Building a lean, agile and adaptive L&D ecosystem with our strategic approach to L&D cost optimization.

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In today's fast-paced business environment, it’s no secret that the spotlight is increasingly on the CLO to deliver the critical skills that drive organizational growth and agility. It’s also no secret that while investments in L&D have increased, CLOs also face mounting pressure to deliver results and business impact at an unprecedented speed and scale that warrants a lean operating model and cost efficiencies.

NIIT’s Approach to Strategic L&D Cost Optimization

At NIIT, our approach to delivering L&D cost efficiencies and building a lean and adaptive learning ecosystem does not just focus on reducing spend. It involves long-term strategies that are aligned with the business to deliver value on both sides of the equation – increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the learning function on the one hand while delivering business-aligned impact on the other. Our goal is to deliver business and functional cost excellence at speed and scale.

Functional Cost Drivers

What CLOs are saying

OPERATING MODEL
  • Decentralization and resource duplication
  • Limited consistency and reuse
  • Missed economies of scale
  • Lack of standardized processes and metrics

What CLOs are saying

“We have a decentralized learning model where each brand is doing their own thing. This is highly inefficient and leads to massive redundancy, duplication and inability to leverage economies of scale.”

RESOURCES AND PEOPLE
  • High fixed cost of L&D staff in high-cost locations
  • Lack of high-performing, scalable, right shored learning shared services
  • Lack of flexibility to meet fluctuating demand

What CLOs are saying

“We’re top heavy and have a lot of resources in high-cost locations and yet we are behind in leveraging technology and providing an outstanding learning experience to our colleagues.”

LEARNING PORTFOLIO AND EXPERIENCE
  • Business metrics - productivity, sales, efficiency
  • Training that takes away employee time and does not add value

What CLOs are saying

“We make our people go through significant amount of mandatory and compliance training that could be so much better.”

THIRD-PARTY SPEND
  • Buyers everywhere, Vendor heaven
  • Duplication, redundancy
  • Inconsistent standards and quality
  • Overinvestment of time and people

What CLOs are saying

“We spend hundreds of millions of dollars of training delivered by vendors and third-party providers. We believe there is an opportunity to save 20-30% of that enormous spend but because of our decentralized operating model and lack of governance we are in no position to achieve those efficiencies.”

TECHNOLOGY
  • Lack of automation leading to manual tasks
  • Misaligned tech stack
  • Multiple and complex systems and tools
  • Lag in innovation and AI adoption

What CLOs are saying

“We’re top heavy and have a lot of resources in high-cost locations and yet we are behind in leveraging technology and providing an outstanding learning experience to our colleagues.”

Business Cost Drivers

What business, talent and learning leaders are saying

BUSINESS ALIGNMENT
  • Misalignment between L&D investments and business priorities
  • Disconnect between L&D performance and business goals
  • Speed of training for business-critical skills, competencies and roles
  • No clear view of talent readiness and ability to execute – by Line of Business, Region, Country, etc.

What business, talent and learning leaders are saying

“We have a need for modernization of learning. To outpace competition and be hyper-relevant in serving customers, our colleagues need to acquire new skills at increased speed.”

TIME SPENT IN TRAINING
  • Insufficient focus on optimizing time spent in training
  • Lack of personalization and learning in the flow of work
  • Very high time to competence for new hires and new to role
  • Increased time to proficiency

What business, talent and learning leaders are saying

“We need to stop doing training that doesn’t add value and rededicate all our focus on reducing time to proficiency.“

BUSINESS IMPACT
  • Business metrics – productivity, sales, efficiency
  • Training that takes away employee time and does not add value

What business, talent and learning leaders are saying

“And despite all the expense, our learning and development is far from world class, disconnected from the business and not creating the impact.  In fact, if I shut down most of the training, no one will notice!“

ORGANIZATIONAL READINESS
  • Rework due to subpar learner experience and adoption
  • Lag in large-scale upskilling programs

What business, talent and learning leaders are saying

“There are significant benefits we can gain by moving to a new operating model for learning – significant cost optimization, rationalization of vendors and technology, and a more consistent and better learner experience across our employees in 50+ countries around the world.“

Sounds familiar? We help our clients solve similar problems and deliver quantifiable results.

