Is Your L&D Holding You Back? The Case for Strategic L&D Consolidation and Managed Learning Services

The Pressures Driving L&D Consolidation

The call for L&D consolidation stems from several deeply ingrained issues that hinder organizational effectiveness and efficiency:

• Pervasive Fragmentation and Inefficiency: Many companies struggle with siloed projects and budgets that are spread across multiple teams, resulting in lower efficiency. This typically leads to teams across the company working on the same problems simultaneously, which wastes resources and annoys top management, including the CFO. The market is also flooded with numerous tools, such as those from Eightfold, Fuel50, or Workday Skills Cloud, which are marketed to different departments (marketing, HR, L&D) for similar skill-mapping goals.

  This “distraction by solutions” without a clear focus on core problems exacerbates fragmentation and creates challenges in data portability and overall organizational efficiency. If data is siloed in marketing and cannot move to HR, it creates significant organizational challenges.

• Demand for a Consistent Learner Experience: There’s a growing expectation for consistent, consumer-grade learner experiences that mirror external digital interactions. However, fragmented L&D often results in multiple logins, varied interfaces, and inconsistent content formats. For example, compliance training might look entirely different from functional training because they are managed by separate entities within the company.

  One organization even reported having 200,000 courses in its catalog, making it incredibly difficult for employees to find relevant content or see a clear career development path. Employees may ask for “more training,” but what they really need is to ensure there are clear paths and engaging, integrated learning experiences that keep them from getting distracted. A significant statistic suggests that approximately 70% of workers would stay with a company if they could see a clear path to career advancement.

• Pressure to Demonstrate Business Impact: Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the L&D landscape has experienced a “boomerang” effect, shifting from a “do whatever it takes” mentality to an intense focus on demonstrating clear business impact. Leaders are scrutinizing L&D budgets, questioning the value of expenditures such as expensive LinkedIn Learning subscriptions when usage is low. While not always about strict ROI metrics, there is a demand to tie learning initiatives to specific business outcomes, whether cultural shifts or skill building.

  Fragmented systems make it difficult to gather consistent data across departments (marketing, HR, IT, sales) and demonstrate how learning activities align with overarching strategic priorities. L&D professionals should act as performance consultants and ask tough questions about baseline data and demonstrable results before starting training. This ensures that learning effectively fills performance gaps, rather than merely delivering a program.

• Technological Proliferation and Complexity: Many enterprises now utilize a dozen or more different learning technologies, resulting in a complex ecosystem and administrative burden. This sprawl often leads to organizations acquiring even more platforms when existing ones don’t perfectly meet a specific need.

  Using more than one Learning Management System (LMS), Learning Experience Platform (LXP), or skill or talent management tool, along with emerging AI tools, can make it challenging to maintain a seamless data flow, integrate all systems, and provide learners with a consistent experience. The rapid growth of technology makes it very challenging for L&D to function effectively without appropriate governance.

• Globalization and Agility Needs: For global organizations, fragmentation hinders speed, scale, and agility. A simple task, such as rolling out compliance training, can become complex when it needs to be disseminated across multiple platforms managed by different decentralized entities.

  Rob Lauber discussed a time at McDonald’s when seven separate markets were all working to solve the same problems simultaneously, but they were unaware of what the others were doing. Instead of tight centralization, encouraging a “community” approach could help spread best practices from one region (like Australia) to the whole world, making things far more efficient and easier to solve problems. This applies to diverse parts of a single country as well as to non-global regions.

Managed Learning Services: A Strategic Path to Consolidation

Given these pressures, Managed Learning Services emerge as a proven path for organizations seeking to consolidate and streamline their learning and development functions, thereby enhancing their learning and development capabilities. MLS typically involves leveraging a single vendor to manage multiple aspects of an organization’s learning business, from content development to LMS administration and management.

• Vendor Consolidation and Procurement Efficiency: MLS providers can significantly streamline the supply chain. For example, a company identified over 200 learning content suppliers globally, with about 150 being duplicative. An MLS partner can consolidate these vendors, resulting in enterprise-level negotiated discounts and enhanced procurement efficiency.
• Access to Specialized Expertise: Rather than hiring a specialized internal team that might only offer a narrow range of solutions (e.g., 40 eLearning designers who will always propose eLearning courses), MLS offers access to a broader pool of expertise. This enables the design of the most appropriate solutions, whether it’s a simulation, instructor-led training, or eLearning, ensuring optimal outcomes.
• Facilitating Change Management: When disagreements arise within the company, an outside MLS consultant can serve as a neutral “tie-breaker” or “bad guy,” particularly when it comes to regional or departmental preferences for specific platforms. This outside view, combined with extensive knowledge about the company, can help people set aside their own egos and make judgments that lead to the most effective overall solution, just as companies standardize email systems without having to argue about it.
• Enhanced Operational Efficiency: Organizations can hire other companies to take care of everyday administrative activities, including coordinating training, managing the LMS, and making reports leveraging MLS. This allows internal L&D teams to focus on generating a strategic impact, establishing themselves as business drivers rather than just performing administrative tasks. It also addresses the challenge of providing clear career paths for highly specialized internal roles, as MLS providers can offer more growth opportunities within their scaled operations.
• Flexibility and Scalability (Elastic Capacity): A key benefit, particularly appealing to CFOs, is the shift from fixed to variable, or “elastic,” capacity. Rather than hiring permanent staff for finite projects (e.g., an 18-month financial system transformation), L&D can flex resources on demand through an MLS provider. This means allocating funds for specific, time-bound initiatives that are aligned with organizational priorities, making budget conversations more flexible and ensuring funding even during economic downturns. This approach ensures that L&D can meet strategic demands without incurring unnecessary fixed costs.
• Improved Governance and Accountability: MLS brings benefits in governance, data visibility, and a single point of accountability. This centralized oversight facilitates the tracking of program effectiveness, ensures compliance, and aligns all learning initiatives with business objectives.

Conclusion

Organizations that want to be more efficient, productive, and flexible must make the journey toward L&D consolidation a strategic priority. Learning and development environments that are fragmented, isolated, and difficult to navigate with technology are no longer viable.

Companies can make their operations more efficient, provide learners with uniform and impactful experiences, demonstrate clear business value, and respond more quickly to changing global needs by embracing L&D consolidation, especially through models like Managed Learning Services. This shift empowers L&D to move beyond administrative tasks and truly position itself as a strategic driver of organizational success.