and high net
worth individuals to finance improvement of education infrastructure in the country.
 India has signed a loan agreement with World Bank under 'Skills Acquisition and
Knowledge Awareness for Livelihood Promotion' (SANKALP) Project to enhance
institutional mechanisms for skills development.
 Singapore is going to open its first skill development center in Assam, which will provide
vocational training to youth in the region.

SOCIAL FACTORS

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  Personal characteristics: It has long been recognized that participation in formal
education and training, including in VET, differs widely and systematically among those
from different socioeconomic groups, for example, by gender, age, rural urban
background, income and ethnicity (see Lamb, Long & Malley 1998; OECD 1998).
However, in recent surveys, the ABS found, contrary to the above, that the incidence of
on-the-job training was very similar at least for males (71.6%) and females (71.7%) and
also by area of usual residence (73% for capital cities compared with 70% for other
areas). See also the earlier ABS surveys of training (ABS 1990, 1994; Schwartz et al.
1997).
 Prior education: Many authors have found that better-educated workers paradoxically
receive more training opportunities (Blundell, Dearden & Manghir 1996; Groot 1997).
Blandy et al. (1999) found that, in Australia, prior education and training increases the
likelihood that an employee will receive further training opportunities, but reduces the
number of extra hours that an employee actually spends on further training. They also
found that: Australian firms are at least somewhat effective in their selection processes in
matching trainable people to jobs requiring training.
 Mobility of workforce: Studies have been conducted which considered the mobility of
the workforce, at a national level, as an important training influencing factor. For
example, Groot (1997) noted that the rate of mobility of the factors of production, such
as labor mobility and technological change, was an important determinant of the returns
to training: High labor mobility may result in low returns and low investments in on-the-
job training. Labor mobility in the United States in general is much higher than in
Europe Ö Thus the wage effects of training in European countries appear to be higher
than in the United States (Groot 1997, p.13) Hashemites (1994) comparison of training
in automobile plants in Japan and the United States of America shows that the high
propensity of American workers to move and United States managements failure to build
trust-based employment relations has made it difficult to implement Japanese-style,
long-term training in many American firms (Hashimoto 1994). The principal
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 components of Japanese training, which Hashimoto identifies as instrumental in shaping
Japanese highly productive labor force, are: reliance on self-study for technical training
of junior workers by senior workers sharing of information and responsibilities lifelong
training by job rotation the occasional infusion of formal training throughout an
employee’s tenure with the enterprise
 Job characteristics: It is difficult to separate worker characteristics from job
characteristics as key factors influencing participation in training and development
activities by Australian employees, since the type of people in certain types of job is
strongly interrelated. Using contemporaneous and longitudinal analyses however,
thereon (1995) concluded that participation in training was predicted more by employee
personal characteristics, such as gender, age and use of career strategies, and job level
factors of managerial level and occupational level

TECHNOLOGY FACTORS

 Technology enabled learning can be an effective tool if the lessons are designed
according to instructional design principles. Additionally, online training is not restricted
to a specific time or location. Employees can complete training materials anytime and
anywhere they have an Internet connection. Websites can deliver the primary
instructional content or extend and enhance training content. Many online employee
training programs require registration and have the capability to monitor employee
performance through the use of a learning management system. Increasingly
organizations are leveraging technology enabled instructional methods that utilize
technology such as electronic learning via web-based training, mobile technology such as
I-pads, and simulations in the delivery of instruction. A primary benefit of technology-
based training is leveraging the scale and scope of employee training programs. If an

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 organization is required to train multiple employees technology offers unlimited options
based on relatively low-cost and employee accessibility.

NATIONAL TRENDS IN LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT INDUSTRY

1.Free digital learning course launched by TCS to build career skills

TCS iON, a unit of IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has collaborated with All India
Council for Technical Education (AICTE) with an aim to offer students with a digital learning
course to prepare them with career skills.
TCS iON has around 20 hour-career skills courses available freely. Courses are expected to
cover issues like corporate etiquette, effective e-mail writing, impactful presentations and IT
awareness that will be accessible to students through the duration of their degree course.
The course will be available to students present across 10,000 AICTE and will be opened on
TCS iON Digital Learning Hub through any device.
This launch is to fill the gap in student’s capabilities in terms of career skills. While students
may have strong academic performance but the lack of basic soft skills such as effective
communication and interpersonal skills may result in students missing out on job opportunities.
Through the cooperation, TCS, together with educational institutions, aims to help students
acquire better career skills.
Ramaswamy, TCS iON Global Head, said the company (TCS) had last year selected 63,000
students from over 2.8 lakh applicants through its National Qualifier Test, but could extend
offer letters to only about 30,000. Many of those not selected lacked these career skills. Thus, to
enhance the quality of talent pool this program has been launched.
The distinctive course will help enhance placement opportunities for AICTE institutions, thus
introducing a strong start to the professional careers of the students. The guidance provided by
TCS iON will prepare students for their professional careers and help nurture a highly qualified,
knowledgeable, and skilled workforce.

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2.Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship launches Mahatma Gandhi
National Fellowship Programme with IIM Bangalore

To boost skill development at the district level, the Ministry of Skill Development and
Entrepreneurship (MSDE) today signed a contract with the Indian Institute of Management
(IIM) Bangalore for introducing a two-year fellowship programme Mahatma Gandhi National
Fellowship (MGNF) programme.
The contract was signed in the presence of Shri R. Subrahmanyam, Secretary, Dept. of Higher
Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development, GoI, Dr. K P Krishnan, Secretary,
Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Shri G Raghuram, Director, IIM,
Bangalore, Mr. Junaid Ahmad, Country Director, World Bank, and officials from the Ministry
of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, GoI. The program has been developed under the able
guidance and leadership of Dr. Mahendra Nath Pandey, Minister for Skill Development and
Entrepreneurship; who has given a renewed focus to skill development at the district level,
since his joining at the Ministry.
Designed under Skills Acquisition and Knowledge Awareness for Livelihood Promotion
(SANKALP) the fellowship aims to address the challenge of non-availability of personnel for
implementation of various programmes at national, state and district levels.
The MGNF programme has an in-built component of on-ground practical experience with the
district administration. Launched on a pilot basis in 75 districts across Gujarat, Karnataka,
Meghalaya, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, eligible fellows for the programme must
be in 21-30 years age-group, have a graduation degree from a recognized university and be
citizens of India. Proficiency in official language of state of fieldwork will be mandatory.
Commenting on the partnership, Dr. KP Krishnan, Secretary, Skill Development and
Entrepreneurship, said, "A dearth of individuals who can implement and manage skill
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development programmes at the grass roots level is a deficit we seek to address with this
fellowship programme with IIM Bangalore. MGNF seeks to create a cadre of young individuals
and train them in a blended academic programme that provides both academic inputs and a
component of field immersion at the district level. Besides allowing for an immersive
experience to fellows under the programme, MGNF will also be an attractive proposition for
those who wish to eke a career in public policy. It is only fitting that we have launched this
programme on the 150th birth centenary of Gandhi ji who was strong believer in decentralized
planning."
"Through this endeavor we are ensuring participation of a larger community for local merit
good and we are certain that this program will attract great talent which will further strengthen
the skill component at the district administration level," he further added.
Shri R. Subrahmanyam, Secretary, Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human
Resource Development, said, "Today, our nation's youth is willing and is anxious to contribute
to our nation building exercise and to the society at large. It must be our effort to ensure that
they are given the right opportunities to extend their support. This is a great initiative by MSDE
and I am sure that it will see through all the challenges at the district level and come out to be a
great outcome-based program."
In the course of their training, fellows will work under the close supervision of state skill
development missions (SSDM) and will spend time and effort in understanding skilling
challenges and gaps in the district. They are expected to enrich skilling programmes by bringing
in fresh thinking to local planning, execution, community interaction and outcome management.
Fellows will receive a stipend of Rs. 50,000 in the first year and Rs. 60,000 in the second year.
On completion of their engagement, they will be awarded a Certificate in Public Policy and
Management from IIM Bangalore.
Shri G Raghuram, Director, IIM, Bangalore, said, "The Mahatma Gandhi National Fellowship
programme is aimed to identify and train a group of young, committed and dynamic
individuals, who will leverage the IIMB ecosystem in management, entrepreneurship and public
policy and work with the district administration in strengthening the process of skilling to create
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a vibrant local district economy. Its unique design will allow the Fellows to take academic
learning at IIM Bangalore and use it in the field under faculty mentorship with the goal of
understanding challenges and barriers that the district ecosystem faces in fostering growth and
development."
Launched by the Government in January 2018, SANKALP is a World Bank loan assisted
project that aims to strengthen institutional mechanisms for skill development and increase
access to quality and market-relevant training for youth across the country. Four key result areas
have been identified under SANKALP viz: (i) Institutional Strengthening; (ii) Quality
Assurance; (iii) Inclusion; and (iv) Expanding Skills through PPPs.

3. Naukri.com acquires recruitment portals iimjobs.com and hirist.com

Info Edge India Ltd, promoter of jobs portal Naukri, on Tuesday announced acquiring premium
recruitment platform iimjobs.com.
"Info Edge (India) Limited (NSE: NAUKRI) has entered into an agreement to acquire 100%
ownership of Highorbit Careers Pvt. Ltd (hereinafter “iimjobs") for a cash consideration of Rs.
80.82 Cr," the listed company said.
Highorbit Careers is the owner of online job portals iimjobs.com and hirist.com.
Nine-year old iimjobs.com was founded by Tarun Matta, an IIT-IIM alum, to cater to job needs
of those who have graduated from premier institutes. With 23,000 job postings and 1.8 million
job applications every month, iimjobs.com and hirist.com have grown rapidly.
“iimjobs has managed to carve a niche for itself and has built a great brand in the premium
jobseeker community. Its value proposition strongly complements Naukri’s proposition to its
customers. Given our massive customer base in Naukri, together we are confident of taking this
business to the next level," said Hitesh Oberoi, Co-Promoter, and managing director of Info
Edge.
Info Edge, a company established during first dot com boom in India 20 years back, is the
owner of recruitment platforms including naukri.com, naukrigulf.com, firstnaukri.com,
ambition box etc. Its flagship brand, Naukri has 69 million registered job seekers and claims it
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has at least 475,000 live jobs available at its platform. Naukri also offers recruitment assistance
to over 76,000 corporate clients.
"Joining forces with Info Edge gives us an opportunity to leverage their resources and
accelerate our journey. This partnership gives us the resources to build better products, serve
our customers better, and take our products to more customers," said Tarun Matta, founder of
iimjobs.

