Custom Training

The industry definition of customization is 20% changes on top of the ‘out of the box offering’. For example, if the course is for 10 hours, then customization allowed is up top 20% which is 2 hours. Any customization beyond 20% changes is no longer deemed customization and becomes a new course.

This means we will need to create a new course from scratch and will not refer to our proprietary data on the ‘out of the box’ offering. This is necessary because any changes for more than 20% increases the probability of human errors mixing our proprietary data and customer’s proprietary data. This is the reason many customer’s contracts include an Error and Omissions clause with high insurance liability clauses. Hence, to avoid any errors and meet compliance, any customization that require more than 20% change will be a new course created from scratch so that the probability of errors in mixing our proprietary data and customer’s data is zero. Hence, the pricing will be high and should NOT be compared with our ‘out of the box’ offering that enjoys the economies of scale to reuse content.

We will need a written statement from the customer that errors and omission insurance is not applicable and will release all claims towards our company of any potential errors when mixing our proprietary data with customer’s data as the statistical chances of errors beyond 20% are high. Our company will make the best effort to avoid errors however it is statistically not possible hence we avoid this altogether

Small and new vendors that have nothing to lose and are desperate to get business play these practices. Laws of Probability in statistics do not change that and the margin of error of more than 20% customization will increase the chances breach of compliance. Our experts have an average of 25years of industry experience hence this is the safe approach so that customers do not have to face unnecessary audits and scrutiny.

A one sided contract is when a party asks for liability from the other party and do not take any liability.

In that case, we will not use our proprietary data, will create customer courses from scratch, will throw away and not reuse the content post completion. This leads to high price as the course will be developed from scratch, and is the result of one-sided contracts. One sided contracts are unfair hence the pricing will be high to remove the negative effects of unfairness. Hence, the pricing should not be compared with our standard out of the box offering which enjoys the economies of scale due to reuse and no liability.

Proprietary data is what our company has created based on over 45 years of our experience. Internal rules and policies of the customer would also be proprietary data.

Email addresses of Government employees are not proprietary and private data as such information is readily available on Government’s website and external databases that can be accessed for free including outside of Canada.

The decision maker or maker of the customer organization should convey the terms of the agreement with their contracts team. Customers are welcome to use our simple 1 page agreement that we have been using for several decades with hundreds of public sector organizations with no issues. If the customer chooses to use their own contract templates, then it is the responsibility of the decision maker at the customer to convey the terms to their contract team. We keep the pricing low as we do not include the pricing of negotiations and review on the course pricing. We will offer up to 1 round of discussion on contracts for up to 2 hours. If the customer organization chooses to iterate for several rounds, then we will be adding the extra hours to the price of the contract as it is unfair to spend taxpayer’s money when there is an easy and straight forward way to move forward.

We practice what we preach for over 45 years serving the Canadian public procurement community. We expect all parties to work in an efficient manner else this leads to not optimal use of taxpayer’s money. Here are a few examples of not respecting each other’s time, organization, and taxpayer’s money. (a) Asking the customer’s contracts team to directly work with our team and providing no support or help. Customer organization’s decision maker should refer to the rules that are clearly laid out before deciding to discuss custom course details. (b) Asking for things from the other party that you yourself will not agree to. This is called one sided contracts which are unfair, (c) If the customer organization’s decision maker do not lead the discussions with their own contract team leading to spending hours on negotiation for contract details that should have been clarified on the first day itself before discussing the project details, and then citing internal rules by stopping all discussions and provide no explanation. This is unfair and disrespectful. (d) Using a common template for training and consulting when most things in training are not applicable for consulting and expecting a lengthy discussion. (Instead, use our simple 1 page contracts that other customers have used for years or prepare the necessary templates in-house before sharing those with us), (e) Mixing education contracts with technology contracts example asking us to own liability for technologies that we do not own example email engines, video conferences, CRM, learning management systems. When customer organizations cannot hold liability for third party systems, then asking the other party comply for third party systems is neither possible nor practical.