Are you ready to bring the power of an online learning platform into your organisation? That’s fantastic news! Perhaps your decision is all that is required and you can immediately request a demo from Tribal Habits and get going.
Alternatively, while you may be ready to go, your organisation may require you to demonstrate the business case for this proposed online learning platform. You may need to bring other decision-makers or stakeholders into the loop and obtain their approval. Alternatively, you may want to simply take yourself through a process to ensure your selected online learning platform is a good choice.
In either case, what you need is a business case for an online learning platform. In this series of articles, we will help you write a business case for a new online learning platform in a way which is both efficient and persuasive. The three articles in this series provide you with two key parts to the process.
- The first part is a 6-step instructional guide designed to help you build your business case and get internal approval for an online learning platform.
- The second part is an example of how a fictional company, ACME Co., put this framework to use to get approval for an online learning platform to optimise the organisation’s induction processes. The purpose of part two is to show you the framework in action, but feel free copy and paste any of the wording into your business case if it serves your needs.
In each article, we will review two steps in the process, along with the example from ACME Co.
- The first article examines step 1 (Define the problem) and step 2 (Explore potential solutions).
- The second article looks at step 3 (Recommend a preferred solution) and step 4 (Explain the pricing).
- The third article reviews step 5 (Describe the implementation) and step 6 (Provide your impression).
You can also download a guidebook of all three articles (including the consolidated ACME Co example) in a single business case template for a learning platform.
Step 3 – Recommend a preferred solution
Based on the information you’ve provided above, you are now in a position to recommend the solution that you think will best address the problems outlined in Stage 1. Explain how the solution you are proposing is superior to other alternatives by highlighting its ability to solve the challenge you identified. You can also provide more detail on pricing, implementation, and any other areas you feel will strengthen your case for the preferred solution.
It’s critical at this stage to link your recommendation back to the problem you’re trying to solve and the organisational goals you’re trying to achieve. If you frame your solution in a way that is relevant to solving the problem, you will go a long way to getting buy-in for your approach. Try and use specific examples and make your recommendation as contextual as possible to your organisation.
Step 4 – Explain the pricing of the preferred solution
At this step, you dive into the pricing details of your preferred solution. Pricing is a crucial element of any business case, so the more detail and transparency you can provide here, the better.
Pricing must be addressed from a total cost of ownership perspective. It’s all too easy with SaaS platforms to simply compare subscription rates as a means of understanding pricing, but the reality subscription rates are only part of the total cost picture.
You need to look at the costs associated with the platform in the medium and longer-term, a concept called total cost of ownership. Some of the questions you should have answers to at this stage include:
- What are the costs associated with implementation?
- How will we create training? What does it take to edit training?
- Do our staff require training to use this solution?
Even the seemingly simple task of comparing subscription rates can become complicated. Discounts may apply for increased usage. Some organisations charge for stored users (meaning you are charged per user whether they access your system or not), others, like Tribal Habits, charge only for active users.
Try to make your pricing explanation as clear as possible. Compare ‘apples with apples’ where you can, even if that means generating a usage scenario(s) and calculating the total cost of ownership over 1-3 years for each alternative.
Your management team will be looking to understand its total cost commitment to the solution you are suggesting. Make it easy for them to understand what you’re putting forward, show why it’s superior to the alternatives and be prepared for questions!
Need help?
If you require any assistance with creating a business case to help support your organisation in its consideration of Tribal Habits, please reach to us at [email protected]. We’d be happy to help discuss your objectives, develop optimised solutions and pricing ideas, and ensure that your organisation is ready for a successful launch of its new learning platform.
Example: ACME Co: Moving to online learning
The preferred solution
After reviewing the options outlined above, I believe that creating customised, online induction training through Tribal Habits is the best option for ACME Co.
Tribal Habits provides a complete eLearning authoring tool, branded portal and unlimited content creation.
Tribal Habits training can be created so that it is entirely interactive. From narration, images, hotspots, quizzes and assessments, reflection and insights plus many more. The platform also lets you host videos which dynamically adjust to the specifications of each learner’s device when they do the training, in order to ensure they get the best video quality each time.
Some key features of Tribal Habits include personalised creation of training where you can create entire training modules yourself, combined with the use of their training library which has pre-designed training modules including compliance training which we can use straight away and modify where needed. They also offer assistance to bring any current training across onto the platform and assist in digitising what you have into interactive learning experiences. Tribal Habits also uses a modern interface, which results in ease of use and navigation for learners and content creators. You can create complete training modules, one-page information articles or learning pathways (which combine multiple modules and articles) that can be job-specific or general.
In terms of data, Tribal Habits has an easy to use administration section that allows you to enrol staff individually or in bulk, track progress, track scoring and assessments, time spent and much more data that can be utilised to record training as per requirements, but also provide insight to the practice team on where we might need to tweak the training, or in what areas we can help coach in order to better the practice of individuals and the organisation.
Tribal Habits can also integrate with pre-existing technology that we currently use, such as Prezi. Tribal Habits can also integrate and link with Learning Management Systems (LMS) should we need to use an LMS in the future.
We would also be able to effectively track webinars that we hold as practice development sessions, by embedding Zoom (or any other video conferencing tool similar) into Tribal Habits. At present, all that is needed is to create a one-page “article” with Zoom embedded, however, Tribal Habits will also be releasing an event feature which will enable tracking of people attending these webinars, without the need to set up an “article”. I would note, that it would only take less than 10 minutes to set up an “article” anyway, and you would then be able to record the Zoom webinar and save it into the article for people to replay or for those who weren’t able to attend.
Tribal Habits Pricing
Tribal Habits is an affordable option when I have compared similar systems. In fact, it was the cheapest option on the market that was able to tick all the boxes we require.
A critical point that requires consideration when pricing a training platform is the total cost of ownership. The other platforms I reviewed required third party content creation which comes with a high cost. Changes, updates and alteration to training also require substantial change fees.
The costs detailed below are the total costs associated with Tribal Habits. There are no implementation costs, no setup fees and because we aren’t reliant on external content creators, no creation and update costs.
Tribal Habits utilises two pricing options, a monthly plan or an annual plan.
Monthly plan option
$5.00 + GST per user each month. This requires a credit card to be in the system and will be charged on the 1st of each month for active users in the previous month (min 5 active users per month).
Annual plan option
$4,500 + GST per annum, payable in advance – includes up to 100 active users per month. If you go over 100 users in a calendar month, you are charged for the incremental overrun at a rate of $3.38 + GST per user (plus a $25 admin fee). They also have plans for 150 and 200 active users per month.