Holistic Approach to Cost Optimization

Our holistic approach to cost transformation involves a staged journey to transforming learning from a decentralized state to a federated model that focuses on cost effectiveness and business impact. The journey as illustrated takes place over multi-year timeline, dependent on focus and investment. The Learning Transformation focuses not only on optimizing costs and resources for the learning function to drive learning effectiveness but is also designed to position learning to better address organization-wide priorities and needs and enable business and talent outcomes.

Discovery of the Landscape

Transparent analysis of L&D landscape

In the initial phase, we create a detailed and transparent overview of your current learning & development landscape for strategy development. During this process, we also identify improvement and cost saving opportunities.

Strategy And Detailed Roadmap

Develop a Strategy, roadmap and business case

In the next phase, our team of expert consultants works with you to define the future learning vision, strategy and roadmap for implementation. They also create a detailed business case to inform future investments and savings across a cost-optimized enterprise.

Detailed Learning Landscape Blueprint

Define the learning organization to deploy the strategy

In this critical phase, our team develops a detailed blueprint that outlines ways of working across the enterprise, followed by the implementation of agreed strategic choices and cost optimization opportunities.

Implementation of the New Model

Implement the new model

In the last phase, we help you implement the chosen strategy while providing continuous advisory support and monitoring cost and business levers. This may include recommendations to outsource some or all learning processes.

Our approach to cost excellence is not unidimensional – it is the direct result of holistic approach to learning transformation that fixes the broken cost-value equation which is the main reason why L&D is perceived as an expense rather than an investment by the C-suite.

A learning function that aligns with and enables the organization, with joint learning planning, management, and oversight and function-specific and core/common learning.

While L&D leaders are finally getting a seat at the table, it is no secret that traditionally, L&D functions have not been in lockstep with the business because of outdated approaches to managing the L&D function. The overarching priority in our learning transformation approach is to align the learning function with business goals and objectives which includes:

  • COLLABORATE: Having business involved in all aspects of the learning lifecycle.
  • IDENTIFY: Jointly defining business priorities and workforce needs and the L&D strategies and solutions that will address those.
  • DEFINE: Mutually agreed-upon business outcomes that define success for L&D and guide decision-making and investments.

A common learning ecosystem with learner-facing and administrative elements to inform activities and resources and the right use of enabling technologies and vendors.

A unified learning ecosystem is a common depiction of learning functions which include learner-facing and administrative functions. This approach helps identify gaps, needs redundancies, and inefficiencies across processes, roles, technologies and vendors:

  • ELIMINATE: Gaps, redundancy, and duplication of people and resources.
  • LEVERAGE: Economies of scale and reuse resources for efficiency.
  • CREATE: Unified and globally consistent processes.
  • STANDARDIZE: KPIs, SLAs and metrics across processes, roles, technologies and vendors.

Outcome-based planning, design, and measurement, positioning the learning function to better drive and demonstrate efficiency, effectiveness, value, and impact.

Ultimately, we believe that the success of the learning function is measured by its ability to deliver value to the business in terms of tangible and measurable outcomes on both sides of the value equation:

  • L&D FUNCTION-SPECIFIC: Increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the learning function including achieving core goals around business impact, learning effectiveness, innovation, and optimization.
  • ORGANIZATION-SPECIFIC: Delivering tangible value in clear business terms including business objectives, performance objectives, and skill proficiency for outcomes like improved productivity, reduced time to competence or measurable business impact.

An optimized learning function with a rationalized curriculum, innovative practices, resource efficiencies, standards and guidelines, and the right use of formal and informal learning modalities.

In conjunction with the focus on measurable outcomes, one of the primary goals of our learning transformation initiatives is to create an optimized and efficient learning function that runs like a business on these key dimensions:

  • PORTFOLIO: A hyper-personalized and rationalized portfolio with consistent quality and standards without duplication and redundancy.
  • PROCESSES: Unified, globally consistent and standardized processes to maximize efficiency.
  • TECHNOLOGY: An integrated tech stack which reduces technical complexity and leverages AI adoption.
  • PERFORMANCE: Design learning programs that optimize time and resources and address real performance gaps.