4. IBM to train over 1 million female students in India in 3 years

IT company IBM Monday said it will collaborate with Central and state governments to upskill
around one million female students in science technology, engineering and math’s fields over a
period of three years.
"We can see 100 per cent jobs are going to change. You need more women in workforce. We
are announcing for 200,000 from grade eight to twelve, we are going to prepare them for STEM
over a three-year period," IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty said at a company
event.
She said the program is not about conducting technical training session, but to focus on basics
of critical thinking, life skills, among others.
"All of us are capable of teaching our employees sort of hard skills. It is soft skill, in technology
world that we have to learn. Collectively our programs are doing one million in numbers and
helping four million teachers," Rometty said.
The company will collaborate with seven state governments across India to prepare over
200,000 girls and women in government schools over the next three years for "new collar" jobs
through the exploration and study of STEM subjects in classrooms and online, a company
official said.
As part of its ongoing engagement with the government, around 4,000 mentors and 6 lakh
mentees will benefit from IBM's AI-powered mentor platform which will include 5 lakh women
students.
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Rometty announced IBM's collaboration with Kendriya Vidyalaya school network to support
math’s teachers across India with its artificial intelligence platform 'Teacher Advisor with
Watson' that will cater to around 3 lakh female students.
IBM also announced a two-year Advanced Diploma Programme in emerging technologies
created in collaboration with the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship which
will be available to 100 Industrial Training Institutes (ITI), including 50 all-women Itises, over
the next three years.
The company will also offer internships of up to five months to some students under the
program.
Under the skills and educational program, IBM will offer science training resources to four
million teachers in the Indian Open Educational Resources community for STEM.
Niti Ayog CEO Amitabh Kant, who was also present at the occasion, said women in India have
performed exceptionally well whenever they are given opportunities.
"It is not possible for India to grow at 9-10 per cent without focusing on women. Every single
place where we have given opportunity to women, they have performed better than men.
Government has to play the role of facilitator, but it's the men who have to change their mindset
that women should get place in organizations," Kant said.

5. Biju’s acquires US-based Osmo for US$ 120 million

Online tutoring startup Biju’s (Think & Learn Pvt. Ltd) has acquired Osmo, a maker of
educational games, for $120 million in its first-ever purchase of a US company. The acquisition
will help Biju’s offer learning solutions to children aged between three and eight by tapping
into Osmo’s physical-to-digital technology and content.
Biju’s has aggressive plans for the international market and will continue to make big
investments in technology to further personalize learning for students, the company said on
Wednesday. Biju’s is on target to triple revenue to ₹ 1,400 crore this year.
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Last month, Biju’s raised $540 million at a valuation of $3.6 billion, as robust investor demand
swelled the size of its latest funding round and turned Biju Raveendran, the founder of the
eponymous startup into an overnight billionaire. That funding round put Biju’s fourth on the list
of India’s most valuable startups, after digital payments firm Paytm (One97 Communications
Pvt. Ltd), cab-hailing service Ola (ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd) and budget hotel chain Oyo
Rooms (Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd).
The focus at Biju’s has been on creating engaging, immersive content offered through
personalized learning experiences for students. Osmo’s use of mixed reality interactions can
help it expand its platform to new audiences and applications, the company said.
“Our partnership with Osmo will help kids acquire love for learning at an early age by
introducing ‘play-based learning’. Together with Osmo, we have the critical elements needed to
build an unprecedented library of engaging and entertaining educational content for a global
pre-K-12 student audience,” Raveendran said in a statement.
Biju’s has raised $784 million in total funding so far and has made three acquisitions before
Osmo, according to data from Crunchbase.
Launched in 2015, the Biju’s Learning App offers personalized programmes for school students
across grades 4-12. It has over two million annual paid subscriptions and 30 million students
learning from the app. Palo Alto-based Osmo was founded in 2013 by ex-Google engineers
Pramod Sharma and Jerome Scholler.
“We started Osmo for parents looking for a way to combine physical, hands-on play with the
power of digital platforms to foster a love of learning,” Osmo co-founder and chief executive
Sharma said.
Osmo will continue to scale on a standalone basis after the purchase and its core team, headed
by Sharma, will remain at its helm.

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6. Over 33.5 lakh people trained in electronics, IT, ITeS in 4 years: Ahluwalia
Over 33.5 lakh people have been provided skill training in electronics, IT and IT-enabled
services sectors between 2014-15 and 2017-18, Parliament was informed Wednesday.
These people were provided training by the Ministry of Skill Development and
Entrepreneurship (MSDE) through Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna (PMKVY), and two
schemes being run by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY),
Minister of State for Electronics and IT S S Ahluwalia said in a written reply to Lok Sabha.
He added that more than 5.41 lakh people were trained by MSDE and MeitY in 2014-15, 8.10
lakh in 2015-16, 9.51 lakh in 2016-17 and over 10.48 lakh people in 2017-18.
Of these, MSDE facilitated training for 16.34 lakh people, while MeitY provided skill training
for the remaining 17.18 lakh people, he added.
A total of Rs 30.44 crore has been received as grant between 2016-17 and 2018-19, under
PMKVY of MSDE, of which Rs 29.09 crore has been utilised, the minister said.
He added that a total grant of Rs 154.13 crore was released between 2014-15 and 2017-18 under
the two schemes for skill development in electronic system design and manufacturing (ESDM)
sector by MeitY.

7. Govt to promote education sector to increase services' share in GDP: Prabhu

The government will work on promoting the growth of the education sector to help increase the
share of overall service sector in the country's economy, Commerce and Industry Minister
Suresh Prabhu said Tuesday.
He said that the services sector currently contributes about two-third in India's gross domestic
product (GDP).
"We want to increase the share of the sector in the economy, and education is an important
sector in this, and we will promote it," he said while speaking at the Higher Education Summit
2018 here.
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He said that the government was working with different universities and institutions in this
regard.
He added that as employment generation is a major challenge, promoting growth of services
sector would help dealing with the issue.
In February, the Union Cabinet had decided to give focused attention to 12 champion service
sectors and mandated the identified nodal ministries and departments to formulate sectoral
action plans under the dedicated fund of Rs 5,000 crore.
The 12 champion service sectors includes IT, tourism and hospitality, transport, accounting,
audio visual, legal, education and environment.
Prabhu also said that the educational institutes have to keep in mind the emerging challenges
being faced by industries and introduce modern technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics
and big data.
Speaking at the summit, Additional Secretary in the Department of Commerce Sudhanshu
Pandey said that there was a need for increase integration and collaboration between industry
and universities.
Higher Education Secretary R Subrahmanyam said that there is a need to focus on issues like
quality, research, employability and internationalization of institutes.
He said that research is a key for higher educational institutes, and for that there was a need to
attract investments and funds.

8. Intel India trains 99,000 people in artificial intelligence

US chipmaker Intel has trained as many as 99,000 developers, students and professors in
artificial intelligence (AI) in India since April 2017, against a target of 15,000 for the first year
of its programme, according to the tech major.
It has also tied up with premier educational institutes like the IITs in Delhi, Mumbai,
Kharagpur, Kanpur, Chennai, and IIITs in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, BITS Pilani, ISI Kolkata,
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IISc Bangalore, CDAC and companies like Shell and TCS among others for training under its
AI developer education.
"Though we had committed to train 15,000 developers, students, and professors in AI initially
through training and workshops, we have already exceeded the target over seven-fold at over
99,000 by roping in many of them from 100 organizations," said Prakash Mallya, managing
director for sales and marketing, Intel India.
The programme was launched in April 2017 and the initial target was for a year ending April
2018, he said, adding the programme is aimed to democratising AI through collaborations with
partners and customers.
Intel powers as much as 97 per cent of data center servers running AI workloads at present in
the world.
The company, which organised its first AI developer conference in the country last week in
Bengaluru after the initiative in home market US earlier this year, had over 500 developers
attending it.
It also announced collaborations with Philips India and Mphasis to deploy its AI portfolio in the
local ecosystem.

9. Byju's turns profitable in 8 years, gears up to enter US in a big way

India’s top education platform Byju’s on Thursday announced it has achieved profitability, a
first in the consumer internet start-up space.
The eight-year-old Bengaluru firm said its sales in FY19 were Rs 1,430 crore ($21 million), up
186 per cent over the last year, enough for the firm to churn out a small profit on a full-year
basis. It did not reveal the bottom line. In FY18, Byju’s had Rs 500 crore turnover and a loss of
Rs 37 crore. “The growth in revenue was fuelled by deeper penetration across India and
significant growth in the number of paid subscribers,” a statement by Byju’s said.

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The company presents a contrast to the other consumer internet players such as Ola, Flipkart,
Swiggy and Paytm which are in the red. Byju’s’ stronger focus on sales has allowed it to race
ahead in the bottom line terms, a metrics ignored by venture capital backed companies. Among
major internet-led companies, Flipkart notched up sales of around Rs 24,717 crore, Paytm Rs
3,314 crore, Ola Rs 1,380 crore, and Swiggy Rs 468 crore in FY18.
With 2.4 million paid subscriber and an audience of 35 million (registered users), Byju’s has all
but capitalised the online learning market. Valued at $5 billion, Byju’s has seen growth sky
rocket in the last two years on the back of mega VC top-ups. Backed by investors such as the
International Finance Corp, a World Bank arm, Light Speed India Partners, Byju’s last year
raised $540 million from premium investors General Atlantic, Naspers, and a Canadian
sovereign pension.
A favourite of the VC world. Byju’s valuation has surged over five times in about 18 months
(valued at $5.4 billion in March 2019 vs $1 billion in early 2018). Sequoia Capital, which
invested in 2015, sold part of its stake, 7 per cent by one estimate, for $190 million last year, in
the latest financing round. Byju’s strength is its core offering (learning platform), and deep sales
network, according to experts. In the last one year, Byju’s has grown its sales team to 40 Indian
cities, and added about 1,000 employees to a strength which stands at 3,200.
The firm sells education subscriptions to schoolgoing students, which is 90 per cent of its
business, and is fast growing its test prep offering for GMAT, GRE and other entrance
examinations. Byju’s is set to launch in the US in a big way, and has recently acquired Osmo.
“While profitability is an important milestone for us, as a company our main focus continues to
be on creating engaging learning experiences that will empower students to learn better,”
founder Byju’s Raveendran said in a statement.
After all, the best part about being in this sector is the long-term positive impact you can make
on the society,” founder Byju Raveendran said in a statement.
Higher Internet speeds and an uptick in consumption the economy, has upped spending in the
online education sector, comprising Unacademy, CourseEra and a wide array of up and coming

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start-ups in consumer and corporate learning space. Edu-tech in India is expected to grow eight-
fold to $2 billion by 2021, according to a Google and KPMG study.
Byju’s was stated in 2011 by math teacher Byju Raveendran, joined by a handful of his early
students. In the early days, the company offered classroom coaching for competitive exam,
before it started recording lessons online. In 2013-14, Byju’s started distributing courses over
tablets, which came bundled with the subscription. In 2015, when launched “Byju’s Learning
App’, it transitioned the model to delivery only though app and website.

