In the 2008 State of the Industry Report, ASTD Research reported on outsourcing and technology, and found a relationship between the two. In BEST Award winning organizations, outsourcing fell to 22.3% of the learning budget. Outsourcing in Benchmarking Forum organizations decreased to 23.8 percent, and overall the percentage of budget spent on external services fell from 28.1% to 25.2%. Technology-based solutions have allowed learning professionals to execute initiatives and coordinate programs in-house that may have required outside assisstance in the past. Internal learning management systems and content delivery systems have also diminished the need to outsource many tasks of the learning function.

\[more\]Meanwhile, technology-based learning delivery continued an upward trend in 2007. The consolidated average for e-learning's proportion of learning hours available was 32.6 percent, up from 30.3 percent the previous year. Technology-based learning delivery methods were equally popular in BMF organizations (35.2 percent) and in BEST organizations (35.8 percent). These findings indicate that organizations remain committed to implementing and sustaining e-learning solutions.

Source: ASTD 2008 State of the Industry Report

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