« content is king »

« Content is king! » we used to say a few years ago, before social media temporarily conceal the importance of content. But this saying appears to get back in force. Content is regarded again as a federating and valuable element.

Organizations are increasingly realizing that it’s the learning content, especially around their unique value propositions: their products, services, and processes that’s crucial. (…) More and more organizations are looking to LCMS technology to develop, manage, maintain, and deliver their learning content.   Global organizations are also looking to leverage the LCMS to deliver consistent learning content across regions and languages while allowing for language translation and local customization. —–Bas Kramer, Outstart

Towards knowledge management

In the face of approaches which consisted in privileging the durability of contents and their reusability within a standardized frame (SCORM/AICC), more flexible logics tend to develop. This is the time of « Rapid Learning », easily modifiable content and collaborative development. What really matters is not the durability of content but its existence to formalize and share knowledge.

From a pure transfer of knowledge point of view, when the LCMS (with authoring) is included in the LMS, then there is no need to import SCORM content. All content authors have to do is to publish to the system which a click of a button. This saves a lot of time and also makes changes/updates easier. —–Maria van Vlodrop, CertPoint

Under the impulse of social media, the co-creation concept is from now on used by the enterprises to develop new products, identify new needs, communicate or train. At the core of any co-creation, you can find the internal or external communities (customers and partners). —–Elodie Primo, MindOnSite

Vendors’ investments

The growth of mobile contents and collaborative development practices justify new investments. Most of the vendors complement their LMS with content-orientated solutions, be it via internal expansion, acquisitions or partnerships.

This acquisition has enabled us to create a real integrated software suite to develop and deliver on-line training programmes. Alike the LMS, Mohive enables to work within a multi-lingual and multi-users environment. (…)  This software makes our customers autonomous in the development of their business contents. —–Vincent Desnot, Epistema

Mobility is increasingly of interest for our customers, so much so that we merged last year with Hot Lava Software, one of the early mobile learning leaders. (…) Hot Lava mobile is available to build, deliver, and track mobile applications for learning, performance support, surveys, assessments, and executive communications. —–Bas Kramer, Outstart

Lectora online is bundled with the iContent service to now add content authoring to the list of available services. —–Jeff Kristick, Plateau Systems

Emergence of new business models

The growth of contents opens the way to new business models, inspired notably from the SaaS model. Development tools can be hired online and contents are directly integrated with the LMS.

We have seen a huge uptick in customer interest for our iContent (content-as-a-service) solution. More and more customers are finding this solution beneficial and cost effective as it allows them to acquire, and/or develop only the content they need (rather than purchasing content bundles, as they have been accustomed to doing).  Because this is a fully managed solution that includes hosting as well as content authoring tools, content testing, validation and delivery, customers are freed from content management and administration burdens. —–Jeff Kristick, Plateau Systems

Shortcuts: Introduction | SaaS | Open Source | Content Management | Talent Management | Adaptability | Accessibility| Individualization | Socialization | Special Thanks