French eLearning Market: Is France Still Lagging Behind In eLearning?
06/18/2016
In 2016, the eLearning market in Western Europe will reach 8 billion euros. Every year more and more companies are willing to try eLearning solutions to train their staff. However, the French eLearning market is no longer ranked in the top 10 markets in terms of rate of growth. Let us see why this happens and whether the French market can grow in the near future.
Through the years, France has become a major player in Europe’s eLearning industry. Nonetheless, the French eLearning market is still lagging behind when compared with its European neighbors. According to a recent study by AFINEF (French association for Industrialists in the Digital Education and Training), conducted with 200 companies, 9 out of 10 companies in France are using eLearning solutions. Of these, 60% were founded in the last 3 years. In 2013, the market was estimated at 200 million euros, which represents only 2% of the global market size. These numbers show that we might be behind compared to the US market; however, the French eLearning market is catching up.
7 Reasons Behind The eLearning’s Success In France
- Companies noticed that eLearning training can reduce costs significantly.
- eLearning can increase the quality and the efficiency of training.
- Training content can be broadcasted widely to a large amount of people at the same time.
- The costs can be stable over the years, which can improve financial forecasting.
- There is ability to update and adapt the training content as often as needed.
- Needs, as well as markets, can be unpredictable; eLearning solutions are very flexible and can be customized quickly.
- Last but not least, digital natives and global digitalization removed all concerns about online training.
3 Reasons For eLearning’s Late Success In France
- Minimum training investment is guaranteed by law, but for years eLearning could not be allocated to this mandatory budget.
- Custom eLearning’s high cost has limited this kind of initiative to the largest organizations.
- Employers are often responsible for providing the necessary training and feared that eLearning was experienced as a “low cost training”.
Conclusion
Last year, the top 4 skills taught through online training were technical training, IT, foreign languages, and marketing. In 2020, marketing will still be one of the most popular trainings, but personal efficiency/communication skills, and finance/logistics will be popular too.
French companies’ favorite tools are customized courses, online surveys, virtual courses, serious games, social networks for work, and mobile learning.
As a conclusion, I would say that the French eLearning market is one of the most dynamic European markets when looking at the high number of eLearning companies and service providers in France. Digital training is now mainly viewed as a win-win solution for employers and employees, which suggests that the French market will continue to grow in the next few years.
By Yann Lescurat