# Decide whether to buy off-the-shelf training or build custom

Compares off-the-shelf courses, a vendor-customized option, and in-house development on fit, cost, speed, and maintenance.

- Topic: Thinking & Decisions
- Framework: RTF
- Level: Standard
- Tags: Analyze, Fill-in Template
- Source: https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/prompts/decide-whether-to-buy-off-the-shelf-training-or-build-custom

## Prompt

```text
Help me decide whether to buy off-the-shelf training, customize vendor content, or build it in-house.

**Learning need and objectives:** [DETAILS]
**Learners:** [NUMBER, ROLES, LOCATIONS, LANGUAGES]
**How specific to our company is the content?** [e.g. "generic time management" vs. "our proprietary sales process"]
**Options I am considering:** [VENDOR NAMES, LIBRARIES, OR INTERNAL TEAM]
**Budget and deadline:** [DETAILS]
**Internal capacity:** [designers, developers, SMEs, authoring tools]
**How often the content will change:** [DETAILS]

Evaluate each option on:
- Fit to our objectives, context, terminology, and examples
- Total cost over 3 years (licenses per seat, development hours, SME time, maintenance, translation)
- Time to launch
- Quality of instructional design (practice and application, not just video and quiz)
- LMS compatibility (SCORM/xAPI), accessibility, data and reporting
- Ownership and the ability to edit content
- Vendor risk: contract terms, lock-in, renewal pricing

Return:
1. A weighted decision matrix with my criteria (suggest weights, which I can change).
2. A recommendation with the reasoning and the conditions under which it would change.
3. Questions to ask each vendor in a demo.
4. Red flags to look for in vendor content samples.

Use only prices and facts I provide; mark unknowns [GET QUOTE] or [CONFIRM].
```

## What to fill in

- DETAILS
- NUMBER, ROLES, LOCATIONS, LANGUAGES
- VENDOR NAMES, LIBRARIES, OR INTERNAL TEAM
- designers, developers, SMEs, authoring tools
- GET QUOTE
- CONFIRM

Free to copy and use. From ThinkWithPrompt (https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/), a library of 2,663 curated AI prompts.