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As the business case for CFP Board creating and offering their own develops, there are several

factors which need to be identified and addressed for the scope of the business proposal to make

sense. These factors include but are not limited to:

- Target Audience

- Competition

- Content Development

- Audience Needs/Wants

- Learning and Development Professionals

- Development/Purchasing access to a learning management system (LMS)

The best way to divide up these factors is into two separate categories, the first being factors

which CFP Board currently has control of and factors which CFP Board is missing in order to

offer education. Factors which CFP Board has control of include target audience, audience

needs/wants, competition, and content development. The only factors which CFP Board does not

have in order to offer their own training are access to a learning management system and internal

learning and development professionals to run the course administration and review content. The

main factor which will be focused on in this paper is finding learning management systems

which will work for CFP Board, then provide a recommendation on which LMS to go with.

Factors CFP Board Controls

Target Audience, Audience Needs and Competition

CFP Board is in a unique position where their audience is almost 90,000 CFP®

professionals, and they are all required to take a CFP Board approved ethics course every two

years in order to maintain their certification [ CITATION CFP214 \l 1033 ]. Because of this,

CFP Board has roughly a 45,000 person per year captive audience who must take an ethics
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course to keep their certification. Even if CFP Board charges $20 for the course, and only 10,000

professionals take it in a year, CFP Board has the potential to earn $200,000 annual on the low

end, which could potentially cover costs for the LMS and a learning and development

professional. On the high end, CFP Board could include a $20 fee into each CFP® professional’s

annual certification fee and give them free access to the CFP Board ethics course. On the

absolute high end, CFP Board could earn $1.8 million per year if they choose to go the latter

route.

Going along with the target audience, the competition for CFP Board to offer ethics

would be the other roughly 40 sponsors who offer CFP Board approved ethics, both

synchronously and asynchronously in online and in-person settings. The competition, however,

is required to use the exact same materials because CFP Board creates all the content and

distributes it out to approved ethics providers [ CITATION Eth19 \l 1033 ]. Likewise, if CFP

Board chose to include the cost of the course into the CFP® professional’s annual fee, then there

would be no money lost to competition as the fee would be included in a required fee for the

CFP® professional to maintain their certification.

Content Development and Audience Needs

Another significant factor in the success of CFP Board offering online learning is create

content that meets the requirements of the CFP Board ethics course and meets a need for the

audience. Fortunately, CFP Board covers both of these bases within CFP Board’s own policies.

For content development, CFP Board creates all content for the ethics program already. This

content includes a PowerPoint presentation, activity guide, recommendations for putting the

course into an online LMS, exam questions, answer guide and explanations for why those

answers are correct[ CITATION Eth19 \l 1033 ]. Everything ethics sponsors use during the
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course, outside of approved activities and the learning management system of their choice, is

already created by CFP Board so content development is not an issue for CFP Board.

For audience needs, CFP Board requires CFP® professionals take a CFP Board approved

ethics course. With this requirement, an approved ethics course is near the top of all CFP®

professional’s education needs, as they cannot renew their certification until they meet their

education requirements [ CITATION CFP214 \l 1033 ]. Because of this, it changes from being

an audience need to a requirement to be a part of the audience and creates a captive market

which CFP Board can take advantage and enhances the overall business case.

Factors CFP Board is Missing

Learning and Development Professional(s)

With any e-learning program, there need to be professionals to run the show and make

sure the learning process runs smoothly. While specifics of staffing needs will not be discussed

within this paper, it is worth noting different types of roles that may be required to run CFP

Board’s learning and development program. At the top there would be a learning and

development professional who would oversee content development and reviewing of content to

make sure it is all up to date and correct. Likewise, this person could also be responsible for

running the day-to-day operations of the learning and development system to answer questions

on CFP Board’s end. Another administrator could be necessary, depending on how much support

the learning management system provides and how responsive the provider is to requests of both

CFP Board and its stakeholders.

Learning Management Systems

Gaining access to an LMS is critical for the success of CFP Board’s e-learning program.

Having already created the content and an audience which is required to complete an ethics
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course to keep their certification, the last step for CFP Board to offer training is to get an LMS to

put the content on. With this in mind, there are several different options which CFP Board can go

for a learning management system. The next sections below will detail several different learning

management systems which CFP Board can use to offer their education through.