It’s too cheap, what’s wrong with it?

‘Is £15,000 per annum too cheap for access to our off the shelf catalogue?’ A question I asked in a recent LinkedIn poll found that nearly half of respondents agreed, but what I was really shocked to hear is that some household names expect to pay up to £50,000 for just one course. I’ve often thought the off-the-shelf elearning market has been overpriced for too long.

Firstly, I’ve never understood why companies charge by end-user numbers when all we’re doing is handing pre-packaged courses over. Lots of companies attempt to justify cost with time but in the process end up creating worthless hour long courses no learner will ever have time for. Lastly, most catalogues on the market just look like dressed up PowerPoint slides, how much longer can the never ending scroll stay alive for? 

In my previous role, we were acquired by another off-the-shelf provider which is what led me to thinking it’s time to do things better and here we are.

At THRIVE, none of the modules look the same. It was so important not only to have different formats of content, not all just SCORM files, but to mix up the look and feel of each individual module too.

People are bored with average elearning. We must face up to that and innovate.

That’s why we threw out the rule book, built Lucid, our very own authoring tool, and do everything we can to keep it fresh, engaging and relevant to the subject in hand. 

This includes being agile and reactive to what’s going on in the market and in the world. For example, we turned around a remote working bundle within a day of lockdown. 

Why Microlearning?

Our off-the-shelf elearning is all microlearning. No module is longer than 10 minutes long and we’ve stripped it back to the key information, putting more emphasis on the practical advice learners can make use of straight away. In simpler terms, we’ve got rid of the nonsense so your learners aren’t spending hours and hours learning something that’s not relevant to them.

Our recent webinar; “why microlearning is the most important tool in your content strategy” saw nearly 300 organisations come together and share their interest in microlearning. The more conversations we have, it’s clear L&D teams see the value in bite-sized learning and how it’s better suited to the way modern users learn in their everyday lives. 

The best products don’t need to be the most expensive

Look at brands like “the ordinary” and “Zara” – great quality products that are easily accessible to everyone. Why should we be any different? Why not go for the mass market?

There are a few sceptics who believe it’s too good to be true and we’ve genuinely had people asking “it’s too cheap, what’s wrong with it?” Our answer? We believe top quality elearning should be accessible. It’s as simple as that. 

Now our modules are some of the most viewed pieces of content in large organisations. Vanquis Bank, for example, has 1,800 employees and since adopting our THRIVE microlearning catalogue, has seen an increase in engagement of 460% for optional elearning content. 

It would be easy for us to charge more, sure. But pricing it at entry level enables us to have great relationships with our clients. In lots of cases, due to the successful impact of our content, we’re seeing them want to move from their LMS to THRIVE Learning & Skills Platform too and it’s a win-win for both of us.

It’s all about partnerships

Client partnerships have been key to building our catalogue too. We collaborated with Domestic & General, to build an IDD course for free which we then added into our catalogue for every subscriber to use. Why not? 

It’s not in our culture to just hand the catalogue over to an organisation and not have any more dialogue. We want to meet your business needs for learning and are always looking for ways to improve and evolve to meet customer expectations.

Additionally, partnerships with content resellers have been a huge success. We currently have an ever growing network of content partners including Cornerstone, Viventis, Eloomi, Digits, Virtual College and Training Sensai and seeing more interest grow every week.

What next?

Our elearning catalogue of 500+ microlearning modules is already supercharging the personal development of employees at businesses such as Nandos, Morrisons and Experian. 

You can get involved too, by subscribing for just £15,000 a year (yes, we know it’s cheap!) and that includes unlimited user limits.