Purpose

The Council requires a Learning Management System (LMS) and workforce learning platform to support the delivery, administration, monitoring and reporting of learning and development across the organisation. The LMS is a critical business system supporting approximately 7,000 active users and enables the Council to deliver and record mandatory and statutory training, monitor compliance and refresher requirements, provide assurance reporting to managers and senior leaders, and support wider workforce development and organisational learning.
The platform also provides established interfaces with the Council’s HR systems, enabling user accounts and employee information to be updated automatically. Over time, the Council has developed extensive content libraries, learning pathways, reporting arrangements, integrations and internal expertise around the platform.
The LMS supports learning beyond the Council’s directly employed workforce. In particular, Adult Social Care uses the system to provide specialist learning content, safeguarding training and workforce development resources to Council employees and Independent, Voluntary and Private sector care providers. Its classroom and event-booking functionality enables external learners to access and book instructor-led training where they do not have access to the Council’s internal HR systems. The platform therefore supports both corporate e-learning and
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the administration and recording of classroom-based and blended learning across the wider care workforce.
The Council has used Learning Pool as its corporate LMS provider for many years. The existing service includes the LMS platform, learning content collections, authoring capability, support and maintenance, upgrades, reporting arrangements and established integrations with the Council’s HR systems. Previous Council evaluations have concluded that the system remains fit for purpose, meets the Council’s operational requirements and provides a cost-effective mechanism for workforce development and compliance management.

Decision

The Council wishes to complete a direct award to our existing provider, Learning Pool, under the existing G-Cloud 14 framework for the provision of corporate e-learning and classroom-based learning for external adult social care.

Alternative options considered

Option 1 – Procure under G-Cloud 15
Rejected due to the additional resources and costs to achieve the same result as the preferred option.

Option 2 – Undertake a full procurement exercise
Rejected due to the additional resources and costs associated with undertaking a full procurement exercise. We have undertaken some broad benchmarking of learning management system (LMS) pricing using both public sector procurement information and local government market comparisons. Whilst this has provided a useful indication of market rates, we also acknowledge that this doesn't provide pricing based on the specific requirements of local government organisations, nor does it take into account our specific operating model and learning requirements. Whilst many organisations utilise an LMS primarily for the delivery of corporate e-learning, the Council requires a broader solution that supports both corporate e- learning and the administration of classroom-based learning. This is particularly important for Adult Social Care, where the system is used to manage and record face-to-face and blended learning activity for both Council employees and external care providers. The requirement for both e-learning and classroom learning management means that solutions which may have appeared lower cost may not necessarily offer equivalent functionality or meet the Council's wider service requirements.