E-learning a cost saving method of training

Guruprasad Deshpande, head of global sales and marketing, Enterprise Business, IIHT talks to Divya Girish of CIOL about e-learning sector, its growth and adoption in Indian Market.

Can you brief us on Enterprise Learning Solutions?

Enterprise Learning Solutions (ELS) is the corporate arm of IIHT. Just as any other training organization, IIHT started off our operations in the student learning space and gradually moved on having a separate focused vertical viz., ELS for all our Corporate customers.

ELS is completely focused on providing qualitative training, consulting and professional solutions to all our customers worldwide.

Has this solution helped out the corporate partners to overcome or withstand recession or economic crisis?

I consider recession, a needed speed breaker for all those organizations and economies who blindly run, thereby creating an inflation in the market. When such organizations get hit by the recessionary wave, they tend to lose focus on their long term objectives and competence.

Our offerings are a blend of cookie cutter and customized solutions that cater to specific business requirements of the customers which help them in sustaining the long term goals and objectives.

Can you name few of your partners and how this solution has helped them?

We have close to 200 customers in India today and I would say close to 80 p.c of our customers have been benefited by this pro-active and consultative approach of our solution offerings. Our SME’s, in house trainers and Solution architects make no mistake in understanding the larger picture of our customers’ painpoints and customizing the training offerings to them. All in all, our various bouquet of offerings help our customers to understand their back end objectives, re-evaluate their learning strategies, budget them and accordingly design a complete calendar plan for all their learning and development needs.

How do you foresee the growth of the IT Services sector in the coming year?

Even though U.S. exports account for 3 percent of India's GDP as a whole but some sectors like IT and ITES derive 70-75 percent of their revenue from the U.S. customers. As a result, there would be lot more focus to hire fresh talent and retain the lateral talent within the organizations. Training would be the market in India for the next 5 years as many companies are looking at a transformational growth as regards to employability and talent retention.

How do you expect ELS to grow 100 per cent, what is the key differentiator in this solution?

Though 100 per cent might be a minimum colloquial benchmark, we at ELS IIHT have been aiming to achieve close to 150 per cent growth year on year. Our huge talent pool of internal consultants and trainers, infrastructure, highest customer base, focused pre-sales and delivery teams blended with a maximum feet on street sales force, enables us to differentiate from the rest of our competition. More so, we are an organization who give a lot of thrust and importance to our own human capital.

How do you see the growth of e-learning in India?

E-learning in India is still at an infancy stage. While we see a lot of enquiries coming in from various of our prospects and customers, somehow we are more addicted towards the conventional classroom- instructor based trainings. However from a cost optimization perspective, many organizations within India are serious to adopt e-learning as one of the most contemporary and cost saving method of trainings.

We being the thought leaders in the process, Learning Services Group (LSG) is one such division within IIHT who have not only built the E-learning competence but also has creating E-learning modules on hardware and networking essentials, windows server, exchange server, CCNA etc.,to serve our corporate clientele.