Here’s the insight: buying more elearning content feels productive, but it usually adds noise rather than solving the real problem.
Just look at the data:
- Learning teams spend up to 50% of their time searching for or curating content rather than delivering learning (The Learning Guild, cited by eLearning Industry)
- Only 34% of organisations measure the business impact of their learning content (Chief Learning Officer Magazine)
- 59% of employees say they received no formal training and learned their job themselves (CareerBuilder, cited by eLearning Industry)
- Content overload is one of the top three reasons learners disengage from digital learning (eLearning Industry)
- 68% of organisations now use blended learning, increasing the need for well-structured, reusable content (Learning Light, State of Learning Technologies Report)
- 49% of organisations use more than one learning platform, creating fragmentation and discoverability issues (Learning Light)
- Only 38% of L&D teams believe their learning content is easy to find and navigate (Training Journal UK)
- Companies with structured learning strategies are 92% more likely to innovate (ATD / Training Industry)
Comparing and purchasing a library purely on size is a mistake. Before you started the project did you really think about why you would use an elearning library?
Size isn’t the way forward. You’ll rarely have time to view everything inside. It can feel like a smart decision, more for your money, a bigger catalogue, but are you actually getting ROI from it? You can feel like you’ve got a great deal, all of that content – especially if you’ve also read the offer about the ability to get the content in over 100 languages.
Are you buying what you truly need? It’s worth pausing to check: what content will your teams actually use? You might feel uneasy about choosing a smaller library, but the return on investment and learning impact can be much higher when the content fits your goals.
In some cases, working with a smaller or more focused provider even gives you access to the developers themselves and influence over what gets built next.
“The biggest misconception is that you need to buy the largest library, or go straight to the brand leaders,” says Scott Hewitt. “There are more libraries out there than most people realise. If you run a good procurement process, you’ll uncover great content that actually solves problems you didn’t expect.”
The Too-Much-of-Everything Trap
Big libraries can feel like a safe bet. They’re comprehensive, even comforting. But once you’re inside, the sheer volume quickly becomes a barrier.
It’s hard to find the content you actually need. Teams spend more time curating than learning. And when no one has the time to organise it properly, it ends up unused.
To make matters worse, the cost of that unused content drains the budget. Suddenly there’s nothing left for tailored programmes, onboarding, or internal development. You’ve bought content, but not a plan.
The best L&D teams avoid this trap. They don’t just buy more. They buy better. They start with a clear list. They choose elearning libraries that align with their roadmap and make it easier to curate and share. They look for content they can reuse and adapt, not just stack in a folder. The AI language content often does work in the target countries, its not localised, poorly received and doesn’t deliver the impact that you are looking for you.
The Console Analogy: LMS + Content Bundles
You might remember buying a games console or more recently buying a flight ticket. It all sounds great unilt you realise you’ve only got the basics. The new games console that comes bundled with one free game. Sounds great, until you realise it’s not the game you want. You’re stuck with it until you can afford to upgrade. Or the flight ticket that needs a ton of upgrades for it to be useful and you’ve got no money to enjoy the time at the airport!
The same thing happens when you buy an LMS or LXP that includes bundled content. It feels like a value-add. But in practice, it locks you into generic content that wasn’t designed for your people, your goals, or your workflows. You might not see the additional cost, but the time you need to spend manage poorly structured and managed content is a hidden cost.
“A lot of content goes unused because organisations just stick with whatever was bundled into their LMS or LXP,” says Scott Hewitt. “They don’t have a content strategy. Content gets blamed unfairly, but it’s not the problem. You’ll see these over-analytical posts criticising content types, but it’s not about finding one-size-fits-all. It’s about doing the work to figure out what works for you.”
It might look impressive in a booth demo. But when you start using it, you realise it’s not what your teams actually need or want to use.
Why Big Libraries Often Fail
Large elearning libraries fail when content is inconsistent, duplicated, or hard to use day to day. We’ve seen it all. Mismatched topics. Outdated infographics. AI-translated content that hasn’t been properly localised.
Translation isn’t localisation. It’s important to understand the different. If you are going to give your teams content that has been developed by just pressing translate then the impact and ROI is going to be lower.
If the content doesn’t reflect the culture or context of your teams, it won’t be a success. It doesn’t matter how many modules you’ve bought. You need a translation team to make localised content a really success. Basic translated content can work, but will it give you the main success that you need? For a really success you need humans in the loop.
In reality, global and frontline teams are often multilingual, time-poor, and under pressure. When training isn’t accessible in a language people truly understand, it doesn’t just reduce effectiveness. It actively undermines safety, compliance, and trust. Translated content matters to L&D and just pressing the translate button just doesn’t work in the long term.
And then there’s the metadata problem. Content only works when it’s structured.