10. US-based online learning marketplace Udemy enters India

Udemy, an online learning and teaching marketplace, has announced it is entering India with an
employee hub at Gurugram, Haryana.
"A local presence will enable Udemy to continue enhancing and localising the student and
instructor experience," the US-based firm said in a statement.
The platform allows experts to develop courses on thousands of topics and share their
knowledge, the statement said.

11. Experiential learning

Many companies are already adopting the ways of popular content platforms like Netflix and
Spotify. Just like shows or music, employees can access the “channel” or “playlist” of content
that interests them most. The eLearning platform might even promote the most relevant content
for each learner through job-skills matching, historical learning data or AI-based
recommendations.

But in 2019, job-specific learning content won’t be enough. At least, that’s what learners are
telling us. Earlier this year, the LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report revealed that the top

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challenge facing learning and development is a lack of available time for learning. That’s right.
Employees are under time pressure every day, and squeezing in training can be tricky.
The other key finding from LinkedIn’s survey of 4,0000+ people was that employees want to
learn at the point of need. No sooner, no later.

The solution? Learning just-in-time (JIT) and on-the-job; a combination commonly achieved
through experiential learning activities. This approach takes a practical spin on training, as
employees engage in a continuous cycle of do, learn, reflect.

12. Learner-centered online training

Every minute, Facebook users share 2.5 million pieces of content, YouTube users upload 72
hours of new video content and Instagram users post nearly 220,000 new photos. That’s every
60 seconds.

It’s no wonder that employees are looking for a more meaningful experience when it comes to
learning. An experience that’s engaging, relevant, convenient, and even a little fun.

Well, L&D managers and instructional designers the world over have heard their plea, which is
why learner-centered training design is becoming a hot topic in 2019. Putting learners front and
center means creating a personalized learning journey, and then handing over the reins so that
learners can direct and control their own learning experience.

Adaptive learning techniques are often used to create a learner-centric design by using
technology and eLearning. This involves targeting each person’s specific needs, providing
content that’s engaging and relevant, adapting the pace of learning, and offering personalized
feedback. It’s not difficult to see why adaptive learning is more effective than one-size-fits-all
corporate training.

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13. XSEED Education acquires Chennai based EdTech startup Report Bee
Xseed Education Pte Ltd, a Singapore-based education company, on Tuesday said it had
acquired Report Bee, a Chennai-based education technology firm focused on assessment
analytics and reporting in K-12 schools for an undisclosed valuation.
The acquisition will help the company expand its offerings in schools across India and abroad.
XSEED, which operates across eight countries, considers India as one of its biggest markets.
“It reflects XSEED’s strategy to augment the scale and impact of its successful school learning
programme by integrating Report Bee’s assessment platform…" the company said, adding, it
will help its client schools make real time assessments, provide personalised student feedback,
and analyse data to diagnose teaching gaps.
Report Bee has been used by close to 1000 schools. XSEED reaches a million children in eight
countries. Report Bee’s founders, including Ananthraman Mani, Bala Ganesh S. and Anjan T.,
will join XSEED as key members of its technology product team.
This is XSEED's second acquisition in India. In 2015, it had acquired Pleolabs, a Delhi-based
start-up focussed on management of curricular resources, academic process workflows and
collaborative learning interactions in schools.
“This (acquisition of Report Bee) is an important step towards becoming a complete education
technology company. Report Bee brings on board capabilities in analytics, reporting,
personalised assessment, and product design that complement the XSEED," according to
Ashish Rajpal, founder and chief executive of XSEED.
“Report Bee’s technology and analytics expertise compliments XSEED's product and mission.
The market is now ripe for many more disruptions and we believe we can move faster
together," said Ananth Raman Mani, founder of Report Bee.
While XSEED with its curriculum, assessment and training offerings has reached eight million
students across eight countries and raised two rounds of funds earlier from fund houses such as
Lighthouse Funds and Verlinvest, Report Bee has secured a round of investment from India
Education Innovation Fund, wholly backed by Michael and Susan Dell Foundation.

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14. Online education firms see higher pay, more jobs in AI, machine learning
Online education companies are seeing an increasing interest from recruiters for placements at
their job fairs and boot camps, especially in the digital, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine
learning sectors. Some of the online service providers state that there is more growth in terms of
both salary levels and students getting recruited.
With the placement season going on, engineering students who are adept in digital skills such as
AI, data analytics and machine learning are receiving better salaries than those who are only
equipped with traditional skills, says Great Learning, an online learning company.
The company has recently initiated a five-month intensive boot camp for freshers in digital
skills. About 60 per cent of their batch has already been placed with an average salary package
of Rs 560,000 per annum, compared to the Rs 350,000 per annum offered in the IT services
industry. Several students with prior experience have even drawn a 100 per cent hike in their
salary, it said.
"A total of 27 companies participated in the placement procedure across industries like
technology, e-commerce, finance, manufacturing and consulting. Cognizant, Mahindra,
Flipkart, Big Basket, HSBC and Tata IQ were among the top recruiters. The core skills that
companies are seeking include statistics, machine learning basics, Python, SQL and Tableau.
Analytics consultant, analytics manager, data analyst, junior data scientist, data engineer and
business analyst are the key job roles being offered to the students," said company officials.
There has been traction in the recruitment of students who have completed the digital, AI,
machine learning and autonomous technology courses from its platform, said online education
firm Udacity India.
"Lot of our students have also been placed successfully in the companies. Machine learning,
data science, autonomous technology are seeing more traction in terms of recruitments. We
have more than 140 partners who recruit in various vacancies, including AI and data sciences,

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etc," said Ishan Gupta, MD, Udacity India. IT services, e-commerce, start-ups, autonomous
technology and finance are the sectors where more recruitments are happening, he added.
The company runs nano-degree programmes in various specialisations, including data analyst,
front-end, machine learning, deep learning and Android, among others, in cities including
Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. It has more than 500 students enrolled for
the self-driving cars nano-degree. It has more than one million students on the platform,
including for free courses and nano-degrees. More than 8,000 students are enrolled in career-
ready nano-degree programmes.
The industry partners include Flipkart, Myntra, Tata Elxsi, HCL, Ola Cabs, Swiggy, and Hi-
Tech Robotics, among others.
During the recruitment process, the companies share their vacant positions with the online
education platforms, which in turn circulate the information internally with their alumni.
Another method followed by Udacity is job fairs. "We have conducted around eight job fairs in
the past two years in cities like Delhi and Bengaluru, among others. We bring in the hiring
partners to these fairs. Offers could even be rolled out on the day itself," Gupta said.
However, the challenge is that many times, the recruitment of students with experience, those
who are upskilling or those who start their own business might not be counted as recruitment
from the platform.
Commenting on the advantage of recruiting students from Great Learning, Anurag Dikshit,
director analytics with business process management firm WNS, said, "The talent pool that
Great Learning is creating is helping organisations like WNS meet the talent demand in various
areas of new-age digital skills, which are required to advance the competitive edge of the
company. Initiatives such as hackathons are a wonderful medium to help us meet, interact with
and identify the best pre-trained talent pool in the industry."

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GLOBAL TRENDS IN LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT INDUSTRY

1. Global Digital Learning Devices Market 2019 Industry

The market research study titled Global Digital Learning Devices Market 2018 by
Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2023 is crafted with a concise
assessment and extensive understanding of the robust data of the global market. The
aforementioned market report has been rising at a higher rate with the advancement of creative
procedures. The report offers enormous open doors for players that will help them in their
business development procedure. Data featured in this report covers various industry trends and
demands linked with the manufacturing goods & services. The report offers an intensive
investigation of the driving elements that are explored dependent on the client requests, limiting
components, and different market changes.
It involves numerous associations, firms, merchants, and other individuals. The research also
highlights the dominating players in the market joined with their market share. In addition, we
convey a complete outline of the general key players. The well-established players in the market
are Dell, HP, Lenovo, Amazon, Apple, Huawei, Samsung, Microsoft, Promethean World,
SMART Technologies, BenQ, Compaq, HCL, HTC, Intel, LG Electronics, NEC, Panasonic,
Positivo Informatica, Sony, Toshiba, . For each company, the report recognizes its competitors,
product/service type, application, pricing, and gross margin. New product launches, merger
acquisition, and geographical expansion are some of the key strategies adopted by leading
players to achieve a competitive gain.

Major types covered are: Laptops and notebooks, Lablets and Kindle devices, Smartphones,
IWBs, Other supporting devices

Major applications are: Education sector, Corporate sector,

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The global version of this report with a geographical classification such as North America
(United States, Canada and Mexico), Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy), Asia-
Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia), South America (Brazil, Argentina,
Colombia etc.), Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)

2. Global Corporate Workforce Development Training Market 2019 – Skillsoft , Wilson

Learning , Eton Institute , LearnQuest

Market Research always aims at offering their clients an in-depth analysis and the best research
material of the various market. This new report on the worldwide Global Corporate Workforce
Development Training Market 2019 Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecasts is
committed fulfilling the requirements of the clients by giving them thorough insights into the
market.

The worldwide Corporate Workforce Development Training Market 2019 report is expansive
research reliant on Corporate Workforce Development Training, which inspects the raised
structure of the present Corporate Workforce Development Training all around the globe.
Arranged by the adequate methodical framework, for instance, SWOT examination, the
Corporate Workforce Development Training report exhibits a total evaluation of the significant
players of the worldwide Corporate Workforce Development Training Market 2019 . The
estimates for CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) is calculated by the Global Corporate
Workforce Development Training Market 2019 report in terms of extent for the specific time
length. This will similarly help the customer with comprehension and settle on a correct choice
depends on a normal chart.

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Some of the Major worldwide Corporate Workforce Development Training Market 2019 Players
Are: Skillsoft
, Wilson Learning
, Eton Institute
, LearnQuest
, NIIT
, Pearson
, CARA Group
, CTU
, Dale Carnegie Training
, GP Strategies
, InfoPro Learning

3. Why 2019 is the Year of Learning and Development: Insights from LinkedIn’s 2019
Workplace Learning Report
LinkedIn’s survey of over 1,200 HR and L&D professionals reveals that the L&D industry is at
a tipping point. Increased budgets and executive support are paving the way for L&D
professionals to play a more strategic role. According to the report, only 27 percent of L&D
professionals listed ‘limited budget’ as a top challenge. For perspective, in 2017, almost half (49
percent) of L&D professionals identified limited budgets as the biggest hurdle to L&D.

