Employee Experience
We are surrounded by high-quality digital solutions in all aspects of our personal lives, and today’s workforce is coming to expect the same at work. Yet off-the-shelf solutions often provide a generic experience that doesn’t quite fit your company’s unique culture or needs – they might get you part of the way there, but fall short of your requirements.
Enter authoring tools. These platforms open up a world of custom HR solutions and training that can be built and managed in-house with relative ease. However, template limitations still exist – when you need something truly distinctive, bespoke development is the answer. These expert-led solutions separate you from the crowd and are perfectly tailored to your business and users.
The choice between authoring tools and bespoke development isn’t about which is better – it’s about which fits your particular needs. Here are two recent projects that demonstrate this principle in action.
A well-known consumer brand came to us with a problem: with AI adoption taking off across the business, they needed to make sure people were using it safely and responsibly. They couldn’t afford to wait around whilst people figured it out for themselves and potentially made brand-damaging mistakes. They’d also developed a new custom AI tool for their employees, making it an ideal time to educate people on AI whilst introducing the new tool.
They challenged us to create something that covered AI fundamentals, usage guidelines, and practical application, all whilst staying true to their distinctive brand. An authoring tool felt like the right tool for the job, enabling us to deliver a high-quality product quickly, and their team to easily manage updates down the line.
Working with Rise was refreshingly straightforward. We took all the content they had given us and created a content map which helped us break everything down and organise it into digestible chunks. We then matched each block of content to an appropriate Rise component, which let us plan out the whole structure before we started building.
Once we began building in Rise, the beauty of the tool became clear – our designers could build directly without any coding know-how, streamlining our process massively. We had weekly catch-ups with the client where they could see exactly what we were developing, and combined with Review 360’s commenting system, gathering feedback and making tweaks during the project became really productive.
We delivered something that looked professional and worked smoothly, and the numbers tell the story: 6.3 out of 7 satisfaction score, with 73% of learners saying they’d recommend it to colleagues. Only 8% weren’t impressed, which for corporate training is pretty remarkable. And when we handed it over, they were already comfortable with the platform.
There was virtually no learning curve with Rise – the tool was familiar and intuitive to use. However, we did encounter some limitations. For example, Rise’s scenario component proved quite restrictive as it forced us to use preset stock photos that didn’t suit the brand or audience, with no option to customise the format. We ended up building an interactive simulation in Storyline instead, which had its own limitations but gave us the creative freedom to design branching scenarios with multiple outcomes.
We also had to adapt some of our content to fit the available components rather than designing components around our content. The navigation was limited to a linear, one-module-at-a-time approach, which constrained our structural options. However, whilst these template limitations required some compromises, the trade-off between customisation constraints and development speed proved worthwhile for this project’s objectives.
This next project came with a completely different set of challenges. A major logistics company was struggling with their day-zero training for new warehouse recruits – training that had to be completed before people could even start the job. They were relying on long-winded, in-person sessions that had high drop-off rates, and expecting potential employees to attend multiple face-to-face sessions before receiving a job offer was becoming a logistical nightmare (pun intended).
Warehouse environments are busy, complex, and potentially dangerous, making proper training absolutely critical rather than just nice to have. They needed a solution that could replace those in-person sessions whilst actually boosting engagement and completion rates.
The content was inherently dry and extensive, and speaking to the client we quickly identified that engagement techniques such as custom gamification, visual progress tracking, and learning games built into the flow would be needed. On top of that, they also required a sophisticated assessment system where users had three attempts to pass. An authoring tool simply wouldn’t cut it here – this was a job for fully bespoke development.
Put simply, the custom approach enabled us to build exactly what the client needed. The gamification wasn’t an afterthought, rather badges, unlocks, and progress tracking were woven into the core experience. We created learning games from scratch that fitted perfectly with the content flow, and built custom quiz functionality that enforced the three-attempt rule for assessments. We also included some quality-of-life functionality, such as the system remembering exactly where users left off, crucial for potential employees who might need to complete training across multiple sessions before starting the job.
Most importantly, the solution solved their business problem. They can now deliver consistent, engaging training that users could complete at their own pace, removing the bottleneck of in-person sessions and dramatically improving completion rates.
Custom development meant longer timelines and more complex project management. We needed a more diverse skillset across the team (designers, developers, project managers, learning architects, copywriters, and testers all working together) creating more moving parts to coordinate compared to the streamlined authoring tool project.
The biggest challenge wasn’t the build itself, but content management. When changes were inevitably needed, updates had to be made in the code, a laborious process when compared to the quick tweaks we could make in Rise, since every amendment required developer time and careful testing. And ongoing maintenance became entirely dependent on us. Unlike an authoring tool where the client can make updates themselves, they were locked into our development cycle for any changes, creating both dependency and ongoing costs.
But the trade-off was worth it – they got a future-proofed solution that delivered exactly what templates couldn’t, and solved a genuine business problem that was costing them time and money.
So how do you decide which route to take? Revisiting these two projects, some clear patterns emerge.
Choose an authoring tool when you need professional results quickly, without assembling a full development team. If your learning content fits relatively standard formats and your team can get comfortable with the authoring environment, tools like Rise offer an excellent balance of speed and customisation. They’re particularly valuable when content will need regular updates – the ability for non-developers to make changes quickly is a genuine game-changer, as we saw with the consumer brand project.
Choose the bespoke approach when your business processes are genuinely unique and need interfaces designed specifically around them. If you’re looking to create something that feels fresh and distinctive, custom development is the way to go. It’s also the right choice when you need complex integrations, have dedicated development resources available, or when templated solutions won’t serve your specific learners effectively. Most importantly, choose custom when your specific requirements simply can’t be achieved within the constraints of existing templates.
So it boils down to this; does your solution need to be genuinely different, or just professionally executed? If it’s the latter, an authoring tool will likely serve you well. But if you need something that stands out from the crowd and serves unique business requirements that templates simply can’t handle, custom development is worth the investment.
These choices about authoring tools versus custom development reflect a broader shift happening across HR technology. The days of one-size-fits-all solutions are behind us, and we’re moving toward more nuanced approaches that recognise different challenges need different tools.
What’s exciting is seeing more organisations become comfortable with hybrid strategies – using authoring tools for some projects and bespoke solutions for others, rather than trying to force everything into a single approach.
If you’re facing a similar decision, don’t get caught up in the technology debate. Start with your business problem, understand your constraints, and be honest about your team’s capabilities. The right solution will become clearer once you’ve done that groundwork.
Because, once again, the choice isn’t about one approach being superior – it’s about matching the solution to your specific challenge, timeline, and resources.
Written by Rob Gardner