Business Plan Table of Contents

Chapter 4

• Features
  • Personalization
  • Actionable Information
    • Free
    • Premium
  • Skill Assessments

• Legal Plan
  • Intellectual Property
  • Data Security/Privacy
  • Terms of Service

Chapter 1 – Executive Summary

• The “Intent” of the @lantis Brand is:
  • Create and deploy a multi-media, dynamic, personalized, and hyper-connected Learning Management System (LMS) 
  • Improve the ability of the individuals in the community to make better choices.
  • Provide more actionable Information than other LMS providers.
• @lantis fills the virtually universal need to get the best information by providing Actionable Information Personalized to the Users Unique Context.  
• @lantis succeeds because it builds on our current “State-of-the-Art” understanding of: Cognitive, Information processing, Education, Computer, Communication & Telecommunication Sciences.
• The Target Market is Early Adopters, Innovators, Educators, Creatives, Entrepreneurs, and Thought Leaders.
• The measure of success is when the community members tell their friends that the @lantis Learning Communities are a great way to make better choices and as a result the Community shows continued growth.
• The @lantis Brand can easily be worth more than $5 Million by 2022.

Market Goals

@lantis will attract “Eyeballs” by offering a lot of free content that:

• Reduces information overload for the person using a Learning Community
• Provides personalized and free “Just In Time” learning.
• Satisfies the need to teach others about the things that are important.
• Provides a safe and effective forum to discuss current affairs.
• Offers A great place to get good advice.
• Is an inoculation to “Fake News.”

@lantis will make money by:

• Publishing Premium Reports and Classes
• Personalized Skills Assessments (Certifications)
• Onsite training and classes
• Donations from the Community
• Licensing of the “Open Source” ALMS (@lantis Learning Management System) Networking Standard.
• Customizing the @lantis Digital Library for individual businesses or organizations.

Benefit of community membership is:

• Community Members have access to a cost effective knowledge and advice source.
• Members can be paid for the Intellectual Property (Classes and reports) they develop.
• Community Members can get paid for Skills Assessments and Mentoring.
• Community membership can be a valuable networking tool.
• Community membership helps inoculate the Community from Fake News.

The @lantis value proposition is: 

• Provide a learning platform equal to or better than other learning platforms.
• Validate existing knowledge through the use of “Knowledge Validation Algorithms.”
• Discover new knowledge through research and collaboration.
• Make knowledge available to others via multi-media; websites, videos, formal class instruction, speakers, blogs, tweets, Facebook posts, etc., and over mobile and fixed networks, whatever fits the end users needs.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOTs)

• Strengths:
  • Because of my unique Personal, Academic, Telecommunications (Cloud) Industry, and Education Industry experience, I bring a unique “holistic” approach to Cloud based Learning Management Systems.  I know how the Internet works and I know how to manage webpages.  I know Information Management and how to maximize actionable information.
  • There is nothing really “Sticky” about LMS systems.  If a better system came along adoption is not terribly hindered.
• Weakness:
  • I am only 1 person.  I need help.  I need help with core programing.  I need help with Content and SQL Management programing.
  • I don’t have a lot of money to put into development
• Opportunities:
  • Everyone needs better education and networking.
  • There are many existing Learning Communities that would benefit from joining our network.
  • This is one of the fastest growing software sectors.  It is now a billion dollar plus industry with hundreds of competing offerings.
• Threats:
  • All established educational organizations and Learning Management Systems Providers will threaten marketshare acquistion.

4 Foundational Products make up our Learning Management System LMS

• REST APIs – Proprietary Enhanced Networking
• Personal Dashboard – Just-in-time delivery of personalized actionable learning
• Cloud Based Library – Context Sensitive Search Engine 
• Blockchain – Proprietary Verification Mechanism

Competition

Everyone is my competition.

Google is my competition. Facebook is my Competition. Along with the traditional LMS competitors like iCollege, Moodle, and such.

I will beat them all by applying my knowledge of how the latest science around learning and my extensive Telecommunications and Information management expertise

Strategic Planning Assumptions

Collective-intelligence-oriented approaches will be the primary method of providing learning for 60% of organizations by 2020, up from 5% in 2016. (I need a source for this.  I think this is an important driver, but there might be others.)  So, we will try to exploit this strategic assumption.

Financials

$5 Million in Revenue by 2022 and costs of $3 Million.

Management Team

Ira Gorelick – iragorelick.com, linkedin

What Motivated me to do this.

As I travel around on the Internet, read a book, have a discussion with family and friends, or watch a movie or TV, I am often presented with new information. And, it’s not uncommon for me to have some “epiphany” where I think about how this new information would help me in any number of ways. These epiphanies could range from the utterly mundane (I should use less sugar in my coffee) to the potentially career-altering (I need to learn to listen more and talk less).\ 

Unfortunately, most of these frequent epiphanies vanish into the “Digital Fog” almost as soon as I perceive I have them. Whatever learning the epiphanies yielded, much more often than I would like, vanish utterly, without a trace. 

The problem is that there’s no easy way to store these little flashes of insight gleaned. I could capture them all in a list, either digital or paper-based, but a list of random reminders I’d look at once in a rare while wouldn’t be terribly helpful. 

That’s why I am building a Learning Network. I don’t like the idea of losing insights that could have a positive influence in my life.

The core of the idea is: learning is deeply personal, and it happens over the course of an ordinary day.  I believe I would be better off with a system for capturing and applying that hard-won learning.  

Chapter 2 – Business Description and Vision

History and Vision

 
@lantis Learning Community is a new Cloud Based Information System.  We will deliver the information via a Learning Management System (LMS).
Our goal is to become the premier information provider.
We will leverage our customer base and position in the market to offer new content.
 
 

Objectives

• Be within the Top 10 Information providers on the Internet
• Generate a net income of $5M at the end of the 4th year of operation
• Create an Employee Organization that will live for multiple generations of Learners.

Standard Business Questions and Answers

• Our industry: Education and Information
• Our customer. Anyone that wants to use 21st Century Information tools to solve 21st Century Problems.
• The problem we solve.Effectively Process Information.
• Show how you will solve that problem. Our Learning Management System (LMS) uses 21st Century tools like Cloud Based Relational Databases, Collective Intellegence Algorythms, and Enhanced Networking to solve the information problems.

 
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Keys to Success

ALC will be Employee Owned

Atlantis will share ownership with employees for a variety of reasons.

• It’s the right thing to do.
• To attract and retain good employees. 
• To make the business perform better. (Several reliable studies indicate that, on average, employee-owned firms perform substantially better than non-employee owned firms when ownership is combined with employee participation in decisions affecting their work.)
• For tax benefits. Certain employee ownership structures qualify for tax benefits.

Atlantis will use an employee profit sharing plan, where profit is distributed as a % of Profit.

Atlantis will provide shares as a reward for contribution.  The more contribution the more the shares.

Shares can be taken away for lack of contribution. 

Contribution will be measured by “Authority.”  (see section on Authority).

Chapter 3 – Product Plan

Products

• ALMS
• Dashboard
• Library
• Cloud

Atlantis Learning Management System – ALMS

Actionable Information – Free & Premium

Skill Assessments

Marketing Plan

Market Analysis

Market Size and Sales Projections

Learning Management System to Cross $10 Billion In Revenues By 2021 With Higher Education Segment Driving Majority Growth

Moodle is the major shareholder in the Brazilian LMS market in education sector with the share of 27.5% in 2015 followed by Santillana and Blackboard.

hyderabad, Oct. 27, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — According to the new report,”Learning Management System (LMS) Market: Modules (Collaborative Learning, (Content, Talent, Performance) Management) Vertical (Government, Corporate, Education Sector) Services (Hosting, Colocation, Authoring Tool, Payment Gateways, Others)-Forecast(2015-2020)“, published by IndustryARC, the market is estimated to cross $10 Billion in revenues by 2021.http://industryarc.com/Report/1259/learning-management-systems-market-analysis.html

A learning management system (LMS) is a software-based platform provides the necessary framework, infrastructure and tools which helps in providing online training or commonly known as e-Learning. This web-based technology allows the user to create, manage, distribute and track learning materials anywhere on any device. As the adoption of online learning and digital learning technologies increases, learning management systems providers will be at the forefront of this change and looking to capture a fast growing market. Though the conventional learning management systems market is close to maturity, the development of an online learning market, particularly based on social media technology provides new avenues for these companies to explore. LMS solutions such as Litmos, Canvas, Docebo and Latitude have witnessed impressive growth in recent years looking to capture this expanding market.

The global market for Learning management systems has remained dynamic and highly competitive with significant investments, mergers and acquisitions. Skillsoft and Providence Equity acquired leading companies such as SumTotal and Blackboard, respectively, in the last five years resulting in dramatic change in the competitive landscape. The dynamic nature of the market and highly competitive industry has resulted in a regionally varied market with the undercurrents of the market landscape highly evolving over the years. Despite the change in leading companies and lively market, the growing demand in the corporate sector will continue to drive the market forward.

Despite education being a major focus, the corporate industry will be the major driver behind the growth of the market. The manufacturing, healthcare and IT companies in particular have increasingly looked to utilize learning management systems for staff training as well as improving efficiency of their employees.

The majority of the learning management systems market for the corporate sector will be focused on companies in the $1M to $10M revenue range as the ease of usage and improved efficiency offered will allow the companies to enhance their employees abilities and efficiency without focusing on extensive review of their processes or training methods.

Decision Assistence Tool

At its core, an LMS could be a Decision Assistence Tool (DAT).  If one considers “Learning” something that helps you solve a problem, then all learning helps make better decisions.  The same filtering and focusing tools you use for LMS you can use for DAT.

If an individual or a team needs to make a decision, they need the information and the skills to understand the information.

As demand for online education escalates, such systems and solutions will be critical to effectively handling the increased demand. The global LMS market was $3.3 billion in 2015 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 18.5% during 2016-2021, while the LMS market for Education as an end user was $678.7 million and by 2021 is estimated to be $2.02 billion globally with a CAGR of 20.2%. This growth will be derived to some extent from the expansion of the market in the emerging economic countries such as India, China, Brazil along with Eastern Europe.

