Note: Over the next few months, my blog will focus on topics that are relevant to the evolution of the training outsourcing market.

The demands on leaders of corporate training organizations have continued to grow over the last few years. Corporate executives are showing less tolerance for the traditional approaches to training management and expect new and innovative ways for training to add value – instead of being a cost burden to the business.

This translates into a new set of expectations for training managers to rethink not just the type of training or courses they are providing, but more about how they are providing learning services. These expectations come with the realization that internal resources may not have all the skills and tools necessary to be as effective as external training companies who do this as their core business.

This issue is the most influential driver to why the training outsourcing market is growing so rapidly (as reported in the 2015 Trends Report in Training Industry Magazine). The use of external training suppliers, or training outsourcing, was at its highest level ever in 2014; hitting an estimated growth rate of close to 10 percent and exceeding $60B in North America alone. This was the strongest performance we’ve seen in outsourced services since 2008.

With all this in mind, let’s examine how these suppliers are being used. For the largest and most complex training outsourcing deals – let’s call this Training BPO (business process outsourcing) – suppliers have most commonly been expected to help the organization to reduce the overall costs of training. Unfortunately, this strategy creates a lot of disappointment because when costs for training are reduced, so is the expected value and return from the benefits of training.

What we are now seeing is that for the large-scale, multinational companies, executives are looking at Training BPO companies to help them transform how they are managing the training function. This has become so common that “transformation” has become a key buzzword in today’s training vernacular.

It’s no secret that training should create value, drive performance improvement and be viewed as an investment. But for so many years, we as training leaders were not successful in doing that. All too often, training organizations were more focused on running a schoolhouse for training courses, and not focused on the true needs of the business.

So corporate executives want change – change in how training is being managed, how knowledge-based information is being disseminated, shared and re-purposed, and how training can and will change behavior. They are looking for experts in the field to bring new and innovative approaches to transform the training function, to introduce ways to leverage the knowledge they have within their own ranks to others who need it, and to bring best practices in the industry to their business.