You have been requested by the your employer to give your opinion on whether your company should purchase or develop a training platform from scratch. How would you develop your argument in each case, for or against building or purchasing the new training software? There are some specific issues for you to consider when deciding on if you should purchase or design your own educational software because e-learning resources should meet specific requirements to include flexibility, performance, and connectivity. The platform should also be efficient and effective.

Homegrown software can be appealing because it is tailor-made to for your specific needs. But is it saving or costing you money and effort? To minimize this cost, you would need to identify and detail every feature that would be needed, as well as pinpoint who in the organization will need to have access to the resource. Be sure to outline data and reporting requirements during the implementation and product evaluation process during the development process. Also think about data quality. If you plan to offer e-learning courseware, you need to be sure that it tracks the data you need and in the manner that you want.

If you make a decision to purchase a learning management system, be sure that the features that you really need are already part of the system. You should not assume that the training platform will meet all your teaching and learning needs. As a matter of fact, it is not a good idea to assume that the training software;s data management and collection system is going to be automatic. Hence look to answer the following questions as you decide what is it that you want for your training needs:

The questions to address are: Which type of user interface is required? How much debugging/troubleshooting will be done on the production phase if building? Which access levels are available for different users? How will usability tests be conducted? Which database output formats are used?

Given that each of the above questions will generate different responses for each organization or company, a team should be brought together to work on coming up with the best plan possible. This means that project management will be important here. Usability and testing should also occur throughout the process and should be piloted with a small group of learners and instructors on a smaller scale before the learning management system is launched throughout the entire organization.

It is entirely possible for a custom-built learning platform to be more expensive to build and manage. It is turns out that sometimes the programmers who developed the system leave the company and technical support is not readily available. With this sorts of possibilities arising, some organization choose to buy off-the-shelf software where the company provides standard support, regular software updates, and training. It should however be noted that in many cases this extra support comes at an additional cost.

One disadvantage of pre-existing software is that it may not always meet your particular training and educational needs. Technical support can be expensive and not readily available when needed. The support features that include licensing and copyright requirements and software updates should be part of the project management teams discussion while the procurement process is ongoing. Whenever it is possible, looking into the customizable, flexible features of off-the-shelf applications is suggested. Most software vendors may have this as an option, so it is a good idea to investigate this further.

Regardless of the option decided upon, it is important to keep in mind that there may be additional costs such as training, maintenance, upgrading. At the end of the day, the important thing to determine is the cost-benefit analysis, and of course the value added to the learners, instructors, and teaching and learning process.

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