South America, APAC and Eastern Europe offer strong growth potential for the LMS market with a number of local companies (such as Emeneo and Shezartec) being established to take advantage of this opportunity. The Brazilian LMS market in education sector for 2015 was $21.6 million and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 24.3% to reach $79.2 million by 2021. Cost saving through e-learning and increasing need of training coupled with technological advancements and the continued adoption of cloud technology are driving demand for the LMS in the country. Moodle is the major shareholder in the Brazilian LMS market in education sector with the share of 27.5% in 2015 followed by Santillana and Blackboard. The U.S will maintain its position as a leader in learning management systems driven by increased adoption in the healthcare and manufacturing sectors. With education market heading towards maturation in North America and Western Europe, the corporate market will be the driving factor in these regions. Higher education in emerging countries continues to explore and embrace new learning platforms and elements in the country. The rising adoption of digital learning in such countries is another major factor driving the market. LMS providers in emerging countries have significant opportunities of enhancing their market share by offering LMS in local languages; user based content generation, user-friendly and with social media enabled learning.

At present, the corporate market accounts for the largest share in the learning management system market, driven by its increased usage in technological companies, followed by the education market. The governmental sector accounts for a low share in the market due to low penetration in utilities and transportation sectors.

The growing shift towards online or e-learning has created a rising demand for cloud based learning management systems. A number of companies have entered this competitive market in recent years to satiate the ever-rising need for improved educational tools and services.

Following key players were also covered as part of the market landscape analysis:

• Moodle
• Blackboard
• D2L
• Instructure
• SumTotal
• Docebo and Others

24×7 Learning Pvt. Ltd, ABSC Group Pty. Ltd, Active Mind Solutions, AJ Square Inc, Alchemy Systems, LP, Allantra Learning Technologies Corp, Allion Technologies (Pvt) Ltd, Amida Learning Consulting, Apixel Pty Ltd, Automatic Data Processing Inc, Aziksa, BaseCorp Learning Systems, BIS Training Solutions, BitKea Technologies, Blackboard Inc, Blue Sky Broadcast, BlueVolt, BrainShark, Brightspace, Chamilo Association, Coggno, Connect-i, Cornerstone OnDemand, Inc, CrossKnowledge, Desire2Learn Inc, Docebo NA, Eaglewood Systems Ltd, eCollege, Edmodo, EduBrite Systems, Educadium, Elearning Force, Entrenar, Evolve Technologies, eXact learning solutions, GlobalScholar and others.

For the purposes of your business plan, narrow your focus and focus on answering these main questions:

• What is your market? Include geographic descriptions, target demographics, and company profiles (if you’re B2B). In short: Who are your customers?
• What segment of your market will you focus on? What niche will you attempt to carve out? What percentage of that market do you hope to penetrate and acquire?
• What is the size of your intended market? What is the population and spending habits and levels?
• Why do customers need and why will they be willing to purchase your products and services?
• How will you price your products and services? Will you be the low cost provider or provide value-added services at higher prices?
• Is your market likely to grow? How much? Why?
• How can you increase your market share over time?

Market Trends

Participation and population trends favor our venture:

• Recreational sports in general and both family-oriented and “extreme” sports continue to gain in exposure and popularity.
• Western VA and eastern WV have experienced population growth rates nearly double that of the country as a whole.
• Industry trends show cycling has risen at a more rapid rate than most other recreational activities.

Market Growth

According to the latest studies, recreation spending in our target market has grown by 14% per year for the past three years.

In addition, we anticipate greater than industry-norm growth rates for cycling in the area due to the increase in popularity of cycling events like the Alpine Loop Gran Fondo.

Market Needs

Start by evaluating the market at a relatively high level, answering some high-level questions about your market and your industry:

• What is the size of the market? Is it growing, stable, or in decline?
• Is the overall industry growing, stable, or in decline?
• What segment of the market do I plan to target? What demographics and behaviors make up the market I plan to target?
• Is demand for my specific products and services rising or falling?
• Can I differentiate myself from the competition in a way customers will find meaningful? If so, can I differentiate myself in a cost-effective manner?
• What do customers expect to pay for my products and services? Are they considered to be a commodity or to be custom and individualized?

Start by evaluating the market at a relatively high level, answering some high-level questions about your market and your industry:

• What is the size of the market? Is it growing, stable, or in decline?
• Is the overall industry growing, stable, or in decline?
• What segment of the market do I plan to target? What demographics and behaviors make up the market I plan to target?
• Is demand for my specific products and services rising or falling?
• Can I differentiate myself from the competition in a way customers will find meaningful? If so, can I differentiate myself in a cost-effective manner?
• What do customers expect to pay for my products and services? Are they considered to be a commodity or to be custom and individualized?

Market Analysis

 
Pinterest

• 30% have incomes > $100K
• 70% are women
• Age 25-34
• 70% of Pinners are on Pinterest to gain inspiration for what to buy.

• 30% have incomes > $100K
• 70% are women
• Age 25-34
• 70% of Pinners are on Pinterest to gain inspiration for what to buy.

LMS Case Study

 
LMS Case Study

Skillsoft’s acquisition of SumTotal gives the company both.  The company now has a mature enterprise software business (which plays in all areas of talent management) as well as a large and mature training content business. The combination opens up a lot of new doors for innovation, better integration, and new customer value.
Scale brings value in many ways. With more customers and a larger sales force (the combined sales force is almost 4X the size of SumTotal’s sales force), more consultants and third party providers are likely to migrate to the Skillsoft-SumTotal platform. There are more than 2,000 providers of content, tools, assessments, and platforms in this market, and many of them will now want to work with Skillsoft’s platforms. The company almost rivals the ERP vendors for size and market reach.
2.  Synergies.  Expanded sales force for SumTotal. Technology team for Skillsoft.
How about company synergies? They fall into two major areas: sales and technology.
Skillsoft was always one of the leading sales organizations in this market. There isn’t a corporate training manager that has not talked with a Skillsoft sales person, and most have purchased Skillsoft courses at one point during their career.
SumTotal is a well-established company in the LMS market and one of the top five market share leaders, but did not have a large sales force.  (Read Bersin by Deloitte LMS 2014 for more details). The LMS market, which is now over $2.6 Billion in size, is growing at close to 24% annually – so there is a lot of buying going on. Together the company now has more feet on the street and can offer LMS to all content customers, and content to tall LMS customers.
The second synergy is technology. Skillsoft has been trying to build out it’s technology capability for some time. While Skillport has become more of a scalable system each year, it could never truly reach enterprise LMS class, holding the company back from taking on a role as a customer’s primary learning platform. This problem now goes away. Skillsoft can offer an enterprise class LMS as well as an entire suite of HR and talent management products, all integrated with content.
3.  Improving the Learning Experience: Integrating content and technology.
The integration of content with platforms remains an opportunity as well. Over the last fifteen years the online learning industry grew into two marketplaces:  content (e-learning) and technology (LMS and talent platforms). Customers purchased the two separately and only SCORM and hard work by vendors made sure that the two worked together.

Competition

INTRODUCTION

Many educational institutes used an eLearning platform Learning Management System (LMS) to automate the administration of their training events. In the same time, these institutes have a lot of different libraries, but without any integration of their local LMS and local libraries.

As a result, the learners have to search on their own for learning nuggets related to their learning goals. Consequently, the learners suffer from the Information Overload problem, when they find thousands of results that are not suitable and related to their goals.

To solve this problem, the ALC LMS presents interesting, relevant, and personalized learning nuggets.

Profile Current Competitors

First develop a basic profile of each of your current competitors. For example, if you plan to open an office supply store you may have three competing stores in your market.

Online retailers will also provide competition, but thoroughly analyzing those companies will be less valuable unless you also decide you want to sell office supplies online. (Although it’s also possible that they–or, say, Amazon–are your real competition. Only you can determine that.)

To make the process easier, stick to analyzing companies you will directly compete with. If you plan to set up an accounting firm, you will compete with other accounting firms in your area. If you plan to open a clothing store, you will compete with other clothing retailers in your area.

Again, if you run a clothing store you also compete with online retailers, but there is relatively little you can do about that type of competition other than to work hard to compete in other ways: great service, friendly salespeople, convenient hours, truly understanding your customers, etc.

Once you identify your main competitors, answer these questions about each one. And be objective. It’s easy to identify weaknesses in your competition, but less easy (and a lot less fun) to recognize where they may be able to outperform you:

• What are their strengths? Price, service, convenience, extensive inventory are all areas where you may be vulnerable.
• What are their weaknesses? Weaknesses are opportunities you should plan to take advantage of.
• What are their basic objectives? Do they seek to gain market share? Do they attempt to capture premium clients? See your industry through their eyes. What are they trying to achieve?
• What marketing strategies do they use? Look at their advertising, public relations, etc.
• How can you take market share away from their business?
• How will they respond when you enter the market?

While these questions may seem like a lot of work to answer, in reality the process should be fairly easy. You should already have a feel for the competition’s strengths and weaknesses… if you know your market and your industry.

To gather information, you can also:

• Check out their websites and marketing materials. Most of the information you need about products, services, prices, and company objectives should be readily available. If that information is not available, you may have identified a weakness.
• Visit their locations. Take a look around. Check out sales materials and promotional literature. Have friends stop in or call to ask for information.
• Evaluate their marketing and advertising campaigns. How a company advertises creates a great opportunity to uncover the objectives and strategies of that business. Advertising should help you quickly determine how a company positions itself, who it markets to, and what strategies it employs to reach potential customers.
• Browse. Search the Internet for news, public relations, and other mentions of your competition. Search blogs and Twitter feeds as well as review and recommendation sites. While most of the information you find will be anecdotal and based on the opinion of just a few people, you may at least get a sense of how some consumers perceive your competition. Plus you may also get advance warning about expansion plans, new markets they intend to enter, or changes in management.