As technologies like IoT, artificial intelligence and intelligent automation take over more
sophisticated tasks, closing the skills gap has become the top priority for L&D leaders. Therefore,
four out of the top seven focus areas for L&D professionals revolve around closing the skills
gaps.

The seven focus areas for talent development in 2019 from the LinkedIn report include:

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  Identify and assess skills gaps
 Increase engagement with learning programs
 Develop career frameworks
 Provide consistent and valuable learning to employees globally
 Train for soft skills
 Deliver company-specific insights to close organizational skills gaps
 Understand the impact of technology and automation on skills development

Armed with more resources and support that they have ever had, L&D leaders are now ready to
proactively identify, assess, and close any skills gaps.

As L&D budgets grow, funding continues to shift from instructor-led training to online learning
technologies. LinkedIn’s data shows that compared to three years ago, 59 percent of L&D
professionals spend more of their budget on online learning and 39 percent spend less on
instructor-led training.

Cloud-based learning technologies make developing learning programs budget-friendly and

effective. By leveraging learning platforms, L&D teams can easily upload existing content and
deliver it across a range of devices, enabling easy access to learning programs without having to
invest in expensive training seminars.

“Personalized Training Experiences: With the advent of AI in learning, entire training paths will
be personalized to meet the needs of each learner based on their styles and preferences. Learning
leaders will also have access to data to better understand their audiences. What are the learner
demographics and professional and educational backgrounds? What are their previous learning
experiences? How do they prefer to learn? All that information will play an integral role in helping
tailor learning opportunities to audiences.

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“Augmented Reality: With so much growth and opportunity in the EdTech space, learning leaders
need to find ways to use virtual environments to help employees practice through simulation and
master the knowledge needed for their roles. A huge benefit of AR is its ability to make learning
fun and engaging while also being easily accessible to learners of all skill levels and backgrounds.
Most learners are already always connected and AR is readily accessible via a tablet or
smartphone. It can be, as well. By leveraging AR, you can share the most up-to-date materials
virtually and move away from expensive hard-copy training materials. Social interaction is
another benefit of AR. You can build in opportunities for learners to collaborate, solve problems
together and work through activities together. Again, it’s fun! You can also use AR to bring in
an element of gamification and keep learners engaged while making the content seem less like
traditional training.

4. Learning & Development Market to Reach $446.1 Billion by 2020, says Beroe Inc
In developed regions such as the U.S. and Europe, e-learning services are anticipated to rise
mainly due to a consistent boost in demand for gamification, rapid e-learning tools, and an
increase in the applications offering LMS platforms. In developing regions such as APAC
and Latin America, only a few service providers are technically equipped to integrate VR in e-
learning. However, the regions are witnessing a higher adoption rate due to the attempts by global
buyers to streamline the supply base

Beroe, which is based in North Carolina, further stated that procurement experts can access this
report on its recently launched market intelligence platform Beroe LiVE

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 The key drivers such as tech-enabled training solutions are transforming traditional training into
effective, and measurable training solutions by outsourcing to global suppliers. On the other
hand, budget constraint is a major obstacle in the L&D market, wherein mid-sized companies
have to operate at a trade-off level to produce digital aids.

Globally, the top organizations are outsourcing their L&D activities to suppliers that support
with technology-enabled training solutions. North America exhibits a significant growth in the
e-learning sector until 2023, which makes it the most mature market for online learning
products in the world, with a growth rate of 4.4 percent.

Key Findings:

 Technical companies that supply LMS tools, performance tracking tools, and other technical
aids in developed markets have an average demand, as the market share is highly competitive.
 Tier 2 L&D service provider companies are building the capability to provide a wide range of
services to various sectors, such as oil & gas, retail, pharma, BFSI, healthcare, etc.
 The L&D market consists of more than 600 corporate L&D suppliers, but few suppliers are
capable of providing managed training services globally.
 With the evolving process in the way the L&D companies work, there is an increasing trend
toward solidification of the supply base, which has produced nearly 5 - 10 percent cost savings.

 Most of the buyers are opting to outsource L&D services due to the presence of emerging
countries in the APAC region.

The research methodology adopted for the report included:

 Experts with twenty years of domain experience

 Interaction with buyers
 Inputs from supply chain partners
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In the near future, most of the L&D roles such as vendor management, reporting &
measurement, and strategy development will be outsourced, and the core L&D team will be
able to focus on the talent management activities of a company. Moreover, buyers are shifting
towards centralization of L&D administration and management to ensure consistency of
information shared across the organization.

5.Five Trends to Watch out in 2019 :

L&D has come a long way in recent years. In the past, many companies only offered one-time
training programs to help employees with their onboarding process. Now, companies are using
continuous L&D programmes as a competitive advantage for recruitment, upskilling and
retention.

In fact, a recent workforce study found that an overwhelming majority of employees (86%) feel
it is 'extremely important or important for employers to provide learning opportunities.' It is no
longer a question of whether you need an L&D strategy, but rather what is the best strategy for
your organization?

To stay ahead of the competition in 2019, companies must continue to promote the value of
L&D programmes and ensure that they align with overall business goals. This means mapping
out programs that meet business needs, taking stock of current technology and skillset needs
and helping prepare for the future.

If you’re looking to refresh your L&D program this year, here are five trends to keep in mind:

Video gets less fancy and more effective

If you had a full-time job in the 80s, you probably remember watching a corporate video that
included a monotone instructor, bright pantsuits and big hair. Video has been a compelling
training format for decades and is still one of the most-effective platforms for disseminating
L&D content.
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The 2018 Training Industry Trends Report notes that artificial intelligence and machine
learning is being used in L&D solutions to help organizations better understand learner
behaviors.

But today’s YouTube generation, video training needs to be created quicker and in more-
digestible formats. Classic film cameras and green screen studios are being supplanted by
mobile devices with tripods and motorised gimbals.

In 2019, we can expect to see even more of this ‘guerilla’ film production with high-end
features with interactivity that will be distributed on mobile devices and applications for easy
accessibility.

Companies will embrace artificial intelligence solutions

The rise of AI technologies means that AI is now becoming cheaper and more widely adopted
by online service providers. The 2018 Training Industry Trends Report notes that artificial
intelligence and machine learning is being used in L&D solutions to help organisations better
understand learner behaviours.

Intelligent technology can predict the training needs of an individual based on past behaviour,
which then allows it to recommend content for that employee. In 2019, more companies will
adopt AI-driven L&D solutions to give employees real-time guidance and personalised paths
for their individual growth.

The students will become the teachers

Employees are no longer solely looking for L&D programs to participate in – They also want a
role in creating and shaping them. Many companies are finding that user-generated content is
extremely beneficial for their L&D programs.

By using ubiquitous cameras and recordings, companies are able to increase the amount of
content that is created by employees for training purposes. The L&D team can then curate this
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content and deploy it to the staff. In 2019, we can expect to see more companies empowering
their employees to be part of the L&D program, both as teachers and students.

The gamification hype will diminish

For the past few years, gamification was the shiny new solution that every L&D department had
on its holiday wish list. In 2019, gamification may lose a bit of its luster. Businesses are now
looking for solutions that can offer the latest skills as quickly as possible to deliver immediate
ROI.

Game mechanics that create 'sticky experiences' do not align with these priorities. Further, game
mechanics often prioritise winning over other objectives, and gamification alone cannot meet
the needs of a diversified business. For gamification to be successful, it needs to be
supplemented with other L&D programs.

Deskless workers will get a training makeover

In addition to these predictions, we can also expect more emphasis to be put on training the
deskless worker population. Google estimates that 80% of the global workforce is made up of
employees without a desk or dedicated computer.

6. Need of corporate training in current scenario

The Learning & Development (L&D) industry has been undergoing sea changes owing to the
growing technological advances which is transforming the business environment and
subsequently the economy – the latest buzzword being Artificial Intelligence and automation,
observes Sanjay Bahl, CEO and MD, Centum Learning.

Behind every successful transformation lies the adaptation of contemporary capabilities, a

scenario starting at the corporate training segment within the country and across the globe. With
the global digitisation of economies at the national scale owing to big data, IoT, advanced
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analytics and much more, workforce reorganization has become inevitable. A research by
McKinsey reveals that two-thirds of business transformations do not adequately meet their
objectives, as transformational aspirations must be adequately supported by a skilled workforce,
ready to achieve the change mission.

What began as a face-to-face training in a closed environment over a dedicated period involving
huge logistics costs of offsite has gradually evolved to having strategic partnerships with
dedicated organizations and teams involved in the training process. The ‘stand and deliver’
approach proved to be tedious and exhaustive giving limited time frames of attention from the
employee. So, if your team seemed tired of subjecting themselves to classroom environments in
order to attend courses on corporate development and training, they were not alone.

Technology is a boon to this segment as technological advancements are making transformation

better paced and well received, aiding and enabling the growth of corporate training. While the
basic principles of corporate training have not changed much, their delivery has certainly
undergone an evolutionary cycle and is still changing.

Need of the hour

Corporate training has assumed significant proportion in this ever-evolving business
environment. Industry estimates reveal that the global corporate training market is worth $320
billion (S$435.55), and $130 billion in the US alone. Global expansion of businesses and
increasing domestic as well as global competition has been major growth drivers for the market
along with the millennial workforce forming the much talked about demographic dividend.

With a talent pool comprising of a majority millennials (born post 1980s), choosing and retaining
the right workforce is becoming seemingly challenging. This digitally savvy, ambitious growing
work-life balance is a rising society that’s tough to satisfy. Having grown up with technology and
experiencing it from much close quarters, it has become their driving inspiration at working
environments. With access to information just a click away, this new breed of workforce finds

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controlling corporate environment uncomfortable.The demographic dividend is turning out to be
an increasing demographic difficulty for the recruiting industry and the organizations at large.

Expectation of rapid progression, diverse and engaging career prospects that is accompanied with
a steady flow of feedback makes them seek a management style that matches these desires.
Employers of today have a tough challenge on hand to hold on to this new-age talent pool of
millennials who do not shy away from shifting jobs in rapid succession. An effective module of
corporate training is essential to keep the attrition rates at bay.

Change is the only constant

With 15 million youth entering the workforce each year, more than 75 per cent are not job ready.
According to the industry statistics, India would need 700 million skilled workers by 2022 to
meet the demands of a growing economy. While the skills scarcity augments the need for
corporate training, inflation and global economic slowdown has put a lot of constraint on the
training budgets. This has made the organizations to look for and adapt technology aided and
technology driven training modules to save on the training costs. Evolving from a group activity
to a more personal experience, technology or e-learning enables them to access the training
material as per their convenience. On-demand video, Web-based training, online virtual lab
programs and virtual classrooms have been adding on to employee capabilities based on
individual, team and business needs.