Off-the-shelf elearning content is only valuable if it’s structured so teams can actually find, reuse, and sequence it. Without strong metadata and smart tagging, even the best content gets lost in the noise.
The Branding Distraction
Thinking about adding your own logo and branding to every course? Ask yourself this. Do you rebrand the Dell laptops in your office? Do you put your logo on the tools in your workshop?
Probably not.
Yet many organisations spend time and money rebranding internal learning content that’s only seen by their own people. They’re chasing polish over usefulness.
The ROI just isn’t there.
What matters more is how that content fits into your wider strategy. How easily it can be delivered, discovered, and reused. You don’t need to have every content object re-branded. The focus needs to be on delivering the content. You might find that the library provider has content that you might want to adapt, but again, do you really get the value that you need from this?
Curation Should Be Simpler, Not Harder
Choosing a library should make curation easier, not more complicated.
So ask:
How will this content actually reach our people?
How good is the search?
Can we even search by what matters to us, topics, behaviours, skills?
If the answer isn’t clear, neither is the value.
The Real Questions You Should Be Asking
It’s not:
“How many courses do we get?”
But:
“How easily can we use this content across the business?”
That is a buying filter. Don’t get distracted. If you can’t get the content to the business, this is a problem. It is something that you need to be thinking about when looking at your LMS/LXP. There is always the criticism about SCORM, but it is widely used. It is therefore interesting to see the number of platforms that don’t use SCORM. Don’t get stuck with a platform that only uses its own format.
Think about ‘what does good look like’. That’s within your organisation. It’s a simple question, but something that you can think about, and think about it across all the functions.
“Before you buy, ask: what does good actually look like? Not just now, but in a week, a month, six months, a year,” says Scott Hewitt. “If it’s only solving a short-term gap, is it really solving a problem? Does it support daily decisions, or is it just there for formal programmes?”
And it’s how the best L&D teams think. Fewer, better courses, clearly structured, and ready to scale with the business.
Check the licensing – are you buying for 1,2,3 years and how flexible are things? Can you get out of the license if things work out like you thought? Is there are a roadmap? How is the content likely to develop while you are in the license? Do you want to be aligned with a library that never changes? How much influence can you have over new content?
These are some simple questions that you can ask before you get into the big ones like pricing, numbers and terms. While you tihnk about pricing – ensure that you’ve got a pricing matrix aso that you can equally measure against all of the supplier that you look. It’s not all about price, but you want to make sure that if you are signing up for a years that you don’t get a surprise in year 2 and year 3.
Final Thought: Size Isn’t Strategy
Once you’ve completed your review and narrowed down your options, come back to this:
Are you choosing based on size, or based on fit?
A smaller, well-aligned library often delivers far greater ROI. You might get better content, stronger relationships with the developers, and even influence over what’s added to the roadmap. That’s not a compromise. That’s a smarter way to buy.
If you go through the process properly, you’ll often realise that content volume is not the issue. What you need is proof.
This is typically the point in the buying process where the focus shifts. It moves away from course volume and toward evidence.
How is the content structured?
How easy is it to find, reuse, and actually apply?
Does it work in real-world scenarios?
Pricing also becomes clearer at this stage, especially how licensing works over time and whether it supports your growth or limits it.
“A good sign a library will work is if people are using it without being chased,” says Scott Hewitt. “I’ve seen posts saying people won’t engage with LMS content outside work, but I don’t really buy that. If it’s good content and it’s helping, people will look for it. The real problem is nagging reports, not the content itself.”
Bottom line
Elearning libraries are not strategies. They are tools, one piece of your L&D puzzle. For them to work, they need to be aligned, accessible, and adaptable.
Each of these points is easy to talk through on a walk with a colleague or in a quick team huddle. And they lead to better buying decisions every time.
Pick the wrong library and you’ll be wasting money. There are questions that you can think about without being overly technical. Don’t get distracted by the big stands at exhibitions, the techincal demo and what your competitors or have or what you think you need. There are hidden costs of using the wrong library, the main one is that you simply just won’t use the content.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is elearning not effective?
Elearning isn’t effective when it’s unplanned, overwhelming, or disconnected from real goals. Many elearning libraries focus on size, not structure. Without a clear use case or way to access relevant content, teams ignore it.
What are the problems with elearning?
Common problems include too much content, no content strategy, poor tagging, and generic LMS bundles. Elearning libraries often fail because teams can’t find or apply what’s inside.
Which of the following is the biggest problem with elearning?
The biggest problem is poor structure. Even the best elearning libraries are useless if people can’t find what they need or apply it easily in their day-to-day work.
What are 5 disadvantages of online learning?
Content overload, generic material, poor search features, no real-world use, and low engagement without a strategy. Elearning libraries only work when they’re easy to use and aligned with real needs.
