What to Look for in a Custom eLearning Vendor

Studies are showing that use of custom eLearning is expected to grow over the next five years. The right training solution is vital to increase engagement, reduce seat time, scale to meet objectives, and help your organization attract and retain talent.

Here are our recommendations to help you choose the right eLearning vendor to design and develop your learning solutions.

1. Check to see if learning is their core business. Do they have instructional designers on staff? What about performance consultants? Look closely at their website. Review their services. They should offer case studies that showcase the work of their team. These samples will help you to determine whether their team uses the latest in adult learning best practices and how relevant their services are based on your needs. The right custom eLearning vendor isn’t just providing courseware; they should have the capability to customize their offerings based on your learners and goals for your organization.
2. Look at the depth of expertise on their team. Do they have a full-service project team with the ability to scale for you, if needed? Do they have the in-house talent to provide agency-level creative services, project management, and software development and integration? The depth of their team matters. It will ultimately make the difference between a streamlined process, and one that gets bogged down in silos and spotty communication. A custom eLearning vendor that must bring in third-party services won’t have the resources to provide the same level of quality – either with rich media design, system maintenance and support, and scale – as one that has the complete team available to take your project start to finish.
3. Do they offer learning technologies and technical experts? Whether or not you have your own in-house IT team, your learning solution provider should offer the technical services needed to ensure systems integration. You’ll want a dedicated experts that can answer questions and make recommendations. These insights are vital to ensure your learning solution is up-to-date, relevant, and useful long term. You’ll also want a team that can offer you learning technologies that may solve long-standing access issues, such as customized landing pages, portals, and digital resources to build new courses.
4. Look for evidence of success. Want a custom eLearning vendor with a proven track record of excellence, and satisfied clients? Choose a vendor with a history of award-winning projects. It helps if they’ve been named a Top Content provider or Top Training Company from leaders in the training and learning industry – such as Brandon Hall, Training Industry, and eLearning – or received media design awards from world class experts, such as the Horizon awards. Check also for reviews from clients. Those are vital clues about the relationship would be able to build with your custom eLearning vendor. You want a vendor that doesn’t just make clients happy once; they earn repeat business.
5. Look at how long they’ve been in business. At AllenComm, we’ve got a 40-year track record. We were on the leading edge of technology solutions designed for instructional design, and we’ve proudly continued that pioneering tradition in the years since.

Finally, might we suggest that you take a look at our offerings and possibly schedule a consultation to see if it might make sense to collaborate? Please don’t hesitate to reach out.