THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE L&D SECTOR: WHAT IT MEANS FOR CLOS
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Imagine you are a Chief Learning Officer planning next year’s roadmap. You wake up to news that the supplier you love has been bought, and another has merged with a rival. Which contracts are safe, which platforms will change, and what does this mean for your people? As Will Storr explains, great stories put us at the heart of a change we cannot ignore, with rising stakes and clear choices. Treat what is happening in our vendor market as that story: your organisation is the hero, the plot twist is consolidation, and your choices now decide the ending.
Why consolidation is the L&D story of the moment
Two signals stand out.
Kallidus has been buying to broaden its suite. It added Engage in Learning in 2020, then Sapling HR in 2021 to move beyond learning into HR and onboarding. Together that creates a fuller employee‑lifecycle platform.
Learning Technologies Group (LTG) has both acquired and been acquired. LTG bought GP Strategies in 2021, then in 2025 itself was taken private by General Atlantic, delisting from London’s AIM market. That is big money flowing into enterprise learning and services.
Rankings also echo this pattern. LTG, via GP Strategies, was named a Strategic Leader again in the 2024 and 2025 Fosway 9‑Grid for Digital Learning, showing how scale and portfolio breadth are being rewarded in buyer shortlists.
The macro picture matters too. The UK’s Employer Skills Survey 2024 confirms skills gaps and training remain front‑of‑mind for employers, while ONS publishes fresh quarterly figures on job‑related training participation. Demand is there, but spend is under pressure.
And budgets are tight. Independent analysis by the New Economics Foundation found UK employers now spend about a fifth less on training than a decade ago, drawing on official data. When money tightens, buyers prefer fewer, larger vendors who promise end‑to‑end value.
What this means for CLOs and Heads of L&D
More one‑stop shops, fewer niche tools. Suites promise lower integration effort, but you risk lock‑in and slower innovation in specialist areas.
Contract terms will matter more than brand names. M&A can reset prices, support levels, and roadmaps. Protect yourself contractually.
Data portability is mission critical. You need friction‑free exports and open standards so you can move content and records if ownership or direction changes.
Service capacity may dip during integration. Even the best firms need time to harmonise teams and platforms. Build contingencies into rollouts.
Your ecosystem will polarise. A pragmatic blend of a primary suite plus a few high‑impact specialists often beats both extremes.
The Consolidation of the L&D Sector: What It Means for CLOs
Think in three horizons: stability, adaptability, and advantage.
Stability: avoid single points of failure. Do not have all learning content, data, and analytics tied to one vendor stack.
Adaptability: design for swap‑ability. Standardise SSO, HRIS feeds, and data models so you can change components with minimal rework.
Advantage: use scale where it counts, then add specialist tools for the moments that drive performance.
How to Choose Vendors in a Consolidating Market
1) Map your ecosystem by outcomes, not tools
List your critical outcomes, for example: faster onboarding, safer operations, better leadership habits, higher quota attainment. Then map which capabilities serve each outcome:
Platforms: LMS/LXP, skills clouds, LRS, content hubs
Content: Custom eLearning Content, Animated Learning Videos, Filmed Training Videos, Microlearning Development
Services: Strategic Learning Consultancy, Training Needs Analysis, Learning Impact Evaluation, Leadership Development Programs
This keeps learning and development solutions aligned to business value, not just features, and strengthens your corporate training solutions case with the C‑suite.
2) Run a vendor Health & Risk Scorecard
Score each shortlisted supplier 1–5 on:
Financial viability: revenue scale, ownership, recent M&A, and transparency of funding
Roadmap clarity: 18–24 month plans, deprecation policies, customer councils
Openness: SCORM 1.2/2004, xAPI or cmi5 support, bulk export of user and course data, documented APIs
Data & security: ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR terms, data residency choices
Service quality: named CSMs, SLAs, implementation capacity during M&A
Consolidation risk: concentration of your stack with one group, competitive overlap from recent buys
Set thresholds: anything averaging under 3 needs mitigation, anything under 2 should be de‑risked or replaced.