To further tackle the capability challenge, organizations have also explored the path of
experiential learning that challenges people to go beyond their established work routines and get
into a learning zone. As McKinsey’s research states, “Experiential learning is a preferred
approach for building the skills of adults, who are accustomed to learn through action and
experience”. Peer interaction brings learning about new knowledge and skills in experiential
learning.

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Blended learning models through integration of Technology and VR is what is being adapted over
traditional learning methods as it offers the employees to improve their job performance thus
fulfilling the primary need of a training session. A perfect blend of online and on the job learning
experience, blended learning, extensively being used by Centum across India and Africa, is an
extremely useful tool for corporate training. Blended learning is also an effective tool to keep
attrition rate in check as feedback from trainers and absorbing and engaging activities make the
learning environment engaging and absorbing.

Digital future
AI, Virtual Reality (VR) and even mobile phone apps are taking over this burgeoning training
market. The promising future of training using artificial learning and augmented reality is being
aided by the growing technological interdependence and digital penetration. These high-tech
advancements are disrupting the training content market and giving options of creating different
levels of employee engagement and involvement at their own pace and leisure.

It will not be completely wrong to say that AI is eating jobs but at the same time, it is creating a
lot more where a lot of specialized skills are required to address the current industry requirements.
That is why corporate training is of utmost importance now which is the only road for employee
retention. Besides only soft skills will save your jobs when robots and automation actually hit the
job market.

7. Eight seismic shifts that will impact how employees learn and develop in the future

Organizations that prioritize learning and development see improvements in talent

attraction, employee engagement, market position, and more.

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In addition, the rapidly evolving demands of the marketplace have 91 percent of learning and
development leaders agreeing that the skills necessary for today's workforce have changed.

The eight shifts highlighted below will move learning and development from a nice-to-have
company perk to an imperative talent strategy for every organization.

8 Big Shifts in Learning and Development

1. Established Generations to Emerging Generations

In the past, generations approached learning conventionally. Learning was top-down, on-the-
job, and delivered in conventional forms such as inside a classroom.

In the future, generations will approach learning unconventionally. Millennials and Generation
Z have a much different relationship, expectation, and approach to learning. Learning now must
be micro, mobile-first, innovative, beautifully designed, relevant, and on-demand to meet the
needs of the next generation. These expanding expectations are a primary driving force behind
the other learning and development shifts.

2. Generalized to Individualized

In the past, workers were likely to have multiple jobs and careers throughout their lifetime--
even farther back and workers held only 1-2 jobs over an entire lifetime. Limited access to
knowledge and information handcuffed past generations to consuming learning content that was
generalized, out-of-date, and/or constricted by one point of view.

In the future, workers will have multiple jobs at one time. It won't be uncommon for modern
workers to hold down a full-time job while participating in the gig economy (running a
photography business, driving for Uber, racing drones, selling on Etsy, etc.). In this new world
of work, workers are likely to engage with highly specific and individualized training that
enables them to create an ever-growing constellation of nano-degrees that supplements their
skills and interests.

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3. Reputable Employer to Relevant Skills

In the past, workers achieved career longevity by going to work for a reputable employer.
Workers used to line up at the doorstep of well-established employers eager to make their case
as to why the company should hire them.

In the future, workers will achieve career longevity by continuously acquiring relevant skills.
Employers used to do the interviewing of new workers, but today's workers are more likely to
size-up the employer with an emphasis on how the company develops its
employees. Tomorrow's worker will be attracted to the employer that enables employees to skill
build using platforms like 21mill.com.

4. Push to Pull

In the past, due to limited access to knowledge and information, training was easily deferred to
certain times or seasons. Employers only made training available on a need-to-know or an as-
needed basis. Workers were pushed training.

In the future, workers will expect training to be on-demand. Future workers will have grown
up with finger-tip 24/7 access to the world's largest how-to video library, YouTube. They will
expect their employer to provide similar on-demand video libraries to boost job and career
performance. Workers will pull down training anywhere and anytime.

5. Learn-to-Work to Work-to-Learn

In the past, people have taken a linear approach to learning. People went to school, learned a
trade, and then spent the rest of their working years applying what they learned. The model was
learn-to-work.

In the future, people will take a lattice approach to learning (learn, unlearn, relearn,
repeat). People will consider forgoing a traditional education (because it's not agile enough) to
work for a company that provides the necessary personal and professional development. The
model will be work-to-learn.

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6. Centralized to Decentralized

In the past, information was centralized in books or in the minds of others. Learning was
reserved for those willing (or lucky enough) to discover the information. The sharing of
information was also centralized to those with access to a platform. Access to information was
hierarchical.

In the future, information will be decentralized. Not only will learning be open to all with
Internet access, but anyone desiring to share their knowledge can do so. In order for workers to
learn at the accelerating speed of business, companies will unlock the speed of knowledge
sharing across the entire organization. Access to information will be diffused.

7. Information Age to Perspective Age

In the past, knowledge was power in the information age. Because information was
centralized, developing insights and expertise took time, resources, and knowing the right
people.

In the future, applied knowledge is power. Workers who turn information into transformation
through application will gain valuable perspective. The more perspective gained, the more
valuable workers can be in an increasingly diverse workforce. However, with an overabundance
of information, workers will need help from leaders to discover the right information and coach
them through their learning.

8. Manual to Automated

In the past, learning was manual. Humans taught other humans with a hands-on approach.

In the future, learning will be automated. Humans will be taught by machines. Artificial
intelligence will offer data-driven suggestions to improve worker performance or suggest skills.
Information will be delivered intelligently and instantly when the learner needs it most.

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 BUSINESS MODEL USED IN LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT

4 Business Models That Redefine L&D - What Is A Business Model?

A business model makes it possible to highlight the added value to the organisation
in terms of income and expenditure, or in other non-financial terms, and the factors
that influence this.

Alex Osterwalder offers a useful definition:

A business model describes the value an organization offers to various customers

and portrays the capabilities and partners required for creating, marketing, and
delivering this value and relationship capital with the goal of generating profitable
and sustainable revenue streams.

It is logical for organisations to assess the different components of their primary

processes based on the business model, including determining measurable added
value. This increasingly applies at department level, and L&D is no exception:
L&D is expected to show the value it creates for the organisation. The 4 L&D
business models described here support the transition from learning to business
value.

4 L&D Business Models

The 70:20:10 Institute’s new book makes a distinction between four L&D business
models. (Arets, J. e.a. in press)
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It draws horizontal and vertical axes for L&D as a function of the organisation. The
horizontal axis represents the continuum between HRD (Human Resource
Development) and the core business , and the vertical one the continuum between
strategy and operations. The two axes create four quadrants:

 Learning-focused L&D business models.

o Order Taker.

o Learning Enabler.

 Business-focused L&D business models.

o Performance Enabler.

o Value Creator.

See fig. 1.

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Fig. 1 Four business models for L&D.

Business Model 1: Order Taker

The Order Taker is responsible for customer focus in terms of providing formal
learning solutions. Under the motto “If you want it, we’ve got it”, they ensure that
learning solutions are available to match client demand.

The Order Taker also makes the service provision as simple and efficient as
possible, offering no complex training analysis, theoretical models or evaluations,
but a detailed professional catalog of the formal learning solutions available.

The Order Taker has the budget to facilitate training in organizations and to take the
burden from management when it comes to learning issues. This mix of activities
and services makes the Order Taker attractive to management and training
participants alike, thanks also to the inherent pragmatism, decisiveness and strong
operational focus.

One disadvantage for the Order Taker is the near absence of evaluations to
demonstrate business impact. Expenditure is justified based on an overview of costs
and the resulting participation in online and offline learning activities. Management
regards the Order Taker as a cost center.

Business Model 2: Learning Enabler

Educational advice forms the core of the service offered by the Learning Enabler.
The Learning Enabler is responsible for organizing the intake, analysis,
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implementation and evaluation processes required to maintain the professional
quality of learning provision. The Learning Enabler engages in dialogue with the
client, using educational analysis to establish whether a formal or other learning
solution is the best response to the question. Effective learning analysis also
establishes the target group’s needs and matches the program to these needs.

In practice, the Learning Enabler usually cannot answer requests from clients with a
clear ‘no’, sometimes against their own better judgment. The Learning Enabler also
tends to be dependent on the client’s decision as to whether to go forward with the
recommended learning solution or not.

As well as a professional catalogue, the Learning Enabler often also works within
learning landscapes or a learning and performance ecosystem. In practice, the main
strength of the Learning Enabler lies in the provision of professional, formal online
and offline learning. The focus is clearly strategic, ensuring that the learning
provision reflects the organisation’s overall priorities. This is the best way of
reconciling learning with organisational development.

The Learning Enabler tends to use the Kirkpatrick and Phillips model to express the
effectiveness of solutions in terms of learning values (Kirkpatrick levels 1 to 3),
business value (Kirkpatrick level IV, 2007) or return on investment (Phillips, 2007).
In practice, however, it is difficult for the Learning Enabler to demonstrate business
impact in more than 20 percent of the learning solutions offered. For this reason,
senior management also regards the Learning Enabler as a cost centre. (Linkedin,
2017)

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Business Model 3: Performance Enabler

The Performance Enabler implements the operational and other priorities of the
business. The services provided focus entirely on helping teams and individuals to
work better, make continuous improvements, and learn from these. The emphasis
on the business is the result of adopting a perspective on working and learning that
is not purely educational.

The Performance Enabler analyses the organisation’s systems and does not regard
learning solutions as the only response to business problems or opportunities. The
Performance Enabler is closely involved in the following roles within the 70:20:10
reference model:

 Performance Detective.

 Performance Architect (with an operational focus).

 Performance Master Builder (Arets, J, e.a. 2015).

The Learning Enabler is less effective in the Performance Game Changer and
Performance Tracker roles. This is partly why they cannot always demonstrate
business impact. However, senior management regards the Performance Enabler as
on the way to being a revenue center.

Business Model 4: Value Creator

By expanding the service to the whole spectrum of 70:20:10 provision, the Value
Creator implements management’s strategic priorities, offering more than formal

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learning solutions, and co-creating with management and best performers to make a
measurable contribution to improving organizational performance.

The Value Creator acts fully in line with the 70:20:10 model by referring not to the
five roles defined to utilize the model, but to the 70:20:10 methodology. The five
roles form the foundation of the methodology and, initially through the
Performance Detective role, enable business alignment and value.

The Performance Architect role provides the 100 solutions at system level, and the
Performance Builder role contributes to the required mix of formal learning and
workplace business solutions, with formal learning no longer being the dominant
solution as it is for both the Order Taker and Learning Enabler business models.

The Performance Game Changer role within the Value Creator model is responsible
for implementing business solutions, and the Performance Tracker role takes
measurements based on a plan agreed with management and using business KPIs
alone. Everything the Value Creator does demonstrate measurable business impact
in the form of business cases or quantified ROI.

