Changefirst Slashes Training Costs for Client with Articulate Storyline Courses

Making organizational changes can be a risky, yet necessary, disruption to any company’s status quo. Even with experts on board to help, it’s time-consuming and expensive. But the U.K.-based company Changefirst helps organizations build the capabilities to implement change effectively. Recently, Changefirst helped a client slash a £400,000 organizational training expense to a £50,000 one—and train four times more people—with an e-learning program created in Articulate Storyline.

For years, Changefirst’s clients had wrestled with the inconvenience, availability, time, and expense of face-to-face workshops. No one doubted their effectiveness, but travel expenses and venue fees alone quickly added up. Not to mention the cost of creating and running programs, and the lost work time for participants. Even a two-day offsite training program could cost over £50,000.

The consultants at Changefirst wondered if e-learning might offer clients a workable alternative. Nathan Brewer, Operations Manager at Changefirst, connected with e-learning developer Phil Mayor from Elearning Laboratory to tackle the challenge. “They wanted online modules that learners could access from computers or iPads, and that featured dynamic content that would respond to a learner’s choices. Yet, the modules needed to be easy for the consulting team to manage and modify. Quite a tall order,” Phil recalls.

Phil knew Articulate Storyline was the only tool for the job. He explains, “Storyline let me build these complex interactions easily. I created small building blocks that I could then replicate, assemble, and test very quickly to see if they did what I needed. The responsiveness of the software cut my experimentation time dramatically.”

The course itself educates learners on the science and necessity of change in an approachable, practical manner. It starts with a broad look at organizational change and then, section by section, narrows course content according to choices learners make in the course. In each section’s action learning component, participants create action plans for their change initiatives. Exercises include short-answer questions, where learners reflect on organizational changes occurring in their own jobs or the workplace and on how they plan to adapt to them. The activity builds throughout each section, recalling the learner’s previous answers. By the end of the course, each learner has created a personalized, downloadable change management guide they can use to manage an upcoming change.

Nathan was impressed with what Phil created with Storyline, and liked that the translation support feature made it easy to produce content in seven languages for global clients. “It’s a snap to swap out language, text, branding, and more,” Nathan notes. “These highly interactive e-learning modules are really easy to modify.”

And the business upside is huge. With these modules, Changefirst can offer clients a way to deliver its proven methodology to a larger audience at a fraction of the cost. For example, one of Changefirst’s clients recently used the e-learning program to cut their annual training expenses by 87%. When measured on a per-person basis, that represents a 96% reduction in what they paid per learner last year.

“The Storyline modules give our clients an incredibly cost-effective way to build skills rapidly at scale,” Nathan concludes. “Now we can help more organizations implement lasting change successfully, at a more affordable cost. And that’s a win for us and for our clients.”