The report endorses the use of online learning technologies to

• keep workforces appraised of their job functions’ developing requirements, enabling them to make a positive impact within their organization and help that organization achieve its aims and goals
• aid succession planning, helping workers to acquire the knowledge and skills to help them progress within their organization
• allow organizations to keep training budgets under tighter control, develop and retain existing employees, and reduce the costs related to external human-resources recruitment, selection, and on-boarding

Ten highlights from the report are the following:

1. Within the training industry, the eLearning sector – and all its subsectors (packaged content, platform, and authoring tools) - has grown consistently in recent years.
2. There is universal agreement that the worldwide eLearning market will show fast and significant growth over the next three years.
3. The worldwide market for self-paced eLearning, said to be $35.6bn in 2011, is estimated to be growing overall at some 7.6% a year.
4. According to recent regional studies, the Asian market is showing the highest annual growth rate, at 17.3%, followed by Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America at 16.9%, 15.2%, and 14.6%, respectively.
5. The market for learning-management systems (LMS) has exceeded growth predictions in recent years, currently being worth some $2.55bn worldwide.
6. Within the cloud-solutions universe - which is changing the way organizations, employees, and partners interact and collaborate - software as a service (SaaS) is playing a major role and is helping to increase the size of the eLearning market.
7. Surveys show that SaaS brings speed of implementation, savings on capital expenditures, and savings in terms of operational expenses.
8. The corporate training market is among the most cyclical within the education industry. Since 2010, employers’ spending on training and the amount spent per employee have been declining.
9. However, the corporate market related to outsourced services (net of all ancillary costs) has grown to reach 42% of total expenditure.
10. With the inflow of an estimated $6bn of venture capital over the past five years, eLearning is not only being driven by startup dot-com entrepreneurs but also by big corporations, for-profit spin-off ventures, as well as big and small universities.

Commenting on the report, Claudio Erba, Docebo’s CEO, says, "The report shows that general budget constraints still appear to be the main driver towards using eLearning. However, eLearning is also an efficient and cost-effective solution when workers - especially those in organizations with a widely geographically distributed workforce - need to be brought up to speed quickly on relevant knowledge and skills.

"The current speed of change means that employees need to be trained continuously in order for companies to avoid the dangers of being out-thought and out-maneuvered by competitors.

"We believe these training initiatives need to be monitored and managed via a consistent and reliable tracking system that can cope with all the growing number of learning delivery devices now being used, in line with today’s bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend.

"This system’s data can be stored, consulted, and analyzed as required, being used for such things as management reports on productivity and for assessing individuals’ career advancement."