Keep in mind competitive analysis does more than help you understand your competition. Competitive analysis can also help you identify changes you should make to your business strategies. Learn from competitor strengths, take advantage of competitor’s weaknesses, and apply the same analysis to your own business plan.

You might be surprised by what you can learn about your business by evaluating other businesses.

Identify Potential Competitors

It can be tough to predict when and where new competitors may pop up. For starters, regularly search for news on your industry, your products, your services, and your target market.

But there are other ways to predict when competition may follow you into a market. Other people may see the same opportunity you see. Think about your business and your industry, and if the following conditions exist, you may face competition does the road:

• The industry enjoys relatively high profit margins
• Entering the market is relatively easy and inexpensive
• The market is growing–the more rapidly it is growing the greater the risk of competition
• Supply and demand is off–supply is low and demand is high
• Very little competition exists, so there is plenty of “room” for others to enter the market

In general terms, if serving your market seems easy you can safely assume competitors will enter your market. A good business plan anticipates and accounts for new competitors.

Now distill what you’ve learned by answering these questions in your business plan:

• Who are my current competitors? What is their market share? How successful are they?
• What market do current competitors target? Do they focus on a specific customer type, on serving the mass market, or on a particular niche?
• Are competing businesses growing or scaling back their operations? Why? What does that mean for your business?
• How will your company be different from the competition? What competitor weaknesses can you exploit? What competitor strengths will you need to overcome to be successful?
• What will you do if competitors drop out of the marketplace? What will you do to take advantage of the opportunity?
• What will you do if new competitors enter the marketplace? How will you react to and overcome new challenges?

The Competitive Analysis section for our cycling rental business could start something like this:

***

Primary Competitors

Our nearest and only competition is the bike shops in Harrisonburg, VA. Our next closest competitor is located over 100 miles away.

The in-town bike shops will be strong competitors. They are established businesses with excellent reputations. On the other hand, they offer inferior-quality equipment and their location is significantly less convenient.

Secondary Competitors

We do not plan to sell bicycles for at least the first two years of operation. However, sellers of new equipment do indirectly compete with our business since a customer who buys equipment no longer needs to rent equipment.

Later, when we add new equipment sales to our operation, we will face competition from online retailers. We will compete with new equipment retailers through personalized service and targeted marketing to our existing customer base, especially through online initiatives.

Opportunities

• By offering mid- to high-end quality equipment, we provide customers the opportunity to “try out” bikes they may wish to purchase at a later date, providing additional incentive (besides cost savings) to use our service.
• Offering drive-up, express rental return services will be seen as a much more attractive option compared to the hassle of renting bikes in Harrisonburg and transporting them to intended take-off points for rides.
• Online initiatives like online renewals and online reservations enhances customer convenience and positions us as a cutting-edge supplier in a market largely populated, especially in the cycling segment, by customers who tend to be early technology adapters.

Risks

• Renting bikes and cycling equipment may be perceived by some of our target market as a commodity transaction. If we do not differentiate ourselves in terms of quality, convenience, and service, we could face additional competition from other entrants to the market.
• One of the bike shops in Harrisonburg is a subsidiary of a larger corporation with significant financial assets. If we, as hoped, carve out a significant market share, the corporation may use those assets to increase service, improve equipment quality, or cut prices.

Blackboard Inc… is exploring a sale that it hopes could value it at as much as $3 billion, including debt.

Now $3 billion is a lot of money for a company that specialises in software mainly for the higher education market. (It’s a lot of money for a company specialising in anything, for that matter). So what makes Blackboard think it is worth this amount to a buyer?

Blackboard Ultra

It’s probably no coincidence that Reuters reported this at the same time that Blackboard announced its new learning platform called Ultra. (Yes, groans from all the faculty who have just moved up to the latest version of Blackboard Learn). However, although I have not yet seen Ultra in operation, it is reported to be much more than just an LMS.  According to Brian Fleming, a senior analyst at Eduventures:

Ultra consists of an integration of three core products (Learn, Collaborate, and Mobile) into one coherent, responsive, and immersive platform. It includes a radically improved user experience (UX) and a number of improved workflows, including drag-and-drop capabilities, embedded grading tools, mobile communication features, and expanded analytics.

In other words, it’s more of a complete learning platform than an LMS. Fleming believes this makes Blackboard Ultra a:

product that is on par, if not prepared to outmatch, its most agile competitors (ahem, Canvas).

More importantly, according to Fleming,

Bb now has the foundation it needs to develop a comprehensive learning analytics platform unlike anything the education world has seen.

But before you rush out to buy Blackboard stocks, you might like to listen to this old midwife (especially as the company is private at the moment and isn’t publicly listed, so it has no stock to buy.)

Risks and opportunities

I’m not a financial analyst (for a good discussion of the financial aspects, see Phil Hill’s blog post), but I do know a bit about learning technologies, and here are some of the risks or challenges I see for Blackboard in the future that might influence whether or not you rush out to buy the stock of any company that buys Blackboard. (I doubt whether anyone actually contemplating buying Blackboard will read my little blog, but the advice is free.)

1. A maturing market 

There are signs that the rapid growth in online learning is beginning to slow down, if not flatten out. The Babson Surveys had been recording growth of between 10-20% per annum in online enrolments in the USA over the 10 years up to 2012. However, the U.S. Federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) survey showed an overall decrease in DE enrolments of 4% from 2012 to 2013. The biggest area was the for-profits, which declined by 17%. Even the Babson Survey recorded a slower growth rate in online enrolments in 2013.
There are technical reasons that make measuring the growth in online learning very difficult, and one year is not enough to determine a trend. However, the rate of students taking fully online courses in the USA (and Canada) is likely to slow in the future for two reasons:

• there is a limit to the market for fully online studies and after 10 years of fairly large gains, it is not surprising that the rate now appears to be slowing down
• as more and more courses are offered in a hybrid mode, students have another option besides fully online for flexible study.

However, offsetting this is the much bigger move to blended and hybrid learning, resulting in the use of online learning in campus-based classes. This is a much bigger overall market than the fully online student market, and has hardly been touched yet outside North America (Blackboard is actually used more for on-campus than fully online courses in the USA). As more and more institutions move to blended learning, so will the demand for software to support such course designs. So while the market is changing, the demand for some kind of platform to manage the online, and increasingly the on-campus components, is likely to continue well into the future. The market then may be maturing but there is still plenty of room for growth, especially internationally. At the same time, the product has to meet the demands of new blended course designs and not be merely an online platform somewhat adapted to use on campus. It remains to be seen whether Ultra can really respond to that requirement.

2. Increasing competition from other integrated platform providers

This is probably Blackboard’s most obvious (but not necessarily most serious) challenge. It is operating in a market with more than 50 direct competitors, and the list grows almost daily. Some of the later entrants, such as Instructure and Desire2Learn, have been taking a big bite out of Blackboard’s market in recent years. Learning platforms still require a relatively low-entry level of technology/software development and it is not difficult to design alternatives on the general theme. While Ultra certainly will help Blackboard to push back against its competitors, they too will not stand still in new software developments and approaches. So while the overall market may be maturing, the consolidation into two or three dominant players seems to be moving even further away.

3. Alternatives to course platforms

The design of Ultra in bringing together a range of disparate but proprietary products into one integrated, consolidated product or platform is being countered by moves to lighter, stand-alone, often ‘open’ technologies that the end-users (both teacher and learners) integrate on an ‘as needs’ basis. This can be seen particularly in the use of social media, such as blogs, wikis, You Tube videos, and mobile apps.
On the other hand, I have also argued elsewhere that the need for some kind of platform that enables learning materials to be stored and organised, limits access to registered students and appropriate teaching staff, provides secure assessment and learning analytics, and offers a central, single location for student work, is not likely to go away well into the future.
The question though is whether the kind of proprietary system such as Ultra is the best way to provide such a platform. Open source solutions such as Canvas and WordPress provide more flexibility and allow more easily for future technology developments and new teaching approaches to be incorporated.

Watch this space

These arguments of course may be actually just academic. No-one has yet made an offer and although suggestions have been made that Oracle, Microsoft or some other company with data-based products might be interested, Blackboard sits in a fairly small, niche market.
In the meantime it will be interesting to see how many institutions, having made the investment in Blackboard Learn or some other LMS, are willing to go through the major upheaval needed to move to a new platform such as Ultra. If I had $3 billion to spend, I’d wait and see – but then that’s why I don’t have $3 billion in the first place.
Exclusive: Education company Blackboard seeks $3 billion sale – sources
Blackboard Inc, a U.S. software company that provides learning tools for high school and university classrooms, is exploring a sale that it hopes could value it at as much as $3 billion, including debt, according to people familiar with the matter.
Blackboard’s majority owner, private equity firm Providence Equity Partners LLC, has hired Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE) and Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) to run an auction for the company, the people said this week.
Blackboard has annual earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of around $200 million, some of the people added.
Two of the people said that Blackboard could fetch a valuation between 14 times to 17 times EBITDA, up to $3.4 billion, based on current multiples of subscription-based software companies.
The sources asked not to be identified because the sale process is confidential. Providence Equity, Blackboard, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America declined to comment.
Based in Washington D.C., Blackboard provides custom software to help students collaborate on assignments and communicate with teachers. It serves 19,000 clients in 100 countries including 1,900 international institutions, with 80 percent of the top academic institutions using its software, according to its website.
The majority of Blackboard’s business is from higher education clients but it also generates revenue from K-12 schools and from government and corporate clients. The company has also branched into “student pathway” services that help students manage financial aid, video conferencing and other areas.

Providence took Blackboard private in 2011 for $1.64 billion and also assumed $130 million in net debt.
A pioneer in education management software founded in 1998, Blackboard has seen its growth slow in recent years as cheaper and faster software upstarts such as Instructure Inc have tried to encroach on its turf. Since its launch in 2011, Instructure has signed up 1,200 colleges and school districts, according to its website.
The sector has been very active for private equity firms. Last year, Hellman & Friedman LLC acquired K-12 education company Renaissance Learning for $1.1 billion, and Charterhouse Capital Partners acquired Skillsoft, which provides educational software to businesses, for more than $2 billion.

