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As customer education leaders look ahead, they’re increasingly thinking about the outsourcing of content creation.
A recent Forrester study of 300 customer education decision makers, commissioned by Intellum, found that 38% of respondents planned to hire a creative/marketing agency for content creation and an additional 35% planned to hire a dedicated customer education/training vendor for content creation.
This may be due to budget and resource constraints internally—or because they want to focus internal talent on other aspects of customer education.
As part of the research, Forrester looked at the differences between high-success and low-success organizations. In this article, we’ll share how these organizations work with vendors—and considerations to drive your own program’s success.
Keys to Success with Vendor Partnerships
The Forrester study found that both high-success and low-success organizations used vendors to support their program. In addition, both types considered the role of a third-party vendor to be very important or crucial in helping the company realize its current benefits from customer education and training!
The key difference is how these firms chose and leveraged vendors.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Make sure you have a formal strategy in place.
It’s worth reiterating: The most successful customer education programs start with strategy.
This makes sense. We’ve all heard the adage, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
But this strategy also applies to outsourcing. Low-success organizations outsourced ad hoc work—work that maybe needed to be done but wasn’t tied to a formal education initiative.
High-success organizations were more likely to outsource as part of a formalized program—leveraging vendors to complete critical work that served the team’s strategy.
2. Value expertise over cost and speed.
Especially if your budget remains unchanged, it’s easy to shop around based on practice. And while this very well might be a factor, it shouldn’t be the determining factor.
The same goes for speed of delivery. Often, projects are outsourced because they can be accomplished faster than using in-house talent—or because that talent is already committed to other work.
But while speed and cost might weigh into your decision-making, the data suggests indexing most on expertise and innovative thinking.
Customer education programs that leveraged vendors for a skill set they didn’t have in-house and/or for an outside perspective saw higher success than those that chose vendors based on price and delivery time.
Get Creative with Resourcing
As much as we hate to say it, the motto for many teams has been (and will continue to be) “do more with less.” This is where getting creative with resourcing—from outsourcing to leveraging AI tools for education—comes in.
For more ideas on how to increase the efficiency of your customer education team, check out this blog.
FAQs
Are education teams outsourcing content creation?
Yes, and increasingly so. A Forrester study of 300 customer education decision makers, commissioned by Intellum, found 38% planned to hire a creative or marketing agency for content creation and another 35% planned to hire a dedicated customer education or training vendor. This often reflects internal budget and resource constraints or a desire to focus in-house talent elsewhere.
What separates successful vendor partnerships from unsuccessful ones?
The difference is how organizations choose and leverage vendors. The Forrester study found both high-success and low-success teams used vendors and considered them important, but high-success organizations outsourced as part of a formalized program tied to strategy. Low-success organizations outsourced ad hoc work that was not connected to a formal education initiative.
Should you choose an education content vendor based on cost and speed?
No. While cost and delivery speed can weigh into the decision, the data suggests indexing most on expertise and innovative thinking. Programs that leveraged vendors for a skill set they lacked in-house or for an outside perspective saw higher success than those that chose vendors primarily based on price and delivery time.
