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Today’s Thoughts ☠️

Hey there 👋,

My inbox has been filled with an odd combo this week.

I’ve had lots of outreach from suppliers desperate for me to ‘endorse their product’. This is not going to happen unless I actually use and find your product useful - soz.

Plus, I’ve had messages from many of my fellow L&D community asking how they can choose the best tech for their company.

Let’s explore these together.

Today, I’m sharing my ultimate guide to buying learning technology you won’t regret. As a former internal L&D leader and budget holder, I know how tough it is to make the right choice in a sea of ‘everything looks the same’ options.

Get your tea or beverage of choice ready, 🍵.

We've got lots to discuss!

→ Much love to today’s sponsor, Sana ❤️

👀 In today’s chat:

• Buying the right learning tech
  

• The people (actually) want L&D!
  

• Addictive intelligence is coming

[🚨I’m working with 12 L&D pros in a 2 week bootcamp to build your advantage with AI in L&D this September. Get the details]

THE BIG THOUGHT
The Ultimate Guide To Buying Learning Technology You Won't Regret

It is a crazy market right now.

Everything is “AI-powered” but should be human-centred, although that’s not a sexy thing to say in the current climate. In my tea-infused opinion, buyers should be looking for tech solutions that are built on AI and powered by humans.

I’m an optimist at heart.

Despite the recent AI craze, buying new tech, especially learning tech, is f*ckin hard.

I did it for 10 years across large corporate, scale-up and startup organisations. I LOVE technology, but by god do I LOATHE the barrage of sales meetings and odd marketing choices.

It’s part of the game, I get that.

Yet, it can leave consumers, and more importantly for you suppliers out there, budget holders confused.

A $400 billion dollar game

That’s a huge number.

According to my research (with Perplexity AI 😉) $20 billion of that sits in the LMS/LXP market. The e-learning market (which I’m convinced will never die in my lifetime) which makes a significant portion of the EdTech category, is expected to reach $1 Trillion by 2032.

With these numbers, no wonder everyone is out there with a AI-powered, e-learning based, content warehouse monolith.

Everyone wants your $$. But you need the right dance partner. One that won’t be another careless whisper and means you might never dance again (bonus points if you know the reference).

Let’s find that for you.

The step by step guide to finding the perfect learning provider for you

Buckle up, we’re about to get super tactical.

Before you buy anything, use this checklist to make sure you’re getting the best deal for your audience.

We’re in the business of humans, after all.

These are all the things you should consider before you event think about stuff like cost, contracts and all that jazz.

1/ Why do we need this?

You’ve always got to start with why, right?

Challenge yourself to dig into what problem you aim to solve by buying a new piece of tech. You might surprise yourself and even find it solves nothing.

This is the exact reason we start our journey with ‘why do we need this tool?’.

2/ Do we already have something that will solve the problem we have?

I find this is the least asked question during procurement stages.

It’s the number one reason why organisations end up with bloated technology portfolios.

It might surprise you to know that you might already have everything you need to support workplace performance. Buying a flashy new and trendy piece of tech doesn’t guarantee anything.

Well apart from a multi-year contract and yearly inflated prices that you might not get out of for a while.

If you have tools like Slack, MS Teams and SharePoint. I would strongly recommend for you to explore the features and functionality of these popular collaboration tools before running out and thinking you need to buy a tool because some supplier who slides into your DM’s on LinkedIn tells you to.

3/ Pick a partner not a provider

If you’ve completed the above and still find yourself needing something to bulk out your learning tech portfolio, then let’s look at the criteria that’s going to help you pick the best product and partner possible.

I recommend you cast your analysis across these questions when assessing suppliers:

👀 Who are they?

It’s always good to know who the people are behind any tech you’re looking to buy.

I have a golden rule of picking partners and not providers, which means I look for people who know their stuff, are clued into the industry and can scale with my organisation’s journey.

So, you’ll want to know who is behind the product.

• Who builds the product?

• What previous experience do they have with learning tech and the industry at large?

• Do their credentials allow them to truly consult and know what they’re talking about. Or are they another run of the mill salesperson trying to sell you a SAAS product with sub-par content and then disappear when you sign on the dotted line?

Do your research.

✅ What is their subject matter expertise?

If it’s not from the learning and education industry, then what is it?

• What products have they built before?

• Who uses them?

• And, have they been successful?

🗺️ What’s their product roadmap?

Again, something I find not often discussed, what does the team’s product roadmap look like for the next 6 – 24 months.

• How do they intend to improve the product over time?

• And are you able to feed into the roadmap with your own requests?

This last one is very important for me.

🤔 What do their clients say?

If you’re starting to get serious about a few suppliers, ask for client referrals.

But don’t just stop at the ones that the suppliers will share with you.

Google is your best friend in these times and you can find a bunch of websites that independently rate and review learning tech. You should ask if they’ll intro you to a few customers too. Most suppliers have a few star customers they’ll setup a chat with.

The golden question: Can you see them as a worthy partner?

Look, some organisations just want an off the shelf SAAS platform to stick their logo on and kick out to their people.

I get it, people have different needs and constraints.

I’ve avoided this approach my whole career. I like to cultivate partnerships with those whose products I’ll use as part of any learning tech ecosystem.

I talk to fellow learning peeps about this all the time.

Find companies who will scale with you and even tailor features and functionality for you. 

Some of the best I’ve worked with are those who have customer success teams that partner with me beyond the technology.

I’ll often talk about strategies, new ways of thinking and creating new ideas. If you can find this, then for me, that’s a big tick in the yes column.

4/ How will it work with everything else we have?

Interoperability with existing workplace technology is very, VERY important when it comes to making a purchase.

You must know if this tool will work with what you’ve already got.

If you have an existing HRIS, collaboration (Slack, Teams etc) and other performance tools. Can this potential new purchase connect to these? 

→ If so, how simple will that be?

Don’t get caught in the death valley of new tech purchases where you’ve paid for your flashy new tool, only to realise it won’t connect with anything in your current workplace learning tech portfolio.

Again, do your research.

✍️ Final Thoughts

This is by no means a comprehensive list.

There will be other questions that might fit specifically for your needs but as a baseline, these are the questions I’d recommend you use as part of your criteria for any purchase.

You’ll notice I’ve not mentioned cost here, and that’s for a very good reason.

You should only ask that question once you’ve completed all of the above. Price shouldn’t even factor into it until you know if you actually need something.

As always, these are just my thoughts but I’d love to hear what questions you’d add to this list?

And if you’re a supplier. No, answering all of these and sliding into my LinkedIn DM’s will not get you anywhere so save yourself the time.

Till next time, you stay classy learning friend!

SMART THOUGHTS

🤔  5 ways to transform employee engagement

Ah, the elusive goal of world-class employee engagement.

It’s almost like trying to catch a unicorn!

Fellow L&D pro, JD Dillion, brought a lot of actionable expertise to this conversation in his latest LI post and live session. You can get all those juicy insights right now.

💡 What matters at work is shifting and L&D is top of it

Gen AI has not just overtaken the tech scene these last two years.

It’s making us reshape what matters in the workplace. The good news? L&D is surging to the top of the ‘we want more of this list’.

Boston Consulting Group (yes, again!) have come out with another meaningful report on AI’s impact at work.

I’ll talk more about this data in the weeks to come.

🔥  Are you ready to fight ‘addictive intelligence’

If you thought social media was addictive, then I’ve got bad news for you.

AI is worse.

And no surprises, tech companies want to take advantage of that. With popular AI partner apps emerging everywhere (note to tech bros: please stop this), a new battle of addiction emerges.

The time to act is now.

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