When someone asks me this sort of question, it’s tempting to try and produce some sort of pithy soundbite, preferably one that incorporates some en-vogue buzzwords and would look good on a poster.
I avoid this temptation.
In my experience, pithy soundbites tend to get subverted. A personal favourite was the UK military slogan which began life as ‘British Army – Be The Best’ accompanied by staccato drumbeats and rousing music. Within days, some wag had published an edited version that ‘borrowed’ the original soundtrack, slowed it down a bit and had supplanted the catchphrase with the rather less alluring ‘British Army – Be Depressed’. There were stickers if I remember correctly.
So instead of a glib one line answer, here are four good reasons why you should talk to Catalyst about eLearning:
Innovation
This guy and this guy – they work right here at Catalyst, writing code that is being implemented in one of the world’s largest and most prestigious Open Source projects, Moodle. They, and developers just like them, could be making cool new things for you too.
Not just a one-trick pony
Yes, we’ve got tech-specialists; people who know about ‘cloud’ and ‘hardware software stack’ and some deep specialist integration gurus. But if you’re a Learning and Development person, maybe you’d like to chat with someone who speaks your language rather than techno-babble. And we do. In the Wellington office alone we have around 40 years of L&D expertise. We understand the problems you’re trying to solve. Discuss your challenges with people who get it, and let us talk to the techies for you.
We’re cost-effective
If someone says ‘Open Source’, people tend to hear ‘free’*. And the software might be, but implementation and support and services come with a price tag. Having said that, we ran some numbers recently based on LMS case studies offered by talentedlearning.com and we found that our largest and most complex Totara implementation in 2016 was just over half the price of their cheapest competitive offering in a direct comparison of 3-year total cost of ownership.
We really want to help
Making beautiful, Open Source software is what gets us out of bed in the morning. People don’t come to work at an Open Source ‘shop’ because they want to be millionaires. They come because they believe in the principles of Open Source and want to make a contribution to the community. Solving your real-world learning and development problems allows us to deliver outstanding eLearning capability that works for you, and enables us to develop our expertise and experience to give back to the Open Source projects on which our solutions are based. We also find that those problem solving engagements help to develop a better understanding of what you do and this helps us to help you to get the best out of the software we provide.
Doesn’t that sound like the kind of team you want on your project?
*Check out this excellent blog post for some other myth-busting Open Source info.
——–
Have we convinced you? Like to know more? Get in touch. We’d love to help you.