3) Strengthen contracts before you sign
Add practical protections that cost little now and save a lot later:
M&A clause: if ownership changes, you can exit without penalty, retain discounts for a set period, and trigger enhanced support for cutover.
Roadmap and notice: minimum 12 months’ notice for feature retirement with an equivalent alternative or exit help.
Data exit: commitment to full exports in open formats, including assessment data and completions, plus 60–90 days of read‑only access after expiry.
Service continuity: escrow for critical IP, or step‑in rights for bespoke builds.
4) Prove impact early and often
Run short, instrumented pilots with learning impact evaluation baked in. Agree a 90‑day scorecard: adoption, time‑to‑competence, error or incident rates, and business KPIs such as sales cycle time or compliance pass rates. Use control groups where you can. This makes selection defendable and aids renewal decisions when the market shifts again.
5) Design a future‑proof architecture
Create a hub‑and‑spoke model:
Hub: your identity, data lake, and HRIS integration
Spokes: replaceable tools for content, practice, coaching, curation, and analytics
Rules: every spoke must authenticate via SSO, push xAPI events, and allow nightly data exports
This lets you blend interactive eLearning and other digital learning solutions today, while keeping optionality for tomorrow.
90‑day action plan for L&D leaders
Weeks 1–2: Discovery
Inventory contracts, renewal dates, and data flows.
Identify any single‑vendor dependencies that would stop your programme if the supplier changed hands.
Weeks 3–6: Options
Shortlist two suite vendors and two specialists per critical outcome.
Complete the Health & Risk Scorecard and run reference calls with three customers per vendor.
Weeks 7–10: Prove it
Launch two time‑boxed pilots tied to one business KPI each.
Agree decision gates and a cutover plan that protects live programmes.
Weeks 11–12: Decide and lock value
Negotiate M&A, roadmap and data‑exit clauses.
Set up quarterly value reviews tied to executive metrics.
Real‑world signals to watch
Kallidus buying to extend from learning into HR and onboarding is a clear example of suite‑building across the employee lifecycle.
LTG buying GP Strategies in 2021 created one of the largest global service footprints in our space, then LTG’s own take‑private completed on 31 March 2025. Expect portfolio rationalisation and product alignment to follow in waves.
Fosway 9‑Grid placements remain a useful temperature check, but they are not a substitute for your own risk and impact tests.
Official UK data continues to show strong interest in training amid tight budgets, so vendor consolidation is unlikely to slow. Track the Employer Skills Survey releases and ONS training participation data each quarter.
Budget reality: UK employers are investing around 20% less in training than a decade ago, so your business case must link learning to productivity and retention.
Where Popcorn fits
If you need a neutral partner to help with training needs analysis, learning strategy consulting, instructional design services, custom elearning content, blended learning solutions, LMS integration, or impact analysis, Popcorn can help you design the roadmap, run the pilots, and prove the value. Our proposal materials outline our in‑house capability across consultancy, design, animated and filmed content, course development, localisation, and evaluation, with accessible QA and WCAG standards as default.
Our approach follows the simple story science above: put the learner and the business at the centre, define the change you want to see, then measure it.
The Consolidation of the L&D Sector: What It Means for CLOs
If you remember one thing, make it this: design your ecosystem so you can change your mind. Consolidation can work in your favour if you buy for outcomes, protect your data, and keep your options open.
Want a short, pragmatic conversation about your vendor map or an RFP you are running? Here is a compact RFP question set to lift into your process:
What is your current ownership and have you been involved in M&A in the last 24 months, or do you expect to be in the next 12?
Which standards do you support for content, data and SSO, and how do you enable bulk export?
What functionality is at risk of deprecation in the next 12 months, and what is your policy for like‑for‑like alternatives?
What is your average implementation capacity per quarter, and your post‑acquisition change‑freeze policy?
Which customer metrics will you commit to move in our first 90 days, and how will we measure them together?
