Part Three
When working to increase the profitability of training and running a training team as a P&L, as with any other business there are only two way to increase profit: increase revenue or decrease costs. Previous white papers have looked at how to quantify training efforts into revenue and discussed some strategies to reduce expense, but for most departments, the single largest expense by far is salary. In challenging economic times and a company is faced with trimming costs, training tends to be one of the first to be cut back. While being prepared to show specifically how training is helping revenue at any time goes a long way to prevent this, outsourcing may be another option to consider.
Challenges with Outsourcing
A 2002 report by The Conference Board found that only 2 percent of companies outsource the entire training function. That's low compared to 55 percent of companies that outsource part of the training function, usually the administrative tasks.
However, in-house trainers are an invaluable asset to a company. There are few employees who are as familiar with so many aspects of the company, know as many people in the company, and have their finger on the pulse of company trends and how to impact them. Their versatility lets them interact with sales one day and with accounting the next, executing on projects often outside the traditional scope of training. But as the pressure builds to cut costs further and to focus solely on core competencies, companies are turning to the growing trend of business process outsourcing (BPO), or total outsourcing of an entire function. But, due to cost-cutting mandates, the number of companies exploring training BPO as an option is on the rise. Doug Howard, CEO and Managing Partner of The Exceleration Group and Founder of TrainingOutsourcing.com and TrainingIndustry.com, says that the number of requests for proposals has tripled in the last 12 months for his firm. In HR, the