Beating the high costs of e-Learning implementation has been a desire of mine for a very long time, especially when it comes to saving money for my clients. I have always believed that many small to medium sized companies have not enjoyed the benefits that high quality e-Learning programs can offer simply because of their exceedingly high price tags, especially for custom e-Learning. Some custom e-Learning companies quote upwards of over $50,000 (yes, that’s $50K) for a two-hour, Flash-based online tutorial!

In January 2005, Andy Hughes (Director, Spirit Consulting Group) wrote that the evidence he has “seen relating to the uptake of e-Learning points to the fact that big businesses have more money to spend and, therefore, are more likely to attract e-Learning suppliers and developers. The cost of implementation is still too high for e-Learning to make a noticeable impact in a business. Most smaller firms are unlikely to have enough surplus profit to plough into e-Learning platforms or courseware.”

Hughes continued by saying, “We have yet to see the significant reduction in the cost of e-Learning that would be associated with a maturing market… It will be another two or three years before we see general e-Learning costs reduce enough to make it viable for” companies to make a reasonable investment in it.

What to do in the meantime? Rapid e-Learning tools are on the rise, and they are becoming more and more robust. No matter how you decide to employ these tools – that is, whether you expend valuable internal resources or you hire an outside instructional design firm, these tools can save you loads of money and time. If you do not have the appropriate people or time resources (or instructional design know-how) to commit to creating affordable, rapid e-Learning programs internally, you can still save a great deal of money by contracting an instructional design firm to implement your custom rapid e-Learning than by hiring a super-expensive e-Learning/graphics company (remember that $50K figure?).