The Value Creator is a profit center for management, with income and value-add
exceeding expenditure. This is also the norm for all other parts of the organization
required to contribute to its profitability.

4 Stereotypical Business Models

These models are recognisable stereotypes. In practice, there are obviously blends
of Order Taker and Learning Enabler, and of Performance Enabler and Value
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Creator. The Performance Enabler and Value Creator may also contain components
of the Order Taker or Learning Enabler. For example, where learning solutions are
developed and deployed to meet regulatory or compliance requirements, provided
by the Performance Enabler and Value Creator.

In our practice, we have presented these four business models to hundreds of L&D
professionals from every continent. Surprisingly, they enjoy a very high degree of
recognition, and L&D professionals are highly motivated to move towards the roles
of Performance Enabler and Value Creator.

No Fixed Order

The four L&D business models are not defined to be prescriptive. For example,
L&D leadership may make a deliberate choice to remain within the Order Taker
model for one or two years while it reviews options for change. An Order Taker
may also move immediately to the right, either directly to Value Creator or
indirectly via the Performance Enabler. There is no fixed path, profile, or sequence,
though we do recommend L&D moves towards the business. This offers
opportunities to shift towards being a profit centre, which is good for any part of an
organisation, not least L&D.

Functions Of The Business Models

We do not intend to express any value judgements concerning these four models.
Their most important function is as a framework to help engage in dialogue so that

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each L&D department can determine the difference, in its own context, between the
current and desired models.

The publication of our new book will make available the following relevant
functions of the four models:

 Diagnosis (assessing the current business model and comparing it to the

target model).

 Benchmarking the four models, and expressing as a percent age where your
organization is in the current model.

 Insight into the factors influencing the four models.

 Drawing up the roadmap to move from current to desired situation.

The Uses of Data

The development of even an imperfect value-added testing system would
revolutionize the systems for hiring, promoting, and compensating teachers. Our
current methods provide teachers with little incentive to improve achievement.
Promotions and salary increases are based on teachers’ seniority and their
acquisition of advanced degrees. These characteristics are, at best, weakly related to
student achievement. Excellent teachers who possess a master’s degree and a few
years’ experience receive exactly the same salary as lousy teachers with the same
formal credentials. Under the current system, we have turned the keys over to
educators and trusted that their professionalism will yield improvements in student

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achievement. Education’s productivity crisis in the past four decades should be
evidence enough that simple trust is not sufficient.
The development of value-added assessment would also revolutionize how we
govern schools and hold them accountable. We currently have little rational basis
for saying that a particular school is a good school or that a particular
superintendent is a good superintendent. Value-added testing would at least give
voters some idea of whether they are getting their tax money’s worth out of the
school system by giving them at least some information on how the schools are
doing. The fact that voters would have better information on achievement provides
the school board with incentives to hire and retain a superintendent who can elicit
improvement in student learning. The superintendent, in turn, has an incentive to
hire and retain principals who will use the value-added results to hire and promote
the best teachers.
Critics of value-added assessment don’t necessarily object to using value-added
assessment. They object to using the data gleaned from it for high-stakes purposes,
such as rewarding or punishing individual schools and teachers. Instead, they
suggest that value-added results be provided to administrators so that they can make
informed decisions about their employees. This is, to some extent, what happens in
the private sector; most private firms do not use the crude techniques exemplified
by the real-estate company in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, where the
salesperson with the fewest sales was fired. Most companies use productivity
measures to inform the subjective assessments of supervisors, with some companies
permitting less subjective judgment than others for fear of bias or favoritism.

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But here is where the parallel between measuring productivity in public education
and private industry ends. Supervisors in private companies have incentives to use
the information provided by productivity measures properly, because their
companies face the discipline of competition from other companies. If supervisors
fail to put data on costs, sales, and revenue to good use, their companies will lose
out to competitors who do.
In public education, by contrast, local decisionmakers have few or no incentives to
make good use of data in assessing their employees because public schools face no
meaningful competition. There are basically no consequences for principals who
disregard the results of value-added assessments in making decisions about
employees, and they’re more likely to disregard those results if they consider value-
added assessment an unreliable analytical technique. Superintendents will not be
able to judge whether principals have used their discretion properly, because they
will be told that the value-added test results are not proper grounds for assessing the
decisions of principals. And school boards and voters, in turn, will all be stymied in
making independent judgments because they will be told that the professional
decisions of educators are more reliable than value-added test results.
So there is good reason to fear that principals in public schools, if given discretion
to reward teachers as they please, will base their decisions on personal relationships
rather than on the results of value-added assessments. In both private industry and
public education, a balance must be struck between the mechanical use of
productivity measures in assessing employees and relying on the subjective
judgments of supervisors. But, in public education, the balance needs to tilt more
toward the mechanical application of results, because supervisors have fewer

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incentives to make appropriate subjective judgments. This means that value-added
assessment needs to be high stakes to have the desired positive effect on student
learning.
Injustices are unavoidable if value-added assessments are used more mechanically.
Some educators will be improperly punished for eliciting what appear to be low
gains because of measurement error. Conversely, some educators will be rewarded
for improvements for which they were not actually responsible. That said, some of
the flaws in value-added assessment have potential technical solutions. For
example, if judging a teacher based on his classroom’s test scores contains too
much error because the sample is too small, we might decide to rate teachers based
on a moving average of multiple years of results, thereby increasing the sample size
and reducing the random error. But even with technical fixes, some injustices will
still occur.
This is not a good reason to abandon the idea, however. After all, some educators
will be treated unjustly under any evaluation system. Under the current system,
excellent, hard-working teachers who put in tons of overtime receive the same
salary as mediocre teachers. What’s fair about that? The Buffalo, New York, district
recently announced layoffs as a result of a budget deficit. Who were the first to
receive pink slips? Not the worst teachers in the district, but the most recently hired.
Surely some excellent teachers lost their jobs, while the district retained its burned-
out veterans. A peer- or supervisor-review system may reward teachers who are
popular among their peers rather than effective with students. Attempting to
measure and reward successful educators, with all of its imperfections, is likely to
create fewer injustices than any other arrangement. At least using value-added

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assessments increases the chance that good teachers are rewarded and bad teachers
are sanctioned.
Besides, ensuring that every single educator receives justice is at most a secondary
concern. An obvious but infrequently recognized truth is that the primary purpose
of the education system is to provide a quality education to all students. If high-
stakes value-added assessment can help motivate public schools to provide students
with a better education, it’s a promising reform even if it has some cost to school
employees. In no other industry would we even entertain the notion that the
interests of employee’s trump those of customers. Only the political dominance of
teacher unions makes us consider the question. It is true that customers usually
receive the best service when employees are treated well and fairly. Happily, high-
stakes value-added assessment is likely to achieve both ends.

Just like automation and AI will replace many front-end business process and system-
oriented jobs, making soft skills more important than ever, so too will they impact
learning consulting, design and development. The core skill sets that must stay true are
instructional design and the business-oriented skills listed above, so that learning
professionals can truly become trusted advisors to the business.

With expectations for more desirable experiences directing the identification of

business outcomes, there is more talk about learning production and the need for
experienced learning professionals to become learning producers. However, we must
be careful: Engineering and production should not be the core focus of the next-
generation learning professional. You can’t develop impactful training if you
don’t first use empathy and smart research to understand who you want to produce
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learning content for. The agile learning development team is emerging instead, with a
staff of hard-core cloud web developers, architects, engineers, graphic and media
artists who can take a well-articulated learning experience concept or journey from a
learning professional and then build, iterate and release it rapidly to the learning
audience.

The experience-driven learning organization looks more like a front-end learning

services business model staffed with professionals who do have backgrounds in
instructional design but who are building new skills in strategy and creative design,
and who are deeply embedded in an organization’s business areas, product teams or
service lines. The learning services business team can focus on solving business
problems and then leverage the “hard” skills of cognitive, cloud, digital experience
and media arts resources with an agile and DevOps production mindset.

So, to all the instructional designers out there who are wondering what the future holds
for you in the cognitive and digital economy, see yourself as a trusted learning advisor
operating in a learning services business model. Work to position yourself more
deeply in the context of the business you serve, and build subject matter expertise and
create learning that will have real business impact. If all learning professionals can
hone these business-oriented skills in an organization, a real culture of learning will
emerge in more desirable, simple and effective ways than we previously thought was
possible.

PRICING LOGIC OR COST ASSOCIATED IN INDUSTRY

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Fixed Pricing

Fixed pricing is a pricing strategy used in training, for which one price is paid for all
the activities within a training function or program, regardless of the number of
activities consumed. This is generally used in outsourcing engagements, in which
suppliers are payed a fixed price for a particular amount of time, regardless of the
amount of work or activity.

One example of fixed pricing is when organizations source e-learning courses from
training suppliers; an organization pays a fixed fee (for the year) to license the courses,
despite how many students take the training during that time.

Breaking Down The Actual Cost Of A Learning Management System

For many businesses, the decision to change their Learning Management System is
easy. In fact, research by Brandon Hall Group shows that 44% of organizations are
unhappy with their existing LMS, and 48% are exploring new or different learning
technologies. The decision to change Learning Management System is an easy one;
the hard part comes when trying to decide which LMS to buy. And key to this
decision is the cost of a Learning Management System - the same research from
Brandon Hall Group found that Learning Management Systems account for 38% of
the average learning technology budget.

Too many businesses only consider the up-front, monetary cost of potential
offerings when deciding to change their Learning Management System. The reality
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is that there is a plethora of costs, both upfront and hidden, when it comes to
switching Learning Management System - and those costs can encompass time as
well as money.

Here’s a quick example from the market. A company with 500 employees is
looking to upgrade to a Learning Management System with full analytics
capabilities and customization options, and narrow their options down to the open-
source LMS Moodle and the cloud-based Coassemble. Management take a look at
the two Learning Management Systems and see that Moodle is free, whilst
Coassemble will cost $699 a month. They make the logical decision, and switch to
Moodle. But months later, after sinking thousands of dollars and countless hours on
their ‘free’ LMS, the company regrets their decision. Why?

Just like an airfare can lure in potential customers by appearing cheap, and then
heap on added cost after added cost until it resembles nothing like the original price,
so too can Learning Management System offerings come bundled with layers of
hidden expenses that many organizations don’t see coming.

Let’s break down the true cost of a Learning Management System.

The Costs Everyone Knows About

These costs are often referred to as ‘hard costs’. They’re the cost of the Learning
Management System as shown on the box - any licensing fees, one-off setup fees,
or pricing models. These hard costs can range from the tens of thousands of dollars,

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to nothing at all - but as we’ll see later, they’re only part of the equation when it
comes to the true cost of a Learning Management System.

