Nuts and Bolts: Buy or Build?

My fellow Learning Solutions columnists and I spend a lot of our allottedspace talking about eLearning development: choosing and using tools, designinggood approaches, building interactions, and creating graphics, programmingsimulations and games.  

 In April 2010 (https://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/442/) I wrote about whether instruction was the right solution at all. Anotherquestion: If instruction is indicated – who should create it?

Before we get going: I’m all aboutfinding low-cost eLearning solutions – it was the topic of my first book backin 2005. But I see an awful lot of people throwing expensive resources afterbad chasing a custom, in-house solution when an off-the-shelf product or some outsourceddevelopment work just makes more sense. 

Examples?

I am thinking of:

• The company that, inthe name of “saving money,” instead of purchasing a high-quality butinexpensive commercial product, chose to bring in a Web developer and commithundreds of person-hours to the creation of a text-heavy online program on workplaceharassment. The learner completion rate for this mandatory program: an abysmal 5%.

• The company that,insisting they could do it better themselves, built an “office safety” coursewhen literally dozens are available commercially at reasonable prices. (Or viaYouTube and Vimeo for free.) Months in, the project has been through dozens ofiterations and rounds of review, issues with acquiring graphics and otherprogram elements, and delays while personnel learn to use a new authoring tool.

• The company that, inneed of online training on the new employee timekeeping system, repurposedclassroom trainers to build poor screenshot-based tutorials rather than hire acustom development firm with extensive resources for, and experience in, efficientdevelopment of online software training.

When Ihear these kinds of stories, the Adult Jane in me tries not to shout,“Seriously, people, it’s office safety.It’s harassment. It’s time sheets. It’s customer service. It’s supervisoryskills. It’s ethics. Please!”

Why?

Why does it happen? Sometimes itreally is money, with organizations not considering the real expense of sunkcosts – like hundreds of hours of employee time devoted to a project,assembling assets, and learning new tools. Sometimes, in resisting existing off-the-shelfprograms, it’s the “not created here” syndrome: I’ve joked that if I made a“fire extinguisher safety” video starring Meryl Streep, and gave it away forfree, that four of our agencies would say they couldn’t use it because I showedred fire extinguishers in the video, and theirfire extinguishers are purple.

Other reasons? People just assumethey can’t afford to contract the work out, or buy an off-the-shelf product,without really investigating possibilities. People greatly underestimate thereality of the development process, particularly when considering projects thatwill involve many stakeholders, contributors, and program assets. Or they seean opportunity for a big public splash, without considering how visible a failuremight be. Or they are so concerned with whether the LMS can “count” uses ofthings like YouTube videos that they don’t really explore ways to handle that.Or they don’t know how to say “no” or offer alternatives to the manager askingfor a complex online course for only 50 users. And frankly, the idea ofdeveloping it yourself is alluring: it’s the “fun” part of what we do, thecreative part, and the reason many of us got into this business. But it justdoesn’t always make sense.

When does building make sense?

So here’s quick decision-makingguide, a buy-vs.-build flowchart (Figure 1). The conditions include bothcontent and potential use. Briefly: Build when information is proprietary,absolutely requires company-specific language or graphics (not purple fireextinguishers), and will be used bymore than 500 learners.

Figure 1. “Buy versus build” flowchart. Copyright January2002 from Learning Circuits by LauraFrancis. Reprinted with permission of the American Society for Training and Development.

Otherwise, look at buying a wholeoff-the-shelf solution or outsourcing all or part of the work. Sit down withpencil and paper and calculate the real cost to the organization; in theharassment example above, the cost of building came out at about $60,000 interms of salary and benefits – far more than one of the many good off-the-shelfharassment courses would have cost.

Another option: renovate, don’t reinvent

You’ll notice in the chart that analternative to buying an OTS product outright is customizing one. You can do thisnot only by the vendor reworking the product (an expensive proposition) butalso through providing your own introductory, supplementary, or concludingcontent. 

What does it really cost?

I realize it’s hard to reconcilefinding money when staff is in place to help with development. But apart fromthe factors I’ve already mentioned, consider not only staffing expenses butalso the costs of delays caused by learning curves, process meetings, pilotphases, and tweaking. If performance is critical, a yearlong wait to get thecourse out to workers brings with it a cost to the organization, too, in termsof inadequate performance, mistakes, rework, lost sales, and lawsuits.