Commercialized Training Product Development: Lessons from the Trenches

This paper focuses on how to develop commercial training products and services for the small-to-medium sized enterprise (SME) sector. The paper describes:

Key trends within the learning industry that are revolutionizing training in the workplace. These include:

• The growth of private sector players and learning technologies;
• Pedagogical models that impart content via digital media and place instructors in a facilitating role;
• The transformation of traditional curriculum into re-usable software objects;
• The challenge and opportunity of aggregating demand for training in the SME sector.

The paper also proposes a strategy for Vietnam, Cambodia and Lao PDR to disseminate a management training program for SMEs in a commercially viable manner as follows:

• Products developed for classroom training will be reformatted into modular workbooks for use in different settings;
• Delivery of these products, to a large number of SMEs, will be done by establishing a delivery channel of value-added-retailers (VAR).
• Insights in developing and marketing similar training products:
  • Integrating technology into a complete learning system;
  • Ensuring control and ownership over training content;
  • Considering the acquisition and adaptation of someone else's product;
  • Validating that training need constitutes training demand;
  • Ensuring that interventions in the training market produce the desired results.

The paper concludes that the greatest challenge in commercializing training products and services, particularly for the SME sector, is the translation of training need into demand.