Enhancing the performance of learning professionals across learning-focused, leadership/professional, and industry/business capabilities to better realize the future of learning at the organization.

Finally, the success of the learning function depends on the capability and skills of learning professionals. Our focus is to help you build a team of learning professionals can elevate learning by:

  • BEST-IN-CLASS LEARNING: Enhance the performance of learning professionals by helping them build best-in-class L&D capabilities and skills so that they can create optimized, modern learning programs.
  • BUSINESS-FOCUSED CAPABILITIES: Enable learning professionals to build learning that is not only skills focused but also looking at learning from the lens of industry and business capabilities as well as leadership and professional skills.
Sounds familiar? We help our clients solve similar problems and deliver quantifiable results.

Client Success Stories

Increased Cost Efficiencies and Learning Transformation

How a CPG Major Achieved 17% Savings Across all Portfolios Globally

A global CPG major achieved 15% to 17% Savings in Supplier Cost and a reduction of 80% in suppliers through NIIT’s new and improved vendor management and strategic sourcing model for global learning programs.

READ THE COMPLETE CASE STUDY

55% Reduction in Cost Per Learner for a Global Life Sciences Leader

NIIT helped a global life sciences leader transition from a highly fragmented vendor landscape to a centralized learning management approach leading to a 35% reduction in learning administration costs and a 55% reduction in CPL.

READ THE COMPLETE CASE STUDY

Reducing Overall L&D Spend by 46% at a Leading Global Logistics Company

NIIT helped a leading logistics company transform its learning strategy from order taker to strategic enabler while reducing overall L&D spend by 46%.

READ THE COMPLETE CASE STUDY

30% Reduction in Design and Development Costs for a Global Oil and Gas Leader

NIIT reduced the cycle time for content design and development by 60% with the AGILE development model leading to an overall savings of 30% in design and development costs.

READ THE COMPLETE CASE STUDY

How a CPG Major Achieved 17% Savings Across all Portfolios Globally

A global CPG major achieved 15% to 17% Savings in Supplier Cost and a reduction of 80% in suppliers through NIIT’s new and improved vendor management and strategic sourcing model for global learning programs.

READ THE COMPLETE CASE STUDY

55% Reduction in Cost Per Learner for a Global Life Sciences Leader

NIIT helped a global life sciences leader transition from a highly fragmented vendor landscape to a centralized learning management approach leading to a 35% reduction in learning administration costs and a 55% reduction in CPL.

READ THE COMPLETE CASE STUDY

Reducing Overall L&D Spend by 46% at a Leading Global Logistics Company

NIIT helped a leading logistics company transform its learning strategy from order taker to strategic enabler while reducing overall L&D spend by 46%.

READ THE COMPLETE CASE STUDY

30% Reduction in Design and Development Costs for a Global Oil and Gas Leader

NIIT reduced the cycle time for content design and development by 60% with the AGILE development model leading to an overall savings of 30% in design and development costs.

READ THE COMPLETE CASE STUDY

How a CPG Major Achieved 17% Savings Across all Portfolios Globally

A global CPG major achieved 15% to 17% Savings in Supplier Cost and a reduction of 80% in suppliers through NIIT’s new and improved vendor management and strategic sourcing model for global learning programs.

READ THE COMPLETE CASE STUDY

55% Reduction in Cost Per Learner for a Global Life Sciences Leader

NIIT helped a global life sciences leader transition from a highly fragmented vendor landscape to a centralized learning management approach leading to a 35% reduction in learning administration costs and a 55% reduction in CPL.

READ THE COMPLETE CASE STUDY

L&D Cost Management Insights and Resources

The CFO and Learning Spending
Download Whitepaper
Strategic Sourcing - What Results can you expect?
Download Infographic
The Learning Outsourcing Playbook
Download Playbook
5 Factors to address the Total cost of learning
Download Infographic
Sounds familiar? We help our clients solve similar problems and deliver quantifiable results.

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