Training vendors, whether they are conducting an in-person workshop or providing an online program, are often considered as focused on the short-term relationship. That is, trainees or companies pay their money, receive the product/service (the online or in-house training session), and walk away with pages of handouts and other sparse resources. Whether the material is delivered in person, as a videocassette, or via the Internet, the objective of training is for trainees to learn, retain, and apply the content that was presented. More often than not, training vendors walk away from any obligation after the training material has been delivered, leaving clients and trainees with little more knowledge than what they had prior to the training. Much like a smart consumer would compare products before settling on one, it is extremely important for companies to evaluate training vendors before they enlist in their services or products.
Determine YOUR Needs First
Assessing the suitability of each training vendor really depends on the needs and requirements of your organization. Before you select a vendor, you should conduct a thorough needs analysis of your training requirements. Once you have determined that training is in fact necessary, you will need to consider some of the following issues:
Budget - How much money would you like to spend? How much money you have to spend?
Type - What type of training is required? Can you obtain an off-the-shelf product that will satisfy these training needs or will you need to design or customize a training program yourself?
Size - How many employees need to be trained?
Duration - How much time do you have to train the intended employees? How long do you want to offer the training program and does the duration coincide with your budgetary constraints?
Resources - Do you have the manpower required to monitor, implement, and maintain the proposed training program? Does your company possess the necessary facilities and/or equipment or will you need to incur more costs in order to obtain these resources?
Choosing a Suitable Candidate
One of the first things you will need to do after you have determined your training needs is find a list of training vendors that may be able to meet these needs. Just because your colleague at another company told you that she was very impressed by the training products and services their vendor provided, it does not mean that this same vendor is suitable for the needs and requirements of your company.
At first glance, many training vendors seem to offer the same or very similar products and services. As a smart consumer, it is your responsibility to distinguish the differences between these vendors and determine which ones will best be able to meet the needs of your company.
Here are some general, but important, questions you should be asking:
Does the vendor have an established track record?
How many years has the vendor been in business and who are some of its major clients? Are these clients long-standing?
What projects has the vendor accomplished and has it been successful?
Does the vendor continue to recommend the same medium/solution even before it knows what and who is to be trained?
Is the vendor using and offering current releases of the development products they recommend?
Does the material that the vendor considers as "great" agree with your idea of what is great?
Does the vendor provide good customer support, both to you and to the other clients it has serviced?
Does the training vendor provide any training and/or coaching sessions for potential users?
Does the service/product offered by the vendor provide users with a testing mechanism so that retention of the training material can be evaluated?
Can the vendor offer comprehensive and/or customizable reporting and analysis capabilities so that users can generate detailed information and data?
Can the training vendor deliver the final product or service in time to meet your deadline?
Get a Demo, Get a Demo, Get a Demo
Caught up in the haste of finding a vendor and meeting various deadlines, many companies forget the importance of getting the training vendor to go through a thorough, guided demo of their product or service. Don’t forget that it is the training vendor’s job to sell you on their product or service, so be sure to have them give you as much information and detail as possible. If they decline, or give you such a brief demo that you could have learned everything you needed from the vendor’s website, consider their ability to deliver the end product/service and their customer service capabilities.
Remember to ask a lot of questions, even ones that you think may be unintelligent or irrelevant. The vendor’s ability to respond to your concerns and "wow" you with their product via the demo acts as a good indication of their ability to commit to you as an important client and to provide you with superior customer service as well.
Now What?
One useful tool to take advantage of when evaluating training vendors is a Vendor Evaluation form. This form will help you compare vendors in a more objective manner. A vendor evaluation form can also help you weigh the strong and weak points of each product or service more efficiently. Rather than having to flip through pages and pages of handwritten chicken-scratch, a well-organized evaluation form, consisting of a legible version of all your chicken-scratch notes, will help other evaluators get a better understanding of the product, service, and vendor. Here are some helpful links that you can use as a guideline to developing your own vendor evaluation template:
Once you have short-listed your most qualified group of candidates, create a Report For Proposal (or something similar) so that you can consolidate all of the information you obtained, including your reaction and feedback of the demos, in one place. This will also be helpful in conducting a final comparison between vendors. It might be a good idea to have management sign off on this RFP as well, so that both the candidate-vendor and your vendor assessment team have a good idea of management’s knowledge and support of the project and qualified candidates.
Granted, you probably won’t need to go through such a complex evaluation process if the only training material you need is a videocassette, nonetheless, it is still important for HR professionals and managers to know how to go through the course of selecting a training vendor. I hope this helps and good luck!
From India, Mumbai
155Determine YOUR Needs First
Assessing the suitability of each training vendor really depends on the needs and requirements of your organization. Before you select a vendor, you should conduct a thorough needs analysis of your training requirements. Once you have determined that training is in fact necessary, you will need to consider some of the following issues:
Budget - How much money would you like to spend? How much money you have to spend?
