There has never been a better time for entrepreneur-minded software people to get into the business of training. The software training industry has changed significantly in the last 20 years. But the majority of that change has occurred in the last 5 years.
Among the many issues contributing to the numerous changes are economic factors, technology change rate, increased number of competing technologies, and ease of access to information. Each of these factors presents significant opportunities for the independent trainer.
Economic Factors
Corporations driven to higher profitability are seeking lower costs and higher returns on training investments. They are shunning the five-day, everything you need to know about this technology, instructor-led training courses in favor of specific lessons of shorter duration, designed to provide just-in-time learning focused on using specific skills to accomplish job-related tasks. This requires a high-degree of flexibility with regard to content and delivery modality.
Recognizing that the typical tenure of an employee today is 2 to 3 years, corporations are abandoning the employee career development programs and requiring employees to learn the technology details on their own. One result of this change in focus is a reduction in the average number of students per class.
Both of these factors pose challenges to the traditional training companies burdened with brick and mortar infrastructure and large staffs. Their efficiencies are achieved by selling the one-size-fits-all, generic technology classes to larger groups.
Technology Change Rate
The rate of change for technology dictates a fairly short lifespan for many courses. Though there are some legacy technology courses that are fairly stable, i.e. UNIX Systems Administration or C Language Programming, it is not unusual for courses to require updating within 6 months of release and have total life spans of less than 2 years. With such short life spans, it is critical to adopt time sensitive, low-cost development and delivery methodologies that will allow a rapid return on investment. Once again, the advantage goes to the independent trainer. An independent subject matter expert can very quickly create supplementary materials to complement off-the-shelf content and then deliver cutting edge technology classes at a price point that the larger training companies cannot meet.
Increased Number of Competing Technologies
With so many competing technologies, it is challenging to discern which, if any, of the emerging technologies will achieve mass adoption. In many cases, there is no clear technology winner. As a result, many technologies face fragmented demand for training that is of insufficient volume for the larger training companies to profitably develop and deliver.
Ease of Access to Training Sources
Training customers are better educated with regard to their needs. They are using search engines to locate experts in their precise area of interest. The old model of identifying a few vendors who could fulfill many of a company’s training needs is being traded for specificity and expertise that provide a greater opportunity for immediately transferable skills. To compete in this environment, training providers need to be experts, not generalists. This trend is challenging the larger organizations that, up to now, have focused on providing training on every topic their customers needed.
Ease of Access to Resources
Ease of access to information and resources presents tremendous opportunity for qualified entrepreneur-minded trainers. The Internet has spawned a large number of product and service companies that allow individuals to offer the same breadth and depth of products and services to their clients that would have previously taken years and a staff of several people to realize.
With the ease of access to content and resources provided by the Internet, many barriers to entry have been eliminated and those who have the software skills can quickly establish themselves as training entities.
By using social media tools to establish relationships and create cooperatives with professionals possessing complementary skills a broad curriculum of courses can be offered without a substantial investment.
A New Market
In addition to the corporate and smaller clients seeking specific knowledge and skills, established training companies are seeking new ways to compete in this environment. This too is an opportunity for the independent trainer. By partnering with established training companies, independent trainers can leverage their subject matter expertise to provide topical, updated content and delivery services while leveraging the marketing and sales infrastructure of the larger training entity. It is a win-win-win situation.
Where to go From Here?
The proverbial stars seem to be aligned for individuals who want to own their own software training business. With the ease of access to content and resources provided by the Internet, many of the barriers to entry have been eliminated. Off-the-shelf courseware, fully-equipped classrooms, instructor rentals, remote access labs, inexpensive website hosting, and website development tools are just a few of the services that are readily available to the entrepreneur-minded individual. In fact, it is possible to create an entire software training business offering a full catalog of courses with the only cash outlay being what is spent on developing and hosting the website.
Individuals can quickly establish themselves as a training entity. And by networking with other professionals who have complementary skills, it is reasonably easy to create complex solutions at extremely competitive prices.
If this is something you would like to learn more about, please contact sales@itcouseware.com to learn how you can leverage their course descriptions and outlines on your site absolutely free.