Apollo Global Management LLC (APO.N) has held talks with investment banks about taking McGraw-Hill Education public later this year in an IPO worth more than $5 billion, Reuters reported in April.
Providence has previously invested in education companies ITT Educational Services Inc ESI.N, Archipelago Learning and Education Management Corp.
(Reporting by Liana B. Baker, Greg Roumeliotis and Mike Stone in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Blackboard Inc… is exploring a sale that it hopes could value it at as much as $3 billion, including debt.

Now $3 billion is a lot of money for a company that specialises in software mainly for the higher education market. (It’s a lot of money for a company specialising in anything, for that matter). So what makes Blackboard think it is worth this amount to a buyer?

Blackboard Ultra

It’s probably no coincidence that Reuters reported this at the same time that Blackboard announced its new learning platform called Ultra. (Yes, groans from all the faculty who have just moved up to the latest version of Blackboard Learn). However, although I have not yet seen Ultra in operation, it is reported to be much more than just an LMS.  According to Brian Fleming, a senior analyst at Eduventures:

Ultra consists of an integration of three core products (Learn, Collaborate, and Mobile) into one coherent, responsive, and immersive platform. It includes a radically improved user experience (UX) and a number of improved workflows, including drag-and-drop capabilities, embedded grading tools, mobile communication features, and expanded analytics.

In other words, it’s more of a complete learning platform than an LMS. Fleming believes this makes Blackboard Ultra a:

product that is on par, if not prepared to outmatch, its most agile competitors (ahem, Canvas).

More importantly, according to Fleming,

Bb now has the foundation it needs to develop a comprehensive learning analytics platform unlike anything the education world has seen.

But before you rush out to buy Blackboard stocks, you might like to listen to this old midwife (especially as the company is private at the moment and isn’t publicly listed, so it has no stock to buy.)

Risks and opportunities

I’m not a financial analyst (for a good discussion of the financial aspects, see Phil Hill’s blog post), but I do know a bit about learning technologies, and here are some of the risks or challenges I see for Blackboard in the future that might influence whether or not you rush out to buy the stock of any company that buys Blackboard. (I doubt whether anyone actually contemplating buying Blackboard will read my little blog, but the advice is free.)

1. A maturing market 

There are signs that the rapid growth in online learning is beginning to slow down, if not flatten out. The Babson Surveys had been recording growth of between 10-20% per annum in online enrolments in the USA over the 10 years up to 2012. However, the U.S. Federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) survey showed an overall decrease in DE enrolments of 4% from 2012 to 2013. The biggest area was the for-profits, which declined by 17%. Even the Babson Survey recorded a slower growth rate in online enrolments in 2013.
There are technical reasons that make measuring the growth in online learning very difficult, and one year is not enough to determine a trend. However, the rate of students taking fully online courses in the USA (and Canada) is likely to slow in the future for two reasons:

• there is a limit to the market for fully online studies and after 10 years of fairly large gains, it is not surprising that the rate now appears to be slowing down
• as more and more courses are offered in a hybrid mode, students have another option besides fully online for flexible study.

However, offsetting this is the much bigger move to blended and hybrid learning, resulting in the use of online learning in campus-based classes. This is a much bigger overall market than the fully online student market, and has hardly been touched yet outside North America (Blackboard is actually used more for on-campus than fully online courses in the USA). As more and more institutions move to blended learning, so will the demand for software to support such course designs. So while the market is changing, the demand for some kind of platform to manage the online, and increasingly the on-campus components, is likely to continue well into the future. The market then may be maturing but there is still plenty of room for growth, especially internationally. At the same time, the product has to meet the demands of new blended course designs and not be merely an online platform somewhat adapted to use on campus. It remains to be seen whether Ultra can really respond to that requirement.

2. Increasing competition from other integrated platform providers

This is probably Blackboard’s most obvious (but not necessarily most serious) challenge. It is operating in a market with more than 50 direct competitors, and the list grows almost daily. Some of the later entrants, such as Instructure and Desire2Learn, have been taking a big bite out of Blackboard’s market in recent years. Learning platforms still require a relatively low-entry level of technology/software development and it is not difficult to design alternatives on the general theme. While Ultra certainly will help Blackboard to push back against its competitors, they too will not stand still in new software developments and approaches. So while the overall market may be maturing, the consolidation into two or three dominant players seems to be moving even further away.

3. Alternatives to course platforms

The design of Ultra in bringing together a range of disparate but proprietary products into one integrated, consolidated product or platform is being countered by moves to lighter, stand-alone, often ‘open’ technologies that the end-users (both teacher and learners) integrate on an ‘as needs’ basis. This can be seen particularly in the use of social media, such as blogs, wikis, You Tube videos, and mobile apps.
On the other hand, I have also argued elsewhere that the need for some kind of platform that enables learning materials to be stored and organised, limits access to registered students and appropriate teaching staff, provides secure assessment and learning analytics, and offers a central, single location for student work, is not likely to go away well into the future.
The question though is whether the kind of proprietary system such as Ultra is the best way to provide such a platform. Open source solutions such as Canvas and WordPress provide more flexibility and allow more easily for future technology developments and new teaching approaches to be incorporated.

Watch this space

These arguments of course may be actually just academic. No-one has yet made an offer and although suggestions have been made that Oracle, Microsoft or some other company with data-based products might be interested, Blackboard sits in a fairly small, niche market.
In the meantime it will be interesting to see how many institutions, having made the investment in Blackboard Learn or some other LMS, are willing to go through the major upheaval needed to move to a new platform such as Ultra. If I had $3 billion to spend, I’d wait and see – but then that’s why I don’t have $3 billion in the first place.
Exclusive: Education company Blackboard seeks $3 billion sale – sources
Blackboard Inc, a U.S. software company that provides learning tools for high school and university classrooms, is exploring a sale that it hopes could value it at as much as $3 billion, including debt, according to people familiar with the matter.
Blackboard’s majority owner, private equity firm Providence Equity Partners LLC, has hired Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE) and Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) to run an auction for the company, the people said this week.
Blackboard has annual earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of around $200 million, some of the people added.
Two of the people said that Blackboard could fetch a valuation between 14 times to 17 times EBITDA, up to $3.4 billion, based on current multiples of subscription-based software companies.
The sources asked not to be identified because the sale process is confidential. Providence Equity, Blackboard, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America declined to comment.
Based in Washington D.C., Blackboard provides custom software to help students collaborate on assignments and communicate with teachers. It serves 19,000 clients in 100 countries including 1,900 international institutions, with 80 percent of the top academic institutions using its software, according to its website.
The majority of Blackboard’s business is from higher education clients but it also generates revenue from K-12 schools and from government and corporate clients. The company has also branched into “student pathway” services that help students manage financial aid, video conferencing and other areas.

Providence took Blackboard private in 2011 for $1.64 billion and also assumed $130 million in net debt.
A pioneer in education management software founded in 1998, Blackboard has seen its growth slow in recent years as cheaper and faster software upstarts such as Instructure Inc have tried to encroach on its turf. Since its launch in 2011, Instructure has signed up 1,200 colleges and school districts, according to its website.
The sector has been very active for private equity firms. Last year, Hellman & Friedman LLC acquired K-12 education company Renaissance Learning for $1.1 billion, and Charterhouse Capital Partners acquired Skillsoft, which provides educational software to businesses, for more than $2 billion.

Apollo Global Management LLC (APO.N) has held talks with investment banks about taking McGraw-Hill Education public later this year in an IPO worth more than $5 billion, Reuters reported in April.
Providence has previously invested in education companies ITT Educational Services Inc ESI.N, Archipelago Learning and Education Management Corp.
(Reporting by Liana B. Baker, Greg Roumeliotis and Mike Stone in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Skillsoft’s acquisition of SumTotal gives the company both.  The company now has a mature enterprise software business (which plays in all areas of talent management) as well as a large and mature training content business. The combination opens up a lot of new doors for innovation, better integration, and new customer value.
Scale brings value in many ways. With more customers and a larger sales force (the combined sales force is almost 4X the size of SumTotal’s sales force), more consultants and third party providers are likely to migrate to the Skillsoft-SumTotal platform. There are more than 2,000 providers of content, tools, assessments, and platforms in this market, and many of them will now want to work with Skillsoft’s platforms. The company almost rivals the ERP vendors for size and market reach.
2.  Synergies.  Expanded sales force for SumTotal. Technology team for Skillsoft.
How about company synergies? They fall into two major areas: sales and technology.
Skillsoft was always one of the leading sales organizations in this market. There isn’t a corporate training manager that has not talked with a Skillsoft sales person, and most have purchased Skillsoft courses at one point during their career.
SumTotal is a well-established company in the LMS market and one of the top five market share leaders, but did not have a large sales force.  (Read Bersin by Deloitte LMS 2014 for more details). The LMS market, which is now over $2.6 Billion in size, is growing at close to 24% annually – so there is a lot of buying going on. Together the company now has more feet on the street and can offer LMS to all content customers, and content to tall LMS customers.
The second synergy is technology. Skillsoft has been trying to build out it’s technology capability for some time. While Skillport has become more of a scalable system each year, it could never truly reach enterprise LMS class, holding the company back from taking on a role as a customer’s primary learning platform. This problem now goes away. Skillsoft can offer an enterprise class LMS as well as an entire suite of HR and talent management products, all integrated with content.
3.  Improving the Learning Experience: Integrating content and technology.
The integration of content with platforms remains an opportunity as well. Over the last fifteen years the online learning industry grew into two marketplaces:  content (e-learning) and technology (LMS and talent platforms). Customers purchased the two separately and only SCORM and hard work by vendors made sure that the two worked together.