Type - What type of training is required? Can you obtain an off-the-shelf product that will satisfy these training needs or will you need to design or customize a training program yourself?
Size - How many employees need to be trained?
Duration - How much time do you have to train the intended employees? How long do you want to offer the training program and does the duration coincide with your budgetary constraints?
Resources - Do you have the manpower required to monitor, implement, and maintain the proposed training program? Does your company possess the necessary facilities and/or equipment or will you need to incur more costs in order to obtain these resources?
Choosing a Suitable Candidate
One of the first things you will need to do after you have determined your training needs is find a list of training vendors that may be able to meet these needs. Just because your colleague at another company told you that she was very impressed by the training products and services their vendor provided, it does not mean that this same vendor is suitable for the needs and requirements of your company.
At first glance, many training vendors seem to offer the same or very similar products and services. As a smart consumer, it is your responsibility to distinguish the differences between these vendors and determine which ones will best be able to meet the needs of your company.
Here are some general, but important, questions you should be asking:
Does the vendor have an established track record?
How many years has the vendor been in business and who are some of its major clients? Are these clients long-standing?
What projects has the vendor accomplished and has it been successful?
Does the vendor continue to recommend the same medium/solution even before it knows what and who is to be trained?
Is the vendor using and offering current releases of the development products they recommend?
Does the material that the vendor considers as "great" agree with your idea of what is great?
Does the vendor provide good customer support, both to you and to the other clients it has serviced?
Does the training vendor provide any training and/or coaching sessions for potential users?
Does the service/product offered by the vendor provide users with a testing mechanism so that retention of the training material can be evaluated?
Can the vendor offer comprehensive and/or customizable reporting and analysis capabilities so that users can generate detailed information and data?
Can the training vendor deliver the final product or service in time to meet your deadline?
Get a Demo, Get a Demo, Get a Demo
Caught up in the haste of finding a vendor and meeting various deadlines, many companies forget the importance of getting the training vendor to go through a thorough, guided demo of their product or service. Don’t forget that it is the training vendor’s job to sell you on their product or service, so be sure to have them give you as much information and detail as possible. If they decline, or give you such a brief demo that you could have learned everything you needed from the vendor’s website, consider their ability to deliver the end product/service and their customer service capabilities.
Remember to ask a lot of questions, even ones that you think may be unintelligent or irrelevant. The vendor’s ability to respond to your concerns and "wow" you with their product via the demo acts as a good indication of their ability to commit to you as an important client and to provide you with superior customer service as well.
Now What?
One useful tool to take advantage of when evaluating training vendors is a Vendor Evaluation form. This form will help you compare vendors in a more objective manner. A vendor evaluation form can also help you weigh the strong and weak points of each product or service more efficiently. Rather than having to flip through pages and pages of handwritten chicken-scratch, a well-organized evaluation form, consisting of a legible version of all your chicken-scratch notes, will help other evaluators get a better understanding of the product, service, and vendor. Here are some helpful links that you can use as a guideline to developing your own vendor evaluation template:
Once you have short-listed your most qualified group of candidates, create a Report For Proposal (or something similar) so that you can consolidate all of the information you obtained, including your reaction and feedback of the demos, in one place. This will also be helpful in conducting a final comparison between vendors. It might be a good idea to have management sign off on this RFP as well, so that both the candidate-vendor and your vendor assessment team have a good idea of management’s knowledge and support of the project and qualified candidates.
Granted, you probably won’t need to go through such a complex evaluation process if the only training material you need is a videocassette, nonetheless, it is still important for HR professionals and managers to know how to go through the course of selecting a training vendor. I hope this helps and good luck!
From India, Mumbai
Dear Tejesh,
The article is quite old whether it merits reply I don't know. However, there are many loopholes in the article.
a) You have asked for Demo by the trainer. However, this evaluation will work only for lower level. No senior training professional will ever agree for demo. Secondly, capability of the assessor also counts. One who never came on the pedestal, is he/she capable to assess a seasoned trainer?
b) Real strength of the trainer lies in pre-training activities. Training Needs Analysis (TNA) by the company is not sufficient.
c) The author of the article does not differentiate between trainer who executes the training and training agents.
Ok...
Dinesh V Divekar
From India, Bangalore
The article is quite old whether it merits reply I don't know. However, there are many loopholes in the article.
a) You have asked for Demo by the trainer. However, this evaluation will work only for lower level. No senior training professional will ever agree for demo. Secondly, capability of the assessor also counts. One who never came on the pedestal, is he/she capable to assess a seasoned trainer?
b) Real strength of the trainer lies in pre-training activities. Training Needs Analysis (TNA) by the company is not sufficient.
c) The author of the article does not differentiate between trainer who executes the training and training agents.
Ok...
Dinesh V Divekar
From India, Bangalore
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