Hi,
I am currently looking for concrete examples with figures that show how upgrading from moodle 1.9 to 2.x (any version of moodle 2) has helped increase revenue (directly or indirectly). I would be grateful if you could share some stories of how this has helped generate revenue?
Thank you in advance
Vijay
How would painting the walls of your office; or fixing a dripping tap in the toilets; or repairing a broken lock on the office window, increase your revenue?
The third example there is, of course, the easiest one to justify, but is your office nice and smart, or a dump?
I suspect that measured in short term "profit" an upgrade would probably have a negative impact. You would have the cost of the switch over and testing and you might even need to invest in more powerful hardware. But if used well it might (and I stress might), increase the quality of education in the long term thus resulting in an improved reputation and possibly an increase in revenue/profit. Perhaps.
Any organization that does not reinvest in its capital equipment is doomed to failure. This is axiomatic in business and if your product is education and training, then you need to reinvest every so often in the latest models of your tools.
If you do not believe this, then I seriously suggest you look at the story of railways, concentrating on the 1930s, '40s, '50s and '60s. Who would have though in 1945 railways would have been brought down so low, so easily. From kings to paupers in 20 years. The lessons are clear, if you choose to look.
No, sorry, Visvanath, but I think I have made my point badly so the fault lies with me. It is about business definition. What sort of organisation were the railways? Transport, obviously. Goods and people, obviously. After 1945, they faced competition from the long range aircraft that could traverse a continent in a few hours as opposed to a railway which would take days. Jet aircraft in the 1950s cut that journey time even further, reducing costs along the way, reducing fares, (and the driver of that change, Juan Trippe, made a fortune out of it). The railways could have taken control of the transport industry by investing in aircraft, in the 1940s and '50s but they did not. They lost out to aircraft and nearly collapsed in the '60s because they defined themselves as "railways" not "transport". However, and here is my point, they did not provide their customer base with what they wanted, they did not move with their customers.
Now, does this organization Vijay belongs to generate an income stream? For how many people? Does it provide a service? What kind of service? Is the service they provide what their customers want? Is their current service adequate for their customer needs? I would suggest these are the kinds of questions that need be considered before ROI. I would also suggest that as other, similar, organisations offer better services, with improved tools, then Vijay's organization may find it has a shrinking customer base.
If there is an issue with the hardware, and newer versions of Moodle will, like all software, run better on newer hardware, replace the hardware, Do they need the latest and shiniest, no certainly not, I think two or three steps off the latest is a much better bet. I would also suggest that a regular upgrade schedule is essential business practice, even if it is an annual event, upgrades have to occur. Those upgrades can be the two or three steps back versions, at the time of upgrade, by the time of the next upgrade, it is likely to be 7 or more steps off the pace. Planning for improvement always generates a positive ROI.
No need to apologize, like Aesop, I prefer analogy to discuss ideas sometimes, only I get a little obscure and connections are not always clear. My students get annoyed with me from time to time for this as well...
Yes, but.
Never forget Colin that there are also students who LIKE divergence, and get irritated when it's all boring, linear and obvious.
Quite right Derek, but in my experience some students really get irritated if you force them to think. The OCD and Asperger kids, they run with anything that can hold their attention, which makes a really divergent teacher like me seriously happy... But now we are getting off topic...
Hi Colin,
Thank you for your questions. Here are my answers which I hope will give me the details, I am after:
1) The moodle site that I am running operates in an ecommerce environment (like an online training provider) - generate income stream by providing online learning to customers. So the revenue we are talking about here is refers to the number of courses and packages sold on the moodle 1.9 version. Its totally money driven business and for the customers.
2) The stories I am after; are from those organisations on similar areas who use moodle as a income generating tool (doesn't matter what you are selling on the site). I am sure there are 100s of organisation selling stuff on moodle and had gone through the phase of upgrading the platform - so had to prove that it is worth the jump --- I am after the number - figures that show that the revenue has increased because of the upgrade.
3) The current moodle version does not support the features that ideally we are interested in: cohorts, webservices, conditional activities and pretty much most of the new stuff included in moodle 2.x (doesn't matter which sub class of moodle 2)
Let me know if you need more details.
Vijay
Hi Vijay, ummm my own history is that I have worked for national and local training organizations, both profit and not-for-profit. I currently work in a low socio-economic district high school. I have had roles of business manager, proprietor, lecturer, trainer-project supervisor, project manager, and now teacher - with periods of rest and recuperation, retraining in between some of them. I tell you this because I want you to understand that there is a lot of experience outside Moodle and in business management here.
Upgrading will not, of its own, improve revenues - to try and link such events is, I suggest, a wasted effort. You seem to be assuming that your clientele is fully aware of your organization and your services. You assume they will be impressed by the additional services that your company will provide if you upgrade. You seem to want to think that more clients will come to you as a result of the upgrade. I suspect these are not realistic assumptions. What attracts clientele is a range of services they may need.
