HBOS signs up for pay-as-you-go e-learning

Financial services giant HBOS has signed up to a pay-as-you-go e-learning scheme in a bid to improve the efficiency and management of staff training.

The company has ditched its previous licence-based system from NetG in favour of the new Parity service.

Customers can select from more than 1,000 courses on an as-needed basis. These include content from a range of top e-learning providers and cover subjects such as IT, business, management, leadership, finance, sales, and health and safety.

Allan Pettman, sales team director at Parity, said: "As far as I'm aware no one else is offering a range of content from different providers under one roof on a pay-per-use basis."

HBOS training manager Jayne Edwards said in a statement: "We want to give our staff access to targeted, timely and good-value learning resources, which our previous licence-based system wasn't able to deliver."

"Having the ability to develop tailored learning programmes, deliver them in bite-size chunks and only pay for what we use underpins our business objectives."

The service is based on Kognita's Site4Learning learning management system, and supports the deployment of both pure and blended e-learning as well as instructor-led courses. In addition, it can be customised with companies' own branding or delivered through Parity's e-learning portal.

Pettman said the flexibility of the offering would be key to its success at HBOS and in the wider market.

"If at any stage an organisation feels there is a more economically advantageous way of procuring certain training - for example, if 200 people are accessing one particular course or range of courses - then it can change to a credit or library-based model for those specific courses," he explained.

He added that the instant-access, pay-per-use model was likely to prove popular with companies aiming to improve process efficiency.

"Gone are the days when people want to wait a week to go on an instructor-led course to learn one discipline that's holding up work on a particular project," he said.

A large utility and telco are also looking at the service, Pettman added.