Moodle vs BlackBoard

Even free LMSs like Moodle can require a significant IT investment, whereas premium LMSs like BlackBoard can end up paying for themselves in the long run. The numbers show a strong split between LMS choice depending on how limited a school’s student body is (and thus their resources). George Kroner, a former BlackBoard engineer, expresses surprise in “…seeing [Moodle] surpass Blackboard below the 2,500 FTE mark – I was actually kind of shocked to see that.” When choosing an LMS, we face a question: what is better – a free open-source solution which requires further development, or an expensive product which is ready out of the box? This question reveals two general investment factors: initial price and future cost of ownership. The market provides dozens of alternatives, but this article compares the two most popular solutions from each category: Moodle vs Blackboard. Regardless of the investment, a good LMS should be user-friendly, cost-effective, and suitable for the type of organization that uses it. Which LMSs are colleges and universities already using, and which new LMSs are they choosing? According to LISTedTECH, BlackBoard and Moodle dominate the market for current LMS usage, and they are both competing with Canvas LMS for new implementations (based on 912 new implementations in the past 5 years). Moodle is a powerful free solution, but tailoring it for your specific needs may require many hours of programming. BlackBoard is fully loaded, but expensive. Let’s compare:

Moodle

Moodle is open-source software using the “freemium” payment model, which means that you get the basic elements for free, but must pay for extra options. According to recent surveys, it is one of the most popular LMSs, mostly used by institutions with between 1,000 and 2,000 full-time students. One of the main disadvantages of this system is that it’s very difficult to set up and fine tune. There are lots of companies that can help to set up the system and customize it, but their services are rather costly. Moodle is perfectly suited for common educational goals, but to implement it, a company should have at least one qualified IT specialist, plus a separate server and hardware. Moodle is free up front, but extra expenses may amount to $10,000/year, not including IT department salaries. The main features of Moodle:

• Grade management
• Student roster / attendance management
• Assessment implementation
• Discussion forums
• Lesson planner
• Collaboration management
• File exchange
• Internal messaging, live chat, wikis

Moodle offers special modules for creating courses (moodlerooms) which can be used in situ or migrated to another LMS. The main problem of this system is that it requires extra time and effort – up to 18-24 months – to customize and implement. If you can afford such time-consuming activities without any harm to your business, then Moodle is a great solution for your company. Here are a couple of reviews from Capterra which reflect the pros and cons of using Moodle:

Moodle is a nice alternative for those that are looking for a full-featured Learning Management System with a relatively low cost. It is often referred to as the free Learning Management System but it is free like a puppy where it comes with a lot of hidden costs such as maintenance, support, etc.. If you’re going to go with Moodle. I would recommend finding a trusted hosting provider such as Moodlerooms to help with all of those hidden costs. If so, you can have a cheaper alternative to some of the others that are out there, have a lot of functionality, and don’t have to worry about any of the behind the scenes stuff. The other benefit is you have access to a massive amount of documentation, how-to videos, and the community to help with anything you can imagine. — Aung Myint Myat , C.E.O at Trust Training Center

The best and worst thing about Moodle is it’s complexity – there are so many features and settings that you can make Moodle do and look like whatever you want, but it can be a bit overwhelming for a teacher new to using an LMS. However, the support community – both instructional and technical – is very responsive and helpful. Being open source, Moodle is continually being upgraded and integrates with many other digital tools. No other LMS compares to Moodle. — Fanny Passeport at Stonehill International School

Moodle is a great LMS but since it’s open-source, you have got to figure out many things. Even though the moodle.org forums are well maintained, it’s not always easy to get support on very specific questions. It’s a great tool if you have a great IT Support in place but if you are only a teacher, it’s not easy to administrate the LMS only by yourself. I like the immense possibilities in terms of delivering content and providing interactive materials but it’s not user-friendly and require long navigation. A great tool but could be improved. — Stephanie Weirich , Staff Developer at Lincoln Intermediate Unit 12

Overall, Moodle is a free and popular LMS, but it often requires customization, which can be very costly and time-consuming. One of its strong points is the active online learning communities and collaboration activities (Blackboard is deficient in this department).

• PROS

  Free. Open source. Modular, plugin-based design enables administrators to add or create features as needed. Supports myriad activities, including peer assessment workshops, real-time messaging, and wiki forums. Generous progress tracking and reporting options. Unparalleled language support.

• CONS

  Setup is by no means turnkey. UI lacks the visual finesse of paid alternatives.

• BOTTOM LINE

  If you’re willing to shoulder some of the administrative burden, Moodle offers an entirely viable learning management service that is free, open source, and rapidly advancing.

An acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, Moodle is an educational Learning Management System (LMS) that enables educators to level up features with various instruction, assessment, and reporting modules. Suffice it to say, Moodle is not your typical learning management system. First and foremost, Moodle is free. As an open source initiative, the LMS can be customized or modified through modular, interoperable plug-ins, and commercial and non-commercial projects can be shared without any licensing fees.
Over the past dozen years, the platform has accumulated an active and far-reaching cohort of educators, learners, and developers. Having attracted nearly 90 million users in fields as wide-ranging as higher education (such as The Open University), medicine, and government from nations as varied as Spain, Russia, and Colombia, Moodle’s developer community has actively contributed to the project, including more than 120 language localizations.
Like other open source initiatives, Moodle entails compromises. Unlike a paid option such as Instructure Canvas the free version of Moodle is not turnkey. While administrators can enable advanced features such as Single Sign-On (SSO), they will need to perform granular configuration.
Unlike Blackboard Moodle assumes that administrators want to host their LMS, though there is a limited-scale hosted version available for a fee. Moodle lacks an integrated marketplace, but users can distribute paid courses via CourseMerchant or enroll in courses via Moodle.net.
In this sense, Moodle may not be a viable option for a lone faculty member who wants to create a blended version of a course; however, Moodle is an exciting alternative for educators who can ask a Faculty Technology Center or IT department to help configure, support, and administer their LMS.
Dashboard, Blocks, and Themes
Moodle’s Dashboard is organized around content blocks. By default, the Course overview block occupies the center of the screen, with left- and right-aligned blocks for navigation and news. Users can customize Dashboards by hiding, docking, deleting, adding, or moving blocks. If instructors get carried away, administrators can now reset Dashboards using a convenient “reset” button bundled with last fall’s Moodle 3.0 release.
Configuration requires practice, and even when you achieve your desired Dashboard, it isn’t exactly flashy. Moodle has about as much visual panache as Wikipedia.
Moodle offers two different themes. In addition to the standard theme (Clean), it provides a custom theme (More), through which administrators can tweak text and background colors and upload a custom logo or footer.
If you’re technically savvy, you can produce a fairly dynamic-looking page.
However you choose to tailor the look and feel of your LMS, you can count on it remaining accessible. In addition to compatibility with every major browser and device, the interface will soon be responsive. Moodle also offers mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.
Roles and Groups Administrators may choose from a variety of roles, which often overlap in complicated ways. At the highest level is the Site Administrator and Manager, followed by roles related to course assembly: Course Creator, Teacher, and Non-Editing Teacher. Whereas Teachers can add or edit content of existing courses, Non-Editing Teachers can only post grades; Course creation is reserved for, you guessed it, Course Creators. Finally, there are two different types of learners: Students can access and participate in courses, whereas Guests can only view courses. Educators can organize their learners using groups. The default mode of organization occurs at the Course level (editable via the Course administration menu), though educators can sort also learners at the Activity level. Activities, Assignments, and More Alongside groups and roles, Moodle supports blended and online courses with nearly two dozen course-related Activities. Similar to other LMS alternatives, Moodle allows administrators to upload SCORM packages as course content. In addition, however, Moodle offers an external tool through which administrators can add resources compliant with the IMS Global Learning Consortium Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard. In practical terms, that means a learner can share their Moodle course using Mozilla’s public Badges Backpack.
Most LMS alternatives include some kind of integrated message service or commenting tool. Moodle offers an all-of-the-above approach, with activities for conducting polls and surveys (Feedback or Survey), asynchronous discussion boards (Forum or Wiki), and synchronous discussions (Chat).
All communication flows through Moodle’s javascript text editor, Atto, which recently gained new mathematic capabilities (e.g. buttons for square roots, fractions, and vectors) and table-formatting controls (border styling, sizing, and colors).
In addition to submitting multiple choice or short responses, students can upload files such as documents, spreadsheets, images, audio, and video clips. (For sound and video files to load, an administrator will need to enable the Multimedia plug-ins filter). Moodle 3.0 brought a handful of new assessment options to the platform, including questions that involve dragging and dropping images, text, and markers. Teachers can comment on responses (Assignments) or organize a peer assessment activity (Workshop). Few LMS alternatives support peer review processes, and what I like about Moodle’s approach to the Workshop is that students can receive feedback on both their own work as well as their assessments of colleagues’ work. Also new with Moodle 3.0 are options to filter submissions using five different workshop phases and to visualize student progress using a new Workshop Planner tool.
Progress Tracking, Reporting, and Plug-Ins Moodle reporting can be augmented to satisfy the appetite of the most data-hungry administrator. By default, administrators can track learners’ progress related to activities, courses, or grades. However, baseline tracking can be greatly expanded through optional plug-ins: Administrators can add features such as progress bars, checklist modules, and even advanced integrations with Office365.
The same principle applies to reporting. In addition to course-level activity and participation reports, administrators can enable Statistics (via the Site Administration menu) to access user activity graphs and tables. Administrators can also run site-wide reports related to activity, performance, and security. If you crave still more reporting options, you may choose from dozens of plug-ins designed to address the most esoteric reporting queries, from listing all assignment files for a course or user (Assignment Files) to rendering a force-directed graph based upon a Forum activity (Forum Graph). In the past year, Moodle has greatly improved the interface for installing and upgrading plug-ins: Admins can now install extra features using the Moodle plug-in directory, an uploaded zip file, or manually at server level. There’s now an option to assign an upgrade key to prevent non-authenticated users from accessing the upgrade screen.
Jailbreaking the Educational LMS If you’re an administrator looking for a hosted LMS with 24/7 phone support and turnkey operation, Moodle is not for you. While MoodleCloud offers hosted plans that scale to 500 users (a bargain at $1,000 AUD annually), most institutions are going to need more accounts and dedicated support. You already knew this because you’re likely already committed to an alternative such as Blackboard or Canvas (in higher education) or Edmodo
If, however, you’re willing to assume some additional administrative duties, Moodle could save you a lot of money, and let you create exactly the LMS you want. Smaller colleges are already voting with their feet, and I suspect larger universities will follow.
Moodle provides an entirely viable education LMS that is free, open source, and rapidly advancing.
Universities deserve a choice, and I am eager to see Moodle, or some other organization that shares its values, jailbreak the educational LMS.