You identify improvements to Moodle, you clearly understand the implications of those improvements to your services, and your potential income, but the reality is, either you will upgrade or not. Much of your potential clientele is only interested in "does this company provide me with the services I want?" A lot will add the idea "Is it affordable?" It is really up to your clients to determine for themselves that what you are charging provides sufficient ROI for them, not you. Your main concern has to be, first and foremost, "am I providing the services my clientele wants?" If you are using v1.9, I suggest you are not doing that to the best of your potential and your organization will be overtaken sooner or later by someone who does offer these services.
It is also obvious that what other organizations have found by upgrading cannot apply to you. No mater what numbers you may be provided with are largely irrelevant - they are not likely to fit your particular economic niche. I also suspect that the number of organizations willing to provide that sort of data is going to be extremely minimal. Having said that, I have heard that 85% of all statistics are made up anyway.
Good luck with convincing people at your organization that standing still on anything related to IT is the anathema to good business practice.
I don't think it's a meaningful question.
If you are happy and it works for you then leave it alone. If it aint broke don't fix it, so to speak.
However, what WILL catch up with you is that 1.9 will eventually (if not now) be long-since unsupported and a distant memory for most users. That will leave you out on your own. If something goes wrong you will be in trouble with no chance of getting bugs fixed and little chance of support.
Hi Howard, mmmm I have to disagree with this.."If it ain't broke don't fix it, so to speak." Because something is working it does not mean it will always work. In most cases where I have heard this sentiment expressed, it has led to even more disasterous consequences and in one case, the collapse of the organisation - ok a bit extreme, but it happened. It does not have to be broke, but remediated to improve services.
Another thought occurs here as well. One of the first things I learned in one job, from the guy I was taking over from, with software, always plan your upgrades. We know there will always be upgrades, even if we do not know when the upgrade is going to happen. Prepare for them, so that when the decision is taken to do an upgrade, your prep work is already completed, makes you look like a genius. With something like Moodle, as the update schedule is so clear, this is a very easy proposition. Do regular backups, convert what needs to be converted, which may be extremely problematic now for Vijay, if the converters are no longer available.
I would seriously suggest that in this case, a later version be prepared and populated with courses. That backups be converted to suit the new environment. The work is done so when the decision is made to go, as it inevitably must, the hard work is done, all tests are done and the new Moodle can be available in a short space of time. One of the beauties of Moodle is that you can run different versions without a lot of angst so this can be done on the quiet and HDD space is cheap.
Hi Colin,
Did you read the second part of my answer?
Maybe I should be more explicit. If you don't touch anything and your hardware never breaks down and you don't ever want to upgrade the OS and there are never any security issues...... then sure, stick with 1.9. What could possibly go wrong?
Yes, Howard, but it didn't register..duh This time of year my Aspbergers really comes out and I don't always get it.. well, that's my story and we're sticking to it...
Hello Visvanath,
As I was reading through this thread, the XP comparison occurred to me, too. Before Vista, there were many problems and complaints, but then the various service packs came out and XP seemed all of a sudden lightweight and reliable. The 1.9 and XP comparison seems justified in some respects.
With Labodanglais.com, we have a customized 1.9.19 "commercial" site that we are very happy with, especially in combination with the excellent Quizport and Peer Review add-ons. In short, we have built our products around these add-ons because of the pedagogy that they have made possible. Until they are both available and mature enough to be offered to the teachers who use our materials without fear of problems, we must stick with 1.9.
I saw a comment above that compared 1.9 to an office that needs painting and is a dump. Far from it! Moodle 1.9 is less daunting to teachers who are new to LMSs than the 2.x line. Perhaps the developers of future versions will look back to the usability of 1.9 and recognize the needs of new users who panic at the sight of increasingly complex and cluttered online forms. They are our customers, and Moodle can be a hard sell when the learning curve starts to look too steep.
We want to move to 2.6, but we can't quite yet. In some respects, the newer versions have not gained so much as they have lost. I expect 2.9 to be the success that 1.9 has been. Until then, we will probably have to wait.
Best wishes,
Nick
All points above are good points indeed, although I could really use some examples from the industry experts who run elearning business to comment on this discussion, hopefully they have some stats to share with us.
Vijay
I am not allowed to disclose much of the business but I can say that it depends on customers. Those who are used to something and don't like changes and run their successful business in Moodle 1.x prefer to stay where they are. But part of a previous role I had to upgrade to 2.x because the customers wanted certain functionalities that were not available in 1.x and for them that was the difference between being customers or leaving. The critical part is where the customer is at the moment and what are their expectations in the future. If one wants to expand and improve on design and functionality the obvious choice is to upgrade. For example using some amazing themes like Essential or Genesis allow a much more professional look, something that looks like a modern website with ease of use (drag and drop, etc.) and improved plugins for inter-systems operability. But on the other hand there are small things that I miss from 1.x which I was disappointed they were deprecated.
For your own business it is best to do have a consultation with your customers and collect data about their current work, what works and what doesn't work, what they want to see improved and their plans for scalability, moving forward. That should give you a very clear picture whether it will be profitable for you to upgrade or not.
Thank you Marius, my point exactly...
