http://www.drmdev.net/scorm/ – Different people adopt SCORM for different reasons. The beauty of a de facto standard however is that all of those reasons are in the adopter’s self-interest; people adopt SCORM because it saves them time or makes them money. SCORM has many benefits, some of which are misunderstood and others which aren’t heralded enough.

Market Benefits Stemming From Interoperability

The primary benefit of SCORM is interoperability. If you produce e-learning content, invariably one (or more likely many) of your clients will ask you to integrate that content into an LMS. Similarly, if you produce an LMS it is certain that your clients will want to import content from a number of different sources into that LMS. SCORM allows this integration to happen seamlessly and simply. Without SCORM, integrating with other vendors is a time-consuming and costly process. SCORM will make your organization more efficient and reduce your support burden.

SCORM is the de facto industry standard for interoperability. If you ever hope to integrate e-learning content with an LMS, it will simply be expected that you are SCORM conformant. SCORM conformance is a prerequisite to selling products in the e-learning space.

SCORM conformance is also required for many RFPs. It is difficult to sell enterprise software within being able to check all the boxes on an RFP. Virtually all procurements for e-learning content and LMSs require that the submitted proposals include SCORM conformant products.

Increasing the number of outlets you have for your product dramatically increases your sales potential. E-learning content that can only play in one place can only be sold to a very limited audience. Similarly, LMSs that can only play content designed for that LMS don’t have much appeal. Content that can be played anywhere and LMSs that can deliver any content are far more useful and have dramatically more appeal to customers. There is a huge ecosystem of e-learning products that all work together because of SCORM. Joining this marketplace significantly increases your market potential.