Blackboard

BlackBoard is an industry-leading LMS, comprehensive and flexible, but expensive. Detailed pricing information is not publicly available, but the cost depends on how many licenses you need. It has lots of schools on board already and is considered to be a great value for the money, especially for large institutions with a lot of resources. BlackBoard excels in course creation; an instructor can upload and manage all the materials s/he needs. However, if extra training or implementation services are required, it may be difficult to find and hire a qualified BlackBoard specialist. The main features of Blackboard:

• Custom branding, fields and functionality
• Exam engine
• Multiple delivery formats
• Administrative reporting
• Course catalog
• Data import/export
• Grading
• Individual plans
• Student portal
• Goal setting
• Skills tracking

The system lacks collaboration features and doesn’t excel in email integration, but offers self-paced instruction methods and resource management. Here are a couple of reviews from Capterra which reflect the pros and cons of using BlackBoard:

I used blackboard as an online central hub for each class during my first couple years at the University of Mary Washington. Blackboard provided each teacher the ability to create diverse classes through their use of online tools such as blogs, online collaboration, and easy communication between professors, classmates, and participants in other classes of the same subject. These tools that Blackboard provided could have created an amazing classroom experience at home. However, blackboard was so complicated to use and had so many bugs that it became more of a hassle than a tool to be utilized. Posted materials would disappear or be locked out of nowhere. Blogs would stop refreshing. One time, a professors whole page was reset to blank over night. These things would always be quickly fixed but annoying nonetheless. — Braylyn Yancy at FLLC

Blackboard puts differently formatted information – pdf, simple data, hyperlinks, etc. – in one spot, but it can be more user friendly. The tools sections, in particular, is so full that it makes looking for the most basic thing a chore. Why, for example, are grades in the tools section? Emailing all members of a class is not prohibitively complicated, accessing course materials is not hard (though they tend to be organized in ascending order from the first thing posted to the last, which is annoying because typically a student would be looking for the latest course material first and not last), and all of the most necessary links – except for grades – are conveniently located on the side bar. — Matthew Allen, logistics support at Talbots

I used blackboard as a student at Georgetown. Professors differed in how the used the program – some would post a syllabus and forget about it, while others would post everything from grades to homework to multimedia and made ample use of features like the discussion board. Overall, I found it useful. Blackboard streamlined communication between me, my professors, and my classmates. I think Blackboard does feature a lot of “noise”, in the sense that it offers many tools both I and my professors never had a purpose for. — Monica Unzueta at Wyoming High School

Overall, Blackboard is perfect for educational institutions, but it is very expensive, takes a lot of time to sort all the software out, and is not convenient for businesses.

You can also have a look at BlackBoard vs Moodle comparisons on G2Crowd and eLearning Roadmap. If you are looking for a multifunctional LMS, you can choose from the two above, but watch out for extra expenses for their customization and maintenance. In choosing the right LMS for you, we recommend you write a checklist of all your requirements. Give Moodle a try, have a look at a demo version of BlackBoard, and check if they fit your list. Tick the points if they are covered, and cross them out if they are not. Then you’ll have an idea of which system fits you better.

How to launch e-Learning faster?

If you are new to LMSs, it can be rather difficult to choose the best solution. A good strategy is to try an easy and affordable system and see which LMS features you need to meet your specific goals and build a complete learning experience. Try iSpring Learn – an easy-to-use platform for teaching students online. This cloud-based platform requires no installation. Once you create your account, you can immediately start developing your learning environment. iSpring Learn LMS collects detailed statistics on all aspects of the learning process and provides a powerful set of reports, so you can always track learners’ performance and analyze training effectiveness.

ADL Initiative

The ADL Initiative is a US government program, reporting to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Education and Training, under the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness. ADL was established to help programs, initiatives, and policies better support flexible, lifelong learning through the use of technology.

ADL Mission

The ADL Initiative bridges across Defense and other Federal agencies, as well as coalition partners and industry and academia, to encourage collaboration, facilitate interoperability, and promote best practices for using distributed learning to provide the highest-quality education, training, informal learning, and just-in-time support, tailored to individual needs and delivered cost-effectively, anytime and anywhere.

ADL Activities

The ADL Initiative pursues three broad lines of effort:

• Thought Leadership: ADL aspires to serve as a leader for forward-looking distributed learning topics within the DoD, other national and coalition governmental agencies, and the greater professional community. For ADL, thought leadership involves the curation (i.e., collection, validation, synthesis, maintenance, and dissemination) of relevant requirements, emerging targets of opportunity, corresponding strategic roadmaps, and associated policy guidance. Effective thought leadership also includes the cultivation of stakeholder buy-in for the advocated strategies, plans, and policies.
• R&D Innovation: ADL strives to develop the next-generation of distributed learning science techniques and technologies via research, development, and collaboration. In accordance with its original mandate, ADL’s R&D work seeks to develop and assess advanced distributed learning prototypes that enable more effective, efficient, and affordable learner-centric lifelong learning. These R&D activities span six technical areas: e-learning, mobile learning, learning theory, web-based virtual worlds and simulations, learning analytics and performance modeling, and interoperability infrastructure.
• Outreach and Transition: Finally, ADL works closely with stakeholders to help them implement effective, coordinated advanced distributed learning solutions. This includes coordination via ADL’s professional communities of practice, the Defense ADL Advisory Committee, international governmental bodies (such as NATO), and the ADL Global Partnership Network.

ADL Program History

The ADL Initiative traces its antecedents to the early 1990s, when Congress authorized and appropriated funds for the National Guard to build prototype electronic classrooms and learning networks to increase personnel’s access to learning opportunities. By the mid-1990s, DoD realized the need for a more coordinated approach, and the 1996 Quadrennial Defense Review formalized this by directing development of a Department-wide strategy for modernizing technology-based education and training. This strategy became the original ADL Initiative, and in 1998, the Deputy Secretary of Defense directed the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (USD(P&R), in collaboration with the Services, Joint Staff, Under Secretaries of Defense for Acquisition and Technology and the Comptroller), to lead ADL. The Deputy Secretary of Defense also directed the USD(P&R) to produce the Department-wide policy for advanced distributed learning, develop a corresponding “master plan” to carry out the policy, and to ensure sufficient programs and resources were available for the associated implementation (see the 1999 ADL Strategic Plan for more details).
By 1998, the DoD and other Federal agencies (e.g., the Department of Labor) had each established their own ADL projects, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) moved to consolidate these via the Federal Training Technology Initiative. Thus, following guidance from Congress, OSTP, and the National Partnership for Reinventing Government, the DoD ADL Initiative was grown into a Federal-wide program. Specific direction for this can be found in Section 378 of Public Law 105-261, the Strom Thurmond National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999, which required the Secretary of Defense to develop a strategic plan for expanding distance learning initiatives, as well as Executive Order 13111 (President William J. Clinton, 12 January 1999), which called for an integrated Federal-wide approach to distance learning.
Shortly after President Clinton signed Executive Order 13111, the Pentagon released the Department of Defense Strategic Plan for Advanced Distributed Learning (April 30, 1999) and the corresponding Department of Defense Implementation Plan for Advanced Distributed Learning (May 19, 2000). These prescient documents defined the ADL Initiative, its rationale and vision, in a way that still largely aligns with the contemporary program. For instance, from page 8:
Importantly, the Initiative’s underpinnings and applications are germane not only to the Department of Defense, but to other government organizations, academia, and the private sector, as well. The ADL Initiative, therefore, is a structured, adaptive, collaborative effort between the public and private sectors to develop the standards, tools, and learning content for the future learning environment. The Department of Defense’s vision is to harness the power of the Internet and other virtual or private wide-area networks (WANs) to deliver high-quality learning. It brings together intelligent tutors, distributed subject matter experts, real-time in-depth learning management, and a diverse array of support tools to ensure a responsive, high-quality “learner-centric” system (DoD Strategic Plan for ADL, 1999).

And later, on page 9:

The advanced distributed learning strategy requires re-engineering the learning paradigm from a “classroom-centric” model to an increasingly “learner-centric” model, and re-engineering the learning business process from a “factory model” (involving mainly large education and training institutions) to a more network-centric “information-age model” which incorporates anytime-anywhere learning (DoD Strategic Plan for ADL, 1999).
Similarly, the objectives outlined in that 1999 strategy still guide today’s ADL Initiative. For instance, the original strategy proposed pursuit of emerging network-based technologies, creation of common standards to enable reuse and interoperability of learning content, lowering of development costs, widespread promotion of collaboration to satisfy common needs, enhancing performance with next-generation learning technologies, working closely with industry to influence the commercial product development cycles, establishing coordinated implementation processes, and ultimately delivering efficient and effective high-quality learning continuously to DoD anytime/anywhere. The original intent of these efforts (which is still valid today) was to establish learning that was accessible (anytime/anywhere), interoperable (across developers and technical platforms), durable (does not require redesign when technology changes), and cost-effective (significantly increases learning effectiveness while reducing time, costs, and duplications of effort).
These aims were to be achieved by taking five actions (which, again, still hold relevance today; see the DoD Strategy for ADL, 1999, p. 10):

• Influence the development/use of common industry standards
• Enable acquisition of interoperable tools and content
• Create a robust and dynamic network infrastructure for distribution
• Enable the modernization of supporting resources
• Engender cultural change to move from a “classroom-centric” to a “learner-centric” model
• Mike Parmentier, the OSD Director for Readiness and Training Policy and Programs, who supervised the original ADL Initiative director published in March 2000 (p. 4):

The ADL Initiative is designed to leverage the full power of communications, information, and learning technologies—through the use of collaboratively developed common standards…The challenge to teachers is to understand and apply the new technologies in concert with, in addition to, or in some cases in place of, traditional learning methods. The challenge to developers is to design methods of instruction and content that are open-architecture, shareable, high quality, and cost effective. The challenge to the information technology sector is to field an infrastructure that supports anytime, anywhere learning with appropriate bandwidth, transaction security, and robustness that is transparent to the learner. These are not easy challenges. They require unprecedented collaboration and consensus building.
This quotation highlights ADL’s long-term mission as well as its enduring core values, including active inclusion of learning science best practices with advanced technology development, dedication to open and interoperable technologies, a learner-centric focus, and unique commitment to widespread collaboration. Although, technologies have advanced since 1999 and requirements have evolved, the original ADL mission and vision still ring true today.

