How “Trust” will help companies spend $50 billion on professional training by 2023 (Part 1)

Over the next 5 years companies will invest over $1 trillion on training their talent. However, a lot of that will be wasted because the way companies buy professional training is inefficient, biased, and fundamentally broken.

This article explains two things:

A) How the next generation of companies are using “Trust” to optimize their training investment decisions and get the results they want.

B) How a new methodology that measures the 'Trustworthiness' of training vendors and their courses, will help companies make 50 billion dollars worth of confident training investment decisions by December 2023.

The problems companies face when buying training today. 

In my former corporate roles, my teams were responsible for the investment in training. We had a big community of project management professionals to train with a decent budget, which was great. But, when it came to buying training, that was a nightmare. 

The difficulty we faced is the same for most companies when buying training; every training vendor says the same thing “We have the most experienced trainers, we deliver the highest quality training, we have a pass mark of 99.99%.” For lots of training vendors that is the truth, for lots of other training vendors that is not the truth…and everyone knows it.

This is why we had to spend excessive amounts of time reading stacks of training proposals. Then we had meetings to decide which training proposals to throw in the bin (‘trash’ if you’re American). Then we sat through endless sales meetings trying to decide which training vendor was a match for our culture, and which one we felt would deliver what they promised.

Ultimately, we had to gamble on a training vendor. Sometimes the gamble paid off, and sometimes it didn’t. So, the question we asked ourselves was, which training vendor do we trust?... and therein lies the magic word, TRUST. 

What is Trust?

We’ve all thought about trust before, but it is not until you dig deeper into the subject that you’ll appreciate just how complex it is.

The Oxford Dictionary defines trust as: "Firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something.”

Trust spans many different subject areas including sociology, psychology and economics. My specific niche of interest focuses on the consumer-brand aspects of trust. Based on our research, my favorite definition of consumer-brand trust comes from Elena Delgado-Ballester, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Murcia.

“Feeling of security held by the consumer in his/her interaction with the brand, that is based on the perceptions that the brand is reliable and responsible for the interests and welfare of the consumer.”

In the context of professional training, the Course Conductor definition of Trust is:

“The extent to which a company can feel secure that a training vendor will professionally deliver promises and expectations for the company, and its learners."

Before I go deeper into the geeky-trust stuff, a bit of context about me and why I love a good methodology. 

I’m a methodology geek, it started at university. 21 years later I've gained a substantial amount of experience with methodology design. A good methodology apply structure to help solve problems, and in so doing improves the lives of people and companies. I for one think that’s very cool.

The last methodology I designed was for the British Government. It’s called Management of Portfolios (MoP). Companies and governments worldwide have adopted it as their corporate standard and use it to invest in the right projects i.e the projects that add the most value to their strategy. 

Management of Portfolios has been adopted in a wide variety of industries including finance, defense, healthcare, IT and nuclear. Over 15,000 professionals now have the certification, which has generated $20 million - $30 million of revenue for the training industry. Whilst it is impossible to know the total value of project investments that MoP has helped globally, I estimate it to be somewhere in the region of $500 to $800 billion...I personally have used it to advise over $20 billion worth of projects during the last 6 years.

Enough about the past. Let’s talk about today, and how "Trust" will help companies confidently invest 50 billion dollars in high-quality professional training.

Reader Beware: this article is about to get real geeky. 

The rest of this article focuses on a new methodology, algorithm and visualization that measures the "Trustsworthiness" of training vendors based on independent customer feedback analytics.

The methodology makes it easy for companies to see which training vendors they should shortlist and work with. Think of it as the equivalent to your Experian credit check score – but for training vendors and their courses.

Visualizing the algorithm using the Trusted Training Radar?.

I’m also going to give you an overview of the mathematics that power the core algorithm, and show you how it creates the main visual output called the Trusted Training Radar?.

The Trusted Training Radar? provides companies with a picture of the training marketplace on a course by course basis using independent analytics to score training vendors as Leaders, High Performers or Contenders. This is already creating efficiencies for companies because for the first time training buyers can quickly see which training vendors have delivered results in other companies, and can use the statistics in the report to make more informed buying decisions.

This is a Trusted Training Radar? for AgilePM training courses. The full report is packed full of independent statistics, you can access here free.

Measuring the trustworthiness of training vendors and their courses. 

I believe the key to achieving potential (for people and companies) is the skills of people, and as the treadmill of digital transformation cranks up in speed so too does the importance of training.

I want to live in a world where companies can easily choose the best training courses and vendor for their people, consistently and confidently. The Trusted Training Radar? is the first step towards that world.

The algorithm that drives the Trusted Training Radar? measures the trustworthiness of training vendors and their courses by calculating scores for Confidence To Deliver Training Outcomes and Learner Satisfaction.

The core algorithm uses analytics gathered from companies that invested in training and the learners that attended courses. Over 120 weighted calculations are used measures across four learning dimensions. Then, based on the results, the algorithm calculates the overall scores for Confidence To Deliver Training Outcomes and Learner Satisfaction.

These two scores are the equivalent of longitude and latitude, and this is how training vendors are automatically positioned onto the Trusted Training Radar? within the Leader, High Performer or Contender categories. Note that position is not dependent on an ambiguous analyst, it is driven by statistics.

This 1-minute animation explains how the Trusted Training Radar? works.

Important note: Comparing small, medium and large training vendors.

One of my big challenges with designing the algorithm was the recognition that there are thousands of smaller high-quality boutique training vendors delivering fantastic courses. I needed to ensure they can be fairly positioned on the Trusted Training Radar? alongside larger training vendors with much higher volumes of courses. To achieve this, weighting and normalization techniques are used to level the playing field and ensure a consistent focus on quality.

Validating the scoring methodology with the Independent Advisory Board:

Integrity and transparency are critical to everything we believe in at Course Conductor so it was crucially important for me to validate the scoring methodology with other experts. This is why I set up an Independent Advisory Board, that consists of recognized authors and expert practitioners from within the learning and project management industry. I'm pleased to say all members approved the scoring methodology.

These experts not only contributed their opinions but they challenged my thinking, which ultimately inspired enhancements and made the scoring methodology better.

What value do companies experience when using the Trusted Training Radar??

Training & Development Teams, Portfolio Office Teams, Procurement Professionals and Vendor/Category Managers use the Trusted Training Radar? to more efficiently shortlist training vendors for their training requirements, and benchmark the trustworthiness of existing training vendors.

Value experience:

A) Less effort and less cost to shortlist training vendors.

B) Increased quality of purchased training.

Course Conductor Vision: We are here to help people and companies achieve their full potential by making it easy to invest in the right training. We will use our Trusted Training Radar to help companies confidently invest $50+ billion on professional training that helps them achieve that potential.

The first Trusted Training Radar for AgilePM? is now available (AgilePM is the worlds most widely adopted agile training certification). Click here to access the free report which is full of useful independent analytics.

Best,

Craig

Craig is the Founder & CEO of Course Conductor, a B2B customer review platform that makes it easy for training buyers to invest in the best training courses from the best vendors.  He is also an executive portfolio consultant and co-author of the world's most widely adopted portfolio management standard (Management of Portfolios); which has helped organizations make an estimated $1 trillion dollars worth of wiser project investments. 

Superpower: Sound color synesthesia: Craig has painted music live on stage during the performances of Iggy & The Stooges, Deep Purple, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, John Batiste, Buena Vista Social Club and many more.