Of course, some vendors use an amalgam of the three, creating an entirely different slew of pricing options. As such, vendors eager to please every potential customer are in a constant state of flux, arranging and rearranging their pricing models. Don t waste time, Stokes says, trying to wrangle services out of a vendor that cannot clearly establish how it will address your needs. And don t create an additional burden for your company by trying to take on programs you simply cannot afford to support on the IT end. That said, the matter of varying in-house IT capabilities has opened the door to more content being hosted on vendor Web sites.
Learners can access the courses on the Web, thus leaving much of the IT management to the host.
The pricing approach for this is akin to a billable monthly service such as your cable TV service. That sounds simple enough, but it actually adds yet another wrinkle to the pricing dilemma. Because each company has its own unique IT strengths and weaknesses, it s very difficult for vendors to establish defined cost models. One relatively new pricing model is to charge companies based on the amount of time their employees spend on a course. But, critics contend, basing costs on time is no easier than evaluating the value of employees based on how long they sit at their desks.