ADL Program Stakeholders

The ADL Initiative originated as a DoD-wide program, and Defense personnel have been—and remain—the core constituents of ADL. However, with the policy documents published in the late 1990s, ADL received direction to also serve the entire Federal workforce as well as international partners, industry, and academia. In short, ADL’s stakeholders, in rough order of priority include, the US Defense and security sector, US Federal government, coalition military partners, and other distributed learning professionals from industry, professional societies, and academic institutions.
Since its inception, ADL has emphasized collaboration. The two primary program offices, in Alexandria and Orlando, were originally named “Collaboration Laboratories” (or Co-Labs, for short) to emphasize this cooperation, and they were explicitly designed as cooperative sandbox environments, where government, industry and academia could come together to test commercial product offerings against learning requirements (Parmentier, 2000).

Sales Plan

Here are some of the basic steps involved in creating our marketing plan:

• Focus on your target market. Who are your customers? Who will you target? Who makes the decisions? Determine how you can best reach potential customers.
• Evaluate your competition. Your marketing plan must set you apart from your competition, and you can’t stand out unless you know your competition. (It’s hard to stand out from a crowd if you don’t know where the crowd stands.) Know your competitors by gathering information about their products, service, quality, pricing, and advertising campaigns. In marketing terms, what does your competition do that works well? What are their weaknesses? How can you create a marketing plan that highlights the advantages you offer to customers?
• Consider your brand. How customers perceive your business makes a dramatic impact on sales. Your marketing program should consistently reinforce and extend your brand. Before you start to market your business, think about how you want your marketing to reflect on your business and your products and services. Marketing is the face of your to potential customers–make sure you put your best face forward.
• Focus on benefits. What problems do you solve? What benefits do you deliver? Customers don’t think in terms of products–they think in terms of benefits and solutions. Your marketing plan should clearly identify benefits customers will receive. Focus on what customers get instead of on what you provide. (Take Dominos; theoretically they’re in the pizza business, but really they’re a delivery business.)
• Focus on differentiation. Your products and services have to stand out from the competition in some way. How will you compete in terms of price, product, or service?

Then focus on providing detail and backup for your marketing plan.

Key questions to answer:

• What is your budget for sales and marketing efforts?
• How will you determine if your initial marketing efforts are successful? In what ways will you adapt if your initial efforts do not succeed?
• Will you need sales representatives (inside or external) to promote your products?
• Can you set up public relations activities to help market your business?

learning library: Terms such as digital library, electronic library and virtual library are often used synonymously with learning library.

A learning library is an organized and focused collection of digital objects, including text, images, video and audio along with methods for access and retrieval and for selection, creation, organization and maintenance.

The Learning Library is more than a collection of books, documents and materials of traditional library on an electronic (digital) form it also contains any digital material, e.g., Software, multimedia.  Plus it includes extensive “Meta-Data” to help the learner evaluate the learning nuggets.

List of other digital libraries:  http://www.faena.com/aleph/articles/the-8-best-digital-libraries/

Besides ALC Learning Library, the majority of the modern traditional libraries have been automated and computerized by saving information of objects and resources (e.g., books, magazines, CD’s, etc.).

Furthermore, some of these libraries adopt also some LL functions (electronic resources) by saving digital objects.

Consequently, the user can search for these resources via internet anywhere to review full content of eBook or to see some information about a paper based book. This kind of library could be named as On-Line Library.

Digital library software packages: The market of Digital Library Software is growing some of those Packages are commercial Software, while others are free Open-Sources. The following list shows some examples:

Commercial packages:
SirsiDynix digital library, http://www.sirsidynix.com/%20Solutions/Products/digitalarchive.php

Content manager-IBM’s Digital Library Software,< http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/cm/cmgr
DigiTool (of Ex Libris), <http://www.exlibris.co.il

Artesia digital asset management-DAM, <http://www.artesia.com/our-products.aspx

Open-source packages:
DSpace, <http://www.dspace.org
Greenstone Digital Library Software, <http://www.greenstone.org
EPrints, <http://www.eprints.org
Fedora digital object repository management system, <http://www.fedora.info

Learning management system: LMS is software that automates the administration of training events; it manage the log-in of registered users, manage course catalogs, track learner activities and results as well as provide reports to management.

The market of LMS is increasing very fast and there are >70 vendors some of LMSs are commercial Software, while others are free Open-Source LMSs. The following list
shows some LMSs:

Commercial LMS: e.g., WebCT <http://www.WebCT.com>
and eCollege <http://www.ecollege.com

Open-Source LMS: e.g., MOODLE <http://www.moodle.org>
and ILIAS <http://www.ilias.de

Recommendations systems: Last decade, RSs have been widely implemented and accepted in many sectors of Internet. We are familiar with recommendations of products (e.g., books, music, movies) and of services (e.g., restaurants, hotels, Web sites), likewise recommendation is not arising from the digital era but an existing social behaviour in daily life. In everyday life, we rely on recommendations from others.

More and more information is available electronically; moreover, the World Wide Web is still growing faster as a result, the users suffer from the Information Overload problem when searching on Internet. Generally, the aim of RSs in Web applications is to present interesting information that fits the users tastes and preferences with little effort. In contrast, sometimes RSs are used to hide special information! and specifically, the aim of RSs in eLearning applications (e.g., LMS) is listing the closest available learning objects to what the instructor describes as the module’s content

Current usage of RS: RSs have been widely used in many Internet activities. It is worth mentioning some examples of the current actual uses of RS.

eCommerce: RSs are used to suggest products to their customers and provide consumers with information to help them decide which products to purchase. Examples: Amazon.com and barnesnoble.com.

Web pages: RS is used to solve the overload problem in the Internet, when using search engines (e.g., Google, Yahoo) which produce thousands of pages to one researched item, most of them have worthless relation to the researched item or of no interest to the user. Example of search engines which used RS:
Mi Yahoo! http://www.my.yahoo.com
and Alexa.com.

Censorship systems: RSs used to protect children from accessing undesirable material on the internet. e.g., cyberpatrol.com as well as Prevent citizens from exploring some Web sites; which some governments already did.

Other sectors: Examples:

Encyclopedia: e.g., <http://www.en.wikipedia.org

Software: e.g., <http://www.download.com
Stores: e.g., <http://www.drugstore.com
Tourist information: e.g., <http://www.viamichelin.com
Digital library: e.g., <http://www.elibraryhub.com

RS and eLearning: eLearning somehow is a new field to apply RS, which may be used to recommend the most appropriate content to students.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The suitability of RS approaches: Actually, RSs consist of approaches everyone has techniques. However, there are many systems that use Hybrid Recommender System (HRS), which combines two or more recommendation techniques to gain better performance.

Here, we are going to study the suitability of the main RS approaches to recommend digital objects from DL to a LMS.

Content-Based System (CBS): In this type, the objects are selected by
having correlation between the content of the objects and the user’s preferences.
Examples: Infofilter (Elkhalifa, 2004) and InfoFinder
<http://www.infofinder.cgiar.org>.
In the case of LMS, CBS can be used within LMS as a primary approach to recommend
digital learning objects from DL by detecting similarities between the current
eCourse attributes (name, keywords, abstract etc.) and the digital objects attributes
from DL.

Collaborative Filtering Systems (CFS): It recommends items or objects to a target user based on similar users’ preferences and on the opinions of other users with similar tastes. It employs statistical techniques to find a set of users known as neighbours to the target user, examples: Amazon.com and ebay.com.

CFS has some methods to calculate the likeliness from the rating matrix, the suitable one to our RS is Memory-Based Algorithm (also known as k-Nearest Neighbour Method), because it is suitable to environments where the user preferences have to be updated rapidly.

Demographic-Based System (DBS): It uses prior knowledge on demographic
information about the users and their opinions for the recommended items as
basis for recommendations (Nageswara and Talwao, 2008).
It aims to categorize the user based on personal explicit attributes and make
recommendations based on demographic group that a user belongs to such as (income,
age, learning level or geographical region) or a combination of these clusters/groups.
Examples: Grundy, a book RS, where people’s descriptions of themselves
were used to build a user model and then predict characteristics of books that
they would enjoy (Rich, 1979) and the Free e-mail suppliers
put advertisements based on the user demographic information such as RS used
in Hotmail and Yahoo.

The DBS could be used in the process of recommending digital objects as a complementary approach.

Rule-Based Filtering (RBF): It is filtering information according to
set of rules expressing the information filtering policy (Terveen
and Hill, 2001). These rules may be part of the user or the system profile
contents and it may refer to various attributes of the data items. In general,
this system is used widely with:

Censorship: RBF is useful in the protection domain e.g., the protection
of kids from accessing some materials, e.g., Cyberpatrol.com and Cybersitter.com
(Itmazi and Gea, 2006).

