6 Elements You Should Include in an E-Learning Business Case
Writing a business case is often essential to get budget approval for the development of a new e-learning course. In other words, a business case could mean the difference between the project going ahead and it being rejected.
How do you make your e-learning business case as compelling, engaging, and comprehensive as possible? What are the elements that you should include? Here are our top tips.
- Overall Summary of Your Proposal
As with most business cases, one of the first elements that should be featured is a summary of what you want to do. This summary will contain the main headlines and points that are included in this article.
- What is the business need you want to solve or address?
- Why is e-learning the best delivery method for the training?
- What is the expected return on investment?
- What is the process you will follow to complete the project and launch the course?
- What are the milestones and what is the completion deadline?
- Business Need Information
The best and most effective training programmes exist to solve a business need. Therefore, you should clearly identify in your e-learning business case the business need you plan to solve.
Remember to focus this part of the document on the needs of the business, rather than the needs of the training and development team. Examples of a business need that e-learning can help resolve include reducing error or accident rates, improving an essential KPI, or ensuring your company has the skills it needs to remain competitive as markets and customer expectations change.
- Why E-Learning?
In an e-learning business case, you are selling both the training programme you want to create and e-learning as the delivery method. As a result, you should clearly outline why you think e-learning is the best option.
This part can include information on other ways you deliver training, with specifics explaining why e-learning is better in this situation. In other words, what is wrong with the current training methods and how will e-learning solve those problems and mitigate the challenges?
Outlining the benefits of e-learning is helpful, too, including the higher levels of engagement that can be achieved, the ease and low cost of distribution, and the fact e-learning courses can be updated whenever required to keep them fresh and ensure they remain relevant to both learners and the business.
- Return on Investment
Your e-learning business case will need to include information on the costs involved in creating a new course. This will include the cost of hiring an e-learning developer in the UAE or Saudi Arabia. You might also have to think about internal costs or resource issues associated with creating the course, such as the time that subject matter experts will need to allocate to help create the content.
While costs must be included in an e-learning business case, they shouldn’t be the focus. Instead, the focus should be on what you will achieve, as well as return on investment. How easy ROI will be to define or explain will depend on the type of training course you are planning to create, but the more tangible and focused this section of the business case is, the better.
- Explain the Process
Your e-learning business case should explain the process that will take place once the budget is approved. This includes how you will appoint an e-learning developer, how the content will be gathered or created, and how the overall process will be managed.
You should also go into detail about what will happen after the development work has been completed. This includes how you plan to launch and promote the course, how you will measure results, and your approach to getting feedback. Explaining how you will use feedback is also beneficial.
You should also include information on the challenges you might encounter. This could include challenges during the development phase, such as getting sufficient buy-in from subject matter experts. It also includes the challenges that might exist once the new course is distributed. Examples here include technical issues, resistance to change, and a lack of enthusiasm from managers and other key staff.
The challenges you might encounter are important to include, but don’t stop there. You should also provide information on solutions or the approach you will take to prevent and mitigate the impact of the potential challenges.
- The Timeline
Finally, provide details on the timeline. This doesn’t just mean how long it will take to get the course developed, although this is an important piece of information to include. You should also include milestones during development, when you want the course to launch, and when you expect employees to have completed it.
It can also be helpful to include in the e-learning business case information on when you think there will be tangible results, whether that is an improvement in performance, behavioural change, or any other measurement.
Optimising Your Business Case
As making your e-learning business case as good as possible is so important, it can be useful to get the assistance of a professional e-learning developer. A professional e-learning developer will add important details and help you refine elements such as return on investment, the timeline, and the process. Ultimately, this will help you get the funds you want to create the new training course.