Pricing Models

The most visible cost of a Learning Management System is its pricing model.
Learning Management Systems can be broadly split into one of two categories:
Cloud-based, and self-hosted. Each of these categories has different pricing
methods.

Cloud-based Learning Management Systems can be Pay-Per-User, Pay-Per-Use, or

simply charge a License Fee. Pay-Per-User models work in one of two ways: They
can charge organizations for each user registered to use the LMS (this is called
‘registered’ users), or for each user that actually logs into the LMS and engages
with LMS content (this is called ‘active’ users). An example pricing system would
be $5 per registered user, per month. Some LMSs that use this pricing model
are Latitude Learning and Skillsoft. Pay-Per-Use models charge organizations each
time they ‘use’ their Learning Management System. These models can vary wildly
as ‘use’ can mean many different things - some examples of common definitions of
‘use’ are: A fee for each user for each course, and a fee for each user for each
module they access. License fees are one-time fees to access an LMS for a set
period of time. For example, a provider may charge a yearly rate for their LMS no
matter how many people are using it.

Self-hosted LMSs are Learning Management Systems that are hosted by the
organization using them, which can mean they are hosted on company or 3rd party
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servers. Pricing models for self-hosted Learning Management Systems cover
Perpetual Licenses, Periodic Licenses, and Free models. Periodic Licenses refer to
Learning Management Systems that charge a monthly or yearly rate for hosting,
whilst Perpetual Licenses have a singular one-off cost that guarantees use of the
Learning Management System for as long as the client requires. Free models are
open-source softwares like Moodle, which are accessible by anyone with no up-
front free..

Setup Fees

Setup fees are one-off payments that some LMS providers charge to install an LMS.
A common fee for a cloud-based LMS is $4,000-$7,000, whilst a self-hosted LMS
can require fees of up to $25,000. This usually covers setup of the Learning
Management System in question, some staff training, a basic level of support, such
as via email, and a basic level of customization (for example, company color
schemes and branding).

The Complexity Of Hard Costs

It should already be becoming clear that there’s no easy way to compare Learning
Management System prices - should you go with $5 per user, a $20,000 annual
license fee, or a cost of $2 per user per course? What are the setup fees for each of
those options? Are they cloud-based or self-hosted?

There’s no easy answer as no pricing model is necessarily any better than any other
- Pay-Per-User can be cheaper than Pay-Per-Use if you have an engaged user base,

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whilst large numbers of employees could warrant a Learning Management System
with a license fee. Researching and analyzing these costs can be time-consuming
and frustrating… And that’s just the hard costs.

The Hidden Cost Of A Learning Management System

The hidden costs of an LMS refer to all the costs that you only really find about
after you’ve chosen your Learning Management System. One of the key factors to
consider when looking at the holistic cost of an LMS is time. If your new LMS has
little or no initial pricing cost, but is taking up large chunks of company time, then
it may prove more expensive than a Learning Management System with a large
pricing cost that fits seamlessly into your organization’s processes.

Let’s take the free, open-source pricing model as an example:

The Precarious Nature Of Open-Source Software

Open-source LMSs are Learning Management Systems that can be accessed for
free, and customized to suit an organization’s needs. An example is Moodle, the
most popular Learning Management System in the world according to Capterra. But
whilst accessing open-source LMSs may be free, actually using them as your
primary Learning Management System is not.

Firstly, you’ll need to set up a server for your open-source LMS. You’ll need to
pick a server configuration based on your expected number of users and their usage
patterns - something which can be very hard to predict. The server will need to last
at least a few years without upgrading, or you’ll be looking at recurring server
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costs. Chances are your IT department won’t have the knowledge base to choose
and set up an appropriate server, in which case you’ll need to hire a professional IT
vendor. This will cost around $4,000.

Next, you’ll want to customize your Learning Management System - this means
adding and removing features, and changing user IX and design. Customizing
Moodle costs thousands of dollars, and making serious changes pushes that figure
into the tens of thousands. To finish setting up your ‘free’ LMS, you’ll need to train
your staff. If you can’t do that yourself, you’ll need to hire someone who can.

Then there are the recurring costs. On the administration side, you’ll need to pay
hosting and security certificate fees. On the recruitment side, organizations with
open-source LMSs require at least one administrator to keep track of site and server
issues. If you want to create any LMS content, you’ll need to hire an eLearning
developer as well. Compare these hidden costs to a Learning Management System
like Coassemble, which costs between $99 and $1199 a month and comes with full
support and an in-house development team to help convert eLearning materials, and
you’ll see that choosing a Learning Management System alternative with higher
hard costs can save you serious money.

As you can see, open-source LMSs may have no ‘hard costs’, but that doesn’t mean
they’re free. In fact, they can prove to be more expensive than an LMS with a one-
off licensing fee. And what’s more, ‘free’ LMSs eat up time. Time to find IT
professionals who can set up servers and customise the Learning Management
System. Time to implement new processes. Time to train staff or hire somebody

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who can. Time to hire new staff to manage the LMS, or in-house developers who
can create new Learning Management System content.

But this isn’t just true for open-source Learning Management Systems - every LMS
has hidden monetary and time costs, such as training staff and converting existing
resources.

This brings us to our next point.

The Inverse Relationship Between Hard Costs And Hidden Costs

Often, the Learning Management Systems with the highest ‘hard costs’ have the
lowest hidden costs. Paying $25,000 up front for access to a self-hosted LMS may
seem too steep at first glance, but when you consider that the price tag includes a
system installation and customization by trained professionals, who also cover staff
training and provide ongoing customer support, you may find you’ve unearthed a
bargain. Furthermore, these hard costs are easier to predict than hidden costs.

The point here is not that organizations looking to change Learning Management
System should pick one that has high hard costs. Often, open-source LMSs are still
the best option. The point, however, is this - all Learning Management Systems cost
you in some shape or form: through money, time, or other resources. Too many
businesses only consider the hard costs when looking to switch LMS. It’s time to
start considering hidden costs in the LMS equation.

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How To Price Your eLearning Courses: 6 Tips For eLearning Professionals

Attaching a price tag to your eLearning courses can be a tricky task. If you charge
too much you may be excluding a good percentage of your target audience. If you
price your eLearning courses too low, then you may undervaluing your efforts.
Finding a happy medium is key, but how do you turn a profit and still keep it
affordable for your online learners?

1. Size-up the competition.

If others are already selling an eLearning course similar to yours, or even in
the same niche, take a closer look at how they have priced their product and
how many sales they have to-date. Some eLearning courses selling
platforms display the total number of sales for each eLearning course,
while others may just show user reviews that give you a good indication of
value and overall satisfaction. For example, if many learners mention the
fact that the eLearning course may be overpriced, then you may want to
take that into consideration when determining your price point. The
eLearning courses length, delivery format, and the benefits are also key
considerations.

2. Factor in your up-front costs.

Chances are that your eLearning courses wasn’t free to create. Even if you
used free authoring and multimedia tools, you still invested a great deal of
time and work into the endeavor. Time is money. Create a spreadsheet for
all of the expenses you accrued when developing your eLearning courses
and factor it into your price. You should also account for all the costs you
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 haven’t racked up just yet, such as eLearning courses' maintenance and
hosting. You wouldn’t want to set it a low price point only to discover that
your monthly upkeep costs are putting you in the red.

3. Opt for a lower price point over FREE.

If you’ve never sold an eLearning course before, free seems like it might be
a good starting point. After all, just think of how many learners you can
attract if you offer your course free-of-charge for a month. However,
offering free courses is usually not the best solution. When learners see a
FREE price tag on the screen, they may perceive it as low quality or not
worth their time. Those you attract are most likely not going to
be motivated enough to learn, or may not be interested in the topic. For
instance, you may find that most of your learners are not
participating actively or don’t seem to be truly interested in the subject
matter. They simply signed up because it didn’t cost them anything. If you
charge a lower price to get learners in the virtual door, however,
you appeal to those who actually want to explore the topic. They are
willing to pay the small up-front fee to access the eLearning course because
they need to know the information or wish to improve some aspect of their
life. They will be dedicated to the eLearning experience, because they are
both monetarily and emotionally invested in the eLearning course.

4. Content is key to determining cost.

The interactive exercises, multimedia elements, eLearning assessments,
written content, and visuals are all key factors when determining your price
point. If you create eLearning courses that are highly interactive, complete
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 with scenarios and simulations, it only goes to reason that they should be
priced higher than online courses that are text-based. The length of your
eLearning courses also plays an important role. For example, an eLearning
course that consists of 10 half-hour lessons is worth more than a one-hour
eLearning course. This is known as the “perceived value” of the
eLearning courses. It is what learners think it is worth and how much they
are willing to pay. Conduct a focus group or a survey to get a better idea for
what learners are currently looking for and to identify gaps in the market.

5. Do some research to calculate supply vs. demand.

If your eLearning course is one-of-a-kind and covers a topic that has never
been dealt with before, then you may be able to charge a higher price.
However, this is only true if there is actually a demand for the eLearning
course. For instance, if you develop an eLearning course for how to
maintain garden tools, but no one is interested in learning about the subject,
then you may want to opt for a lower price point. It’s also essential to find
the point where supply and demand meet. An eLearning course that is
priced at $25 might attract 100 learners ($2,500), but pricing it at $20 might
result in 150 sales ($3,000), which nets you a greater profit.

6. Test the waters by offering promo codes.

Using promo codes and discounts can be a great way to figure out the
perfect price for your eLearning courses. Start off with a larger discount,
then lower it gradually while monitoring the total number of sales. If you
notice that signups start to decrease, then you know that the price may be
too high. Then you can sell your eLearning courses at the most successful
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 price point. For example, if offering a 25% discount netted you the most
sales for your $100 course, you may want to offer your eLearning course at
$75. Alternatively, you can just keep offering the promo code, as a great
deal!

FUTURE PROJECTIONS FOR LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT

INDUSTRY

Digital transformation and its revolutionary impact on changing job profiles and
skill demands is a key driver for the changing role of learning, next to the habits and
expectations of generations growing up with Google searches, ever-present smart
phones, YouTube videos on any topic you can possibly imagine, social media
platforms, WhatsApp and Snapchat communications (and whatever comes next)
from the start.

Here are 7 predictions on how this will change the world of Learning Some of these
transformational steps have started to become highly relevant already today, and
will significantly accelerate over the years to come. Others are only at the very
beginning but will play a strong role in shaping the future.

