The hidden cost of learning content chaos

When L&D teams in enterprise organisations talk about improving learning, the focus usually goes straight to content creation.

How do we create more content?

How do we create it faster?

How do we use AI to help?

Those are fair questions. But they are not always the right ones.

In many organisations, the biggest challenge is not creating learning content. It is managing it. Keeping it current. Updating it quickly. Reusing it properly. Making sure people are working from the right version.

That is where learning value is often won or lost.

The importance of effective planning

A learning content development project, no matter how exciting, without a strategic plan can end in chaos. Not every organisation takes a methodical approach to project planning – there are some essential considerations before content development starts:

Business drivers – understand the business drivers. This could be a new IT system or a change in compliance, irrespective of the type of content, a business plan of some sort will have been presented to secure budget.

The learners – understand the learners’ needs, including how they learnt previously, and was it considered successful. How are they going to consume it, what are their accessibility needs? Information such as the user roles, the over-arching processes and supporting documentation, media and assets should be reviewed.
Together, the business drivers and learners’ needs provide the framework for the learning objectives.

Scope considerations – the development scope is based on the insights above. Content Designers should take a holistic view of the proposed scope to confirm that it meets the learning objectives. Apply instructional design principles by focusing on what learners need to do and whether any background information is required to complete the task. Use the Scope to create a development work plan which details the agreed development methodology and timelines. Consider how best to ensure the content is consistent in both language and terminology, through to page design and layout.

Reporting – continuallyalign actual development to the work plan and identify bottlenecks.

The challenges of AI in content development

AI can absolutely help teams increase the pace of content development. It can support creation, tagging, repurposing, and updates. But it cannot fix poor governance, unclear ownership, or disconnected systems. If there is no planning or structure, AI can simply help bad content spread faster.

AI should be intentional and empower great work while keeping human judgment at the center. Most authoring tools now offer AI but content development teams who get adoption right treat AI as an accelerant, not a fix – it still requires a controlled human approach,maintaining the human expertise and judgement needed to use it responsibly.

A connected learning environment

Choosing a Learning Content Management System (LCMS), rather than an authoring tool, supports the entire content creation, content management, reporting, governance, and publishing lifecycle.

The real opportunity is not just to create more learning content. It is to create an environment where content can be planned effectively, governed, maintained, delivered, tracked, and improved without unnecessary time and cost.

Addressing the wider issue

Inadequate learning content is not just an L&D issue – it is a business issue!

When content is out of date, performance suffers. When teams are duplicating work or chasing the latest version, time and budget are wasted. When updates are slow, the business becomes less agile. And when inaccurate content stays in circulation, risk goes up.

Organisations that improve learning content management are not just making life easier for L&D teams. They are improving agility, consistency, performance, and confidence across the business. They are making it easier to maintain quality, respond to change, support employees effectively, and get more long-term value from the content they create.

The importance of utilising a professional LCMS cannot be overstated. Combining a feature rich LCMS with proven project management best practices will ensure that content development is both streamlined and fully supported.

Three questions L&D leaders should be asking

How much of our active training content is outdated or duplicated?

Are our systems built for content creation only, or for full lifecycle management?

Will AI improve our learning operation, or just speed up existing chaos?

The organisations that answer these questions well will be in a much stronger position to create learning that stays useful, relevant, and ready for change.

About the Authors:

Janice Brown and Rebecca Clark are Directors of Larmer Brown, a Learning & Development Consultancy established in 2000. Larmer Brown has been helping clients plan and deliver digital learning strategies for decades. This experience has provided the basis for a tried and tested framework which is incorporated not only in the projects delivered, but in training workshops for client teams enabling them to successfully plan and deliver their own projects.

The importance of supporting any L&D project with the right tool is crucial. Larmer Brown is agnostic in terms of content development, however they resell, host and provide services for dominKnow | ONE, a powerful LCMS, in the UK, Europe and the Middle East.

Larmer Brown are exhibiting at the World of Learning 2026 on 6 & 7 October. Find them at Stand C20.

Larmer Brown client use cases:

HMRC – Larmer Brown implemented the dominKnow | ONE learning content management system as a UK OFF-SEN hosted solution in 2017. Services include supporting the HMRC Authors to create and manage learning content at scale. Shared assets, reuse, collaboration, and review supported a more sustainable content operation over time.

HeyCentric – dominKnow | ONE formed part of a wider digital learning strategy alongside the Larmer LRS. The result was a more scalable self-serve support model that reduced dependence on consultants for repetitive training and made learning content more useful.