Traditional approaches to purchasing training appears to be taking a new angle in conjunction with the changing trends of training delivery. This is not about e-learning but about what is to be referred to as 'training exchanges' the on-line joining of corporate training buyers and vendors.

Many of those in search of their appropriate training provider are now moving to booking training through digital online exchanges. This has resulted in those responsible for locating appropriate training, whether it be material, resources, tutors, etc, often resulted in many hours carrying out the appropriate research to find the results they want.

Training exchanges are now bringing all these vendors to a central online market, allowing buyers easier access to a far wider choice of training solutions, be it off-the-shelf, courseware, trainers, etc. Most buyers have been overwhelmed with the greater number of choices that they now have available to them at one location thus hours of time saved by finding their solution on one site.

You would think that the idea of bringing buyers and sellers together online for 24 hours a day, seven days a week would be fairly straight forward, however, there are technical issues involved and then non-technical issues that exchanges have to consider and that there still is a certain amount of human interaction required to make a site really successful.

Exchanges do cost a lot of money to maintain, even though the idea is a good one. A Consultant stated that the future of such exchanges can be enhanced through e-learning as this will help the acceptance of the training model, as by not being instructor and classroom bound, there are no geographic restrictions.

For further examples of training exchanges visit Thinq, KnowledgePlanet and Trainseek who have made progress towards digitalising education services.