Prediction 1: Learning will emerge from ‘a phase in our life’ to a life-long

theme

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In the past, learning and education has been dominating a phase of our life
preceding the working phase. First school, then college and/or a specific work-
education education – say for instance: learn to be an accountant – then we had
learned ‘enough’ and could start working all our professional lives in this one job.
With the digital revolution, this is no longer the case. Jobs, working styles and
respective skill needs will undergo constant change at increasing speed, and we will
have to continuously learn, un-learn and re-learn to stay relevant. As machines learn
to do more and more tasks, careers – and even jobs overall – will be exclusively
centered around areas where human-only skills apply, and life-long learning
becomes key to success. As Albert Einstein already said: ”once you stop learning
you start dying”.

Prediction 2: More important than formal learning programs, on-demand and

informal micro learning will become the main learning approach

There may still be some occasions in our life, where we will put dedicated time
aside to learn new skills in a programmatic, academy-like fashion ahead of time,
e.g. for initial on-boarding into a new job. However, the majority of learning
activities will take place via small ‘nuggets’ of micro learning that we consume on
demand. No matter if a child needs help with the latest math problem he didn’t
understand at school, or if we want to know how a specific feature of our new
camera drone works, or may need a sophisticated cooking skill to prepare a
Michelin-star quality dish, we typically go to YouTube where sure enough we’ll
find a short video that explains exactly what we need to know in just a few minutes,
rather than going through documentation or formal learning programs. Or we may

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check blog posts in a social user community and benefit from the experiences of
others. Already today, the majority of IT professionals admits to frequently use
such learning for professional skill needs as well. And this is only going to increase.

Prediction 3: Learning itself becomes more and more digital

I know, this has been a long-standing discussion and some of you might be
skeptical about which role digital learning will really play in the future. I keep on
meeting people who are deeply convinced ‘if you want to learn something real, e-
learning doesn’t cut it’, that there is no way around some sort of personal learning
environment such as a classroom. Is that so? This belief is mostly driven out of an
historic image of how e-learning looks like – that it might not be really engaging,
not interactive, not modular enough, and that the promise of ‘you can learn
anywhere, anytime’ often translates to ‘well, then I don’t need to do it today, maybe
tomorrow, or whenever – or never’. But Digital Learning is much more than this
image of e-learning, in fact ‘e-learning’ is probably the wrong term altogether.
Successful digital learning requires blending together the same 4 components that
we all naturally know are crucial for any traditional learning setting: A book, a
teacher, the possibility to practice and a discipline-enforcing element such as a test
or competition. What may sound a trivial no-brainer for a classroom setting, may
not be so intuitively clear in the digital learning world: often the focus is purely on
‘the book’, i.e. providing the content in a digital format – namely the ‘e-learning’.
This is exactly when ‘e-learning’ falls short, even if it’s done in an engaging
fashion. To be effective the other 3 elements must blend in. You must be able to
practice. In SAP we are proving hands-on practice to digital learners via live access

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to systems in the Cloud. You must have teaching elements that guide and motivate
the learner as well. In the digital world this may translate into expert videos and live
sessions. More often than not these are short nuggets explaining a small but tricky
part of the content, rather than replicating a full ‘class’ and teaching the entire
content from A to Z. Or guiding sessions to coach learners on their next step of self-
study and to discuss their questions. Further crucially important elements include
social learning forums. At SAP, we observed that complementing digital content by
such digital teaching elements increases learner engagement up to a factor of 10!
And last but not least, you need to ensure a high learner motivation and drive – in
many cases even a certain extent of pressure – to keep them going. Next to
traditional carrot-and-stick elements like assessments, certifications and hard
milestones for certain task completions, gamification will continue to see fast
growing adoption in digital learning.

If done right, digital learning can deliver at much higher speed and scale, and
enable continuous learning in small nuggets to stay current with the ever-changing
knowledge required. In SAP we apply these elements already successfully today for
our digital learning offerings, and continuously evolve the approach. Whenever we
need to educate our worldwide ecosystem on an innovation, we can reach tens of
thousands of learners in record time with our openSAP massive open online course
(MOOC) program. And more than 500,000 learners on SAP Learning Hub have
immediate access to the latest learning, the second we put it out. So, yes: Digital
learning will become the primary learning vehicle of the future, and will further
expand not only to deliver spectacular learner experience, but also into areas like
‘crowd-sourcing’ knowledge from the broader eco-system.
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While we see all of this becoming increasingly relevant already today, I expect it to
become even much, much more powerful in the future. Technical advances like
Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are important enablers. Watch out for
a lot of advancement in the years to come in the following areas:

Prediction 4: Super-intelligent mass-individualization of Learning will become

standard

In managing consumers, ‘1:1 Marketing’ has already become the norm. Who still
thinks that anonymous mass email campaigns promoting the same content to
everyone will be successful? Instead every one of us gets super-individual
suggestions considering factors like our latest web searches, social media activities
etc. The smartness and relevance of these algorithms is quite stunning today already
and will only become better and better. Even in manufacturing, managing in ‘lot
sizes of one’ has become a mandatory requirement for many businesses, as every
consumer wants their individual variant of the product. Only in learning we should
believe that the same learning content on a topic fits to all learners alike? No way!
Even when learning the same topic, every learner has different starting points and
probably different learning goals and context. With the advance of Machine
Learning, we will be able to create individual versions of the same ‘book’ for every
learner, exactly tailored to their needs, in an automated fashion. And beyond help
them manage their learning journey supported by pro-active, Amazon-like
recommendations. All the sophistication we have come to know from Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) approaches, will be applied to learning

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approaches as well. ‘1:1 Learner guidance’ or ‘Learner Relationship Management’
if you will.

Prediction 5: The user experience for Learning will become conversational –

and will blend learning and doing together

If learning consumption becomes more and more on-demand, then why not put it
right into the place where you do the task rather than into a separate learning world.
In enterprise software for instance, it is already becoming a reality that from the app
where you do a certain task it makes sense to directly jump into learning about this
task if needed. We will see this coupling become increasingly smart in the future,
and not the least, support a conversational user experience. Already today we can
tell our car’s navigation system where to go to, and have more or less sophisticated
‘conversations’ in human language with Siri or Alexa. If such conversational
capabilities will be connected in a smart way to the massive libraries of learning
content, this will have tremendous potential for improving learning experience and
efficiency. You simply ask the machine – a ‘Learning Bot’ – what you want to
know – in human language – and the bot puts together a great explanation out of the
myriads of content available, tailored exactly to your pre-knowledge and preferred
learning style. Moreover, it won’t be only about you asking question, the bot might
reach out to you and pro-actively inform you about new things you should learn.
In SAP Learning Hub we are piloting a first prototype of such a learning bot today,
and expect such scenarios to become extremely powerful in the future. Probably
even to the point of such bots becoming ‘personal teachers’, who know their
learner’s profile and habits precisely and can teach each one in the way most

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effective for the respective individual. At some point, Learning Management
Solutions (LMS) as we know them today will go away as the primary user interface
to the learner and will be replaced by human language chat and speech, potentially
integrated directly in respective apps like WhatsApp (or whatever the post-post-
post-successor of today’s WhatsApp will be popular in 2030…) rather than being a
separate app.

Talking about human language: with the amazingly steep learning curve of machine
translation we have seen lately, I also do predict that by 2030 all of the above will
be available to the learner translated real-time into any language at perfect quality,
so language barriers will have completely disappeared by then. We are running
some prototypes of this in the openSAP program already today (Enterprise Machine
Learning in a Nutshell), with results that raise high expectations for the future.

Prediction 6: Gaming features will enable the Learning technologies of

tomorrow

A lot of learning technology advances are being spear-headed by the gaming

industry. Be it in the areas of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, that are
empowering large parts of the conversational and learning-individualization
features previously discussed. Stunning graphical advancements that enable Virtual
Reality and Augmented Reality possibilities are key as well. We have all seen flight
simulators providing huge value to pilot training – probably one of the first and
most widely known use cases for deploying Virtual Reality in a learning scenario.
We will see such technology deployed across the board in learning wherever it
makes sense. Not the least, computer games can often really get their player
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hooked, a capability that will become more and more interesting to increased
stickiness of learning as well. Overall, if you are interested in what the most insane
advancements may be to enable future learning technology, keep an eye on what’s
happening in gaming.

Prediction 7: Some ethical questions will need to be resolved

A lot of this innovation is fueled by machines gathering more and more insight and
intelligence on the learners. Naturally this will bring up questions around data
privacy, legal regulations and overall ethics. Already today, depending on country
and company, it might be problematic to track rather trivial information like an
individual’s learning history. How problematic might it become if this extends to
real intelligence about behaviors, preferences, skills and capability in a future where
these will be the decisive factors for an individual’s success in life? On the other
hand, the willingness of individuals has already to share information on social
media has reached such tremendous levels, even more so in the younger
generations, that I do believe at the end of the day people’s desire to benefit from
machine and AI advancement is going to largely prevail over privacy concerns.

So will we be able to directly upload knowledge to the brain after all?

Last year, researchers from the California-based HRL Laboratories said they have
found a way to amplify learning by feeding electric signals from the brain of an
experienced airplane pilot into the brains of trainees. The trainees receiving the
electric signal were able to learn piloting airplanes in a flight simulator 33 per cent
better than a placebo group. We won’t see such technology playing serious a role in

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2030, but sure enough the evolution / revolution of learning will become one of the
most exciting topics over the next 15 years, and bring more innovation to learning
than we have ever seen before.

As crazy and unrealistic as the Hollywood SciFi sounds, science in fact seems to be
making progress here as well and by 2030 secret agent Frank Monahan’s digital
enablement will be more powerful than ever imagined.

Engage in Learning, the eLearning supplier, has followed the well-honoured

tradition of offering ten predictions for the eLearning sector in 2019.

Published and amplified on the company’s website, the predictions are:

1. The key ‘elephant in the room’ issue, from a UK- and EU-perspective, is
Brexit – and the positive and/or negative effects it will have on learning
and development (L&D) activities.

2. There will be lots of investment money looking for a home in the online
learning sector around the world.

3. Adaptive learning will mature – and will be a pre-cursor to the widespread

use of artificial intelligence (AI) in learning.

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 4. Where AI is concerned, watch for smart vendors of online learning
materials and systems integrating with the technology giants.

5. Those catering for the learner experience (LxP or LEP) market will
continue to make lots of noise.

6. Many LMSs will integrate with other parts of the corporate technology
stack, especially in the new and fast-emerging financial technology
(Fintech) market.

7. The trend towards greater consolidation in the online learning sector, begun
over the last few years, will continue.

8. The long-running xAPI saga will continue.

9. Several new platforms focused on augmented reality (AR) and/or adaptive

learning will emerge.

10. Despite these market changes, little of the ‘fabric’ of the corporate
online learning industry will change. Compliance and regulatory online
learning materials will continue to comprise some 80 per cent of all online
learning activities – and, thus, will continue to be the major justification for
the industry’s existence.

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