Spam filtering: RBF is useful to be used against the Spam e-mails, e.g.,
Spam Assassin <spamassassin.apache.org/> and MailEssentials <http://www.gfi.com>.
In RS, RBF could be used to filter the recommendations list of digital objects
upon some rules of system and student.

Hybrid Recommender System (HRS): It combines two or more recommendation
techniques to gain better performance with fewer of the drawbacks of any individual
one (Robin and Burke, 2002). Examples of systems: Tapestry
(Goldberg et al., 1992), which mixed CBS and CFS,
hybrid algorithm system (Vozalis and Margaritis, 2004)
which mixed CFS and DBS and Information lens, which combines the CBS with the
RBF (Mackay et al., 1989).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Customer Profile

Sales Strategy

Sales Strategy
Build Tribe though Online Marketing
Paid Online Promotion
Offer Lead Magnate

Operations Plan

Your Operations Plan section has two sub-sections as follows:
14 – Key Operational Processes
Your Key Operational Processes are the daily functions your business must conduct. In this section, you will detail these functions. For example, will you maintain a Customer Service department? If so, what specific role will it fill?
By completing this section, you’ll get great clarity on the organization you hope to build.
15 – Milestones

In this section of your business plan, list the key milestones you hope to achieve in the future and the target dates for achieving them.
Here is where you set goals for specific and critical undertakings, such as when a new product will be created and launched, by when you plan to execute new partnerships, etc.

Initiative

Established to help programs, initiatives, and policies better support flexible, lifelong learning through the use of technology.

Mission

Encourage collaboration, facilitate interoperability, and promote best practices for using distributed learning to provide the highest-quality education, training, informal learning, and just-in-time support, tailored to individual needs and delivered cost-effectively, anytime and anywhere.

 Activities

Four broad lines of effort:

• Thought Leadership: serve as a leader for forward-looking distributed learning topics within the community. Thought leadership involves the curation (i.e., collection, validation, synthesis, maintenance, and dissemination) of relevant requirements, emerging targets of opportunity, corresponding strategic roadmaps, and associated policy guidance. Effective thought leadership also includes the cultivation of stakeholder buy-in for the advocated strategies, plans, and policies.
• R&D Innovation: strive to develop the next-generation of distributed learning science techniques and technologies via research, development, and collaboration.  Develop and assess advanced distributed learning prototypes that enable more effective, efficient, and affordable learner-centric lifelong learning. These R&D activities span six technical areas: 1) e-learning, 2) mobile learning, 3) learning theory, 4) web-based virtual worlds, games and simulations, 5) learning analytics and 6) performance modeling, and interoperability infrastructure.
• Outreach and Transition: Work closely with other learning communities to help them implement effective, coordinated advanced distributed learning solutions.
• Develop the standards, tools, and learning content for the future learning environment.

Our vision is to harness the power of the Internet and other virtual or private wide-area networks (WANs) to deliver high-quality learning.
We want to bring together intelligent tutors, distributed subject matter experts, real-time in-depth learning management, and a diverse array of support tools to ensure a responsive, high-quality “learner-centric” system.
The advanced distributed learning strategy requires re-engineering the learning paradigm from a “classroom-centric” model to an increasingly “learner-centric” model, and re-engineering the learning business process from a “factory model” (involving mainly large education and training institutions) to a more network-centric “information-age model” which incorporates anytime-anywhere learning (DoD Strategic Plan for ADL, 1999).
ALC strategy is pursuit of emerging network-based technologies, creation of common standards to enable reuse and interoperability of learning content, lowering of development costs, widespread promotion of collaboration to satisfy common needs, enhancing performance with next-generation learning technologies, working closely with industry to influence the commercial product development cycles, establishing coordinated implementation processes, and ultimately delivering efficient and effective high-quality learning continuously to the Community anytime/anywhere.
ALC’s intent is to establish learning that is: 1) accessible (anytime/anywhere), 2) interoperable (across developers and technical platforms), 3) durable (does not require redesign when technology changes), and 4) cost-effective (significantly increases learning effectiveness while reducing time, costs, and duplications of effort).
These aims will be achieved by taking five actions.

1. Influence the development/use of common industry standards
2. Enable acquisition of interoperable tools and content
3. Create a robust and dynamic network infrastructure for distribution
4. Enable the modernization of supporting resources
5. Engender cultural change to move from a “classroom-centric” to a “learner-centric” model

The ALC is designed to leverage the full power of communications, information, and learning technologies—through the use of collaboratively developed common standard.

• The challenge to teachers is to understand and apply the new technologies in concert with, in addition to, or in some cases in place of, traditional learning methods.
• The challenge to developers is to design methods of instruction and content that are open-architecture, shareable, high quality, and cost effective.
• The challenge to the information technology sector is to field an infrastructure that supports anytime, anywhere learning with appropriate bandwidth, transaction security, and robustness that is transparent to the learner.

These are not easy challenges. They require unprecedented collaboration and consensus building.

We have the tools and we have the will, so now we just need to do it!

Section VIII – Management Team

Your Management Team section has three sub-sections as follows:

16 – Management Team Members

This section details the current members of your management team and their backgrounds.

17 – Management Team Gaps

Particularly if you’re a startup venture, you will have holes in your team; roles that you’d like to fill later. Identify such roles here, and the qualifications of the people you will seek later to fill them.

18 – Board Members

If you maintain a Board of Advisors or Board of Directors, detail your Board members and their bios in this section.

.

Your goal is to answer the following key questions:

• What facilities, equipment, and supplies do you need?
• What is your organizational structure? Who is responsible for which aspects of the business?
• Is research and development required, either during start-up or as an ongoing operation? If so, how will you accomplish this task?
• What are your initial staffing needs? When and how will you add staff?
• Who will you establish business relationships with vendors and suppliers? How will those relationships impact your day-to-day operations?
• How will your operations change as the company grows? What steps will you take to cut costs if the company initially does not perform up to expectations?

Operations plans should be highly specific to your industry, your market sector, and your customers. Instead of providing an example like I’ve done with other sections, use the following to determine the key areas your plan should address:

Location and Facility Management

In terms of location, describe:

• Zoning requirements
• The type of building you need
• The space you need
• Power and utility requirements
• Access: Customers, suppliers, shipping, etc.
• Parking
• Specialized construction or renovations
• Interior and exterior remodeling and preparation

Daily Operations

• Production methods
• Service methods
• Inventory control
• Sales and customer service
• Receiving and Delivery
• Maintenance, cleaning, and re-stocking

Legal

• Licenses and permits
• Environmental or health regulations
• Patents, trademarks, and copyrights
• Insurance

Personnel Requirements

• Typical staffing
• Breakdown of skills required
• Recruiting and retention
• Training
• Policies and procedures
• Pay structures

Inventory

• Anticipated inventory levels
• Turnover rate
• Lead times
• Seasonal fluctuations in demand

Suppliers

• Major suppliers
• Back-up suppliers and contingency plans
• Credit and payment policies

Financial Plan

Financing Model

What type of business financing are you interested in obtaining at this time?

Revenue Model

The ALC will make money by selling:

1. Premium Information created by the ALC Members
2. Grading/Certification/Advising

The driving revenue model is: the price for information goes up as the value goes up.  The way to measure value is through downloads of the information.

Financial Highlights

Your full financial model (income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement) belong in your Appendix, but in this section you’ll include the highlights. For instance, include your revenues, key expenses, and projected net income for the next five years.
21 – Funding Requirements/Use of Funds
If you are seeking funding for your company, detail the amount here, and importantly for what you will use the funds.

Exit Strategy

Sell to a Larger LMS Provider like Blackboard.
They would be buying the IP and copyrighted algorithms that have been developed under the @lantis® brand.
They will be buying the Brand which will have value they can see.

Pricing Model

Most business plans include at least five basic reports or projections:

• Balance Sheet: Describes the company cash position including assets, liabilities, shareholders, and earnings retained to fund future operations or to serve as funding for expansion and growth. It indicates the financial health of a business.
• Income Statement: Also called a Profit and Loss statement, this report lists projected revenue and expenses. It shows whether a company will be profitable during a given time period.
• Cash Flow Statement: A projection of cash receipts and expense payments. It shows how and when cash will flow through the business; without cash, payments (including salaries) cannot be made.
• Operating Budget: A detailed breakdown of income and expenses; provides a guide for how the company will operate from a “dollars” point of view.
• Break-Even Analysis: A projection of the revenue required to cover all fixed and variable expenses. Shows when, under specific conditions, a business can expect to become profitable.

It’s easy to find examples of all of the above. Even the most basic accounting software packages include templates and samples. You can also find templates in Excel and Google Docs. (A quick search like “google docs profit and loss statement” yields plenty of examples.)

Or you can work with an accountant to create the necessary financial projections and documents. Certainly feel free to do so… but I’d first recommend playing around with the reports yourself. While you don’t need to be an accountant to run a business, you do need to understand your numbers… and the best way to understand your numbers is usually to actually work with your numbers.

But ultimately the tools you use to develop your numbers are not as important as whether those numbers are as accurate as possible–and whether those numbers help you decide whether to take the next step and put your business plan into action.

Then Financial Analysis can help you answer the most important business question: “Can we make a profit?”

Appendices

Some business plans include less essential but potentially important information in an Appendix section. You may decide to include, as backup or additional information:

• Resumes of key leaders
• Additional descriptions of products and services
• Legal agreements
• Organizational charts
• Examples of marketing and advertising collateral
• Photographs of potential facilities, products, etc
• Backup for market research or competitive analysis
• Additional financial documents or projections

Keep in mind creating an Appendix is usually only necessary if you’re seeking financing or hoping to bring in partners or investors. Initially the people reading your business plan don’t wish to plow through reams and reams of charts, numbers, and backup information. If one does want to dig deeper, fine–he or she can check out the documents in the Appendix.

That way your business plan can share your story clearly and concisely.

Otherwise, since you created your business plan… you should already have the backup.

And one last thing: always remember the goal of your business plan is to convince you that your idea makes sense–because it’s your time, your money, and your effort on the line.