The situation
The institute held a substantial portfolio of regulated CPD content — module-by-module learning material used by members to maintain their professional standing with the institute's regulator. The content was technically sound, the editorial work was solid, and the curriculum had been built up over many years. What had aged was the authoring environment around it: a legacy platform that had become difficult to maintain, slow to update, and structurally incompatible with modern accessibility requirements.
The institute's Learning Solutions team had a clear mandate from above. Migrate the existing content to a modern authoring environment — Articulate Rise had been selected as the destination — and deliver the migration with WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance built into every module from the outset. Editorial redesign was explicitly out of scope for this phase: the requirement was conversion, at fidelity, with accessibility raised to current standard. The deeper editorial work was a separate decision to be made later.
What the team needed before commissioning the work was something that's harder to procure than it sounds: a credible plan. Not a sales pitch with a number at the end of it. A plan they could take to their executive team, with the cost framed honestly, the dependencies named clearly, and the architecture of the engagement structured so the decision was defensible at any number along the way.
The diagnostic approach
The discovery and scoping phase ran for four weeks. The structure follows what every LearnFrame engagement does: diagnose first, scope against the diagnosis, quote against the scope. No part of that runs in parallel; doing them out of order is what produces the kind of engagement that drifts.
The diagnostic centred on a five-decision scoping framework applied to the institute's portfolio. For each module type, the framework asked five questions in sequence: what's the learning outcome a member should be able to demonstrate after completing this; what level of interactivity does that outcome require; what media richness earns its production cost; what accessibility and compliance standards apply; and who owns the content lifecycle once the engagement ends.
The institute provided a sample module they had already converted in-house — a "History and background" preview that demonstrated the visual fidelity, structural conventions, and interaction patterns they wanted to maintain across the wider portfolio. The sample set the standard. Everything in the quote that followed was anchored to it rather than to an assumption.
The framework, in summary
The output of the diagnostic phase was a written Decision Guide produced specifically for the institute — a six-section document that laid out the framework, the decisions inside it, and the institute's specific position against each decision. It included an honest assessment of where money is typically well spent in regulated CPD conversion (storyboard sign-off before development; knowledge checks at the right cadence; real scenarios from the institute's own world; accessibility built in from the start; source files in the institute's possession) and where it's typically wasted (cinematic intros and outros; custom characters when stock would do; voiceover on text the learner could read; gamification that isn't tied to motivation).
The framework is supplier-agnostic by design. The institute could have used it to commission the work with LearnFrame, with any other supplier, or to run the project internally. That was the point. A scoping engagement that only works if the institute commissions the next phase isn't a scoping engagement — it's a sales process with a written cover.
"A scoping engagement that only works if the institute commissions the next phase isn't a scoping engagement. It's a sales process with a written cover."
The architecture proposed
The recommended architecture had three components, structured to let the institute commit incrementally rather than to a single all-or-nothing decision.
The first was a seven-module trial. Seven modules at the institute's chosen standard, built to the sample's fidelity, with WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility implemented from the outset and delivered both as Rise source files and as a SCORM/xAPI package for the corporate-learning platform. The trial wasn't a pilot to test whether the work could be done — it was an investment in setting the conventions that the remaining ninety-plus modules would inherit. Theme alignment, accessibility infrastructure, production cadence, SME-liaison rhythm: all of these were established once during the trial and applied across the programme.
The second was the programme rate that would apply across the remaining modules. The per-module rate dropped meaningfully at programme volume, because the trial-phase setup costs amortised across the larger build. The institute could see the volume-discount logic transparently — what was carried by the trial, what reduced at scale, why.
The third was a set of optional higher-production tiers, scoped separately and priced on request. Talking-head video. AI-presenter avatars. Custom illustration and animation. Voiceover narration. Each tier included its initial production cost and the cost of updating it when the underlying content changed — a consideration most quotes leave out and that matters disproportionately for regulated content, which updates more often than buyers anticipate. A new Act, an updated regulation, an amended definition: text-and-image content can absorb that change in thirty to sixty minutes per module. Audio and video content cannot.
The numbers
The trial price was €8,400 across seven modules. The indicative programme price across one hundred modules was €97,500. The per-module rate at programme volume was €975 — meaningfully below the trial-phase rate of €1,200 per module, with the difference traceable to the setup costs amortising across the larger build.
Higher-production tiers, if elected for specific modules, ranged from €600–€900 per module for custom graphic design through to €2,400–€4,200 per module for filmed talking-head video. The quote made clear what each tier cost initially and what it would cost again every time the content changed. The intent was to give the institute the information needed to choose deliberately, not to default to higher production because suppliers tend to suggest it.
What the institute received at the end of scoping
- A written diagnosisThe institute's current position, the target state, and an honest assessment of the work between the two. Not a sales document. A document the executive team could read and act on, regardless of which supplier they chose to commission.
- A scoped quoteItemised against the sample's fidelity. Trial and programme rates side by side, with the volume-discount logic shown transparently. Each line traceable to a captured decision. UK B2B reverse-charge VAT framing clarified. Quote validity stated.
- An architectural recommendationTrial-first at one rate; programme rate applied across the volume that follows. Optional higher-production tiers scoped separately with both initial and lifecycle costs visible. The recommended approach was Level 2 — cleaner than lift-and-shift, with accessibility built in from the start, but stopping short of editorial redesign in this phase.
- The full Decision GuideA six-section framework the institute could use to evaluate any supplier — not just LearnFrame. Five decisions, an honest column on where money is typically well or badly spent, a scoping worksheet for the team to fill in internally, and a structure for the conversation with the executive team.
The shape of every LearnFrame engagement
This is the shape every LearnFrame engagement takes in its first four to six weeks. The diagnostic phase produces the written diagnosis, the architectural recommendation, the scoped quote, and the framework. The institute — or any other LearnFrame client — has, at the end of that phase, everything required to make an informed decision about the work that would follow.
What the institute decides next is the institute's call. If they decide to proceed with LearnFrame, the trial phase begins and the architecture above moves into delivery. If they decide to proceed with a different supplier, the framework still applies and the diagnostic still holds. If they decide not to proceed at all, the work to that point stands on its own — and the institute keeps the framework as a permanent asset for any future modernisation conversation. Discovery is not a loss-leader. It is the engagement's first deliverable.
That structure is deliberate. The alternative — open-ended retainers, ambiguous deliverables, work that drifts because the brief drifted — is the failure mode the discovery phase exists to prevent. The institute commissioning LearnFrame's discovery phase pays for the diagnostic and receives the diagnostic. What follows is a separate decision, made with the information in hand.
If your situation looks like this
If your institute, training body, or corporate academy is sitting with a comparable situation — a portfolio of content needing migration, modernisation, or rebuild; an authoring environment that has aged out; accessibility compliance that needs to be raised to current standard; a quote you can defend internally — the four-week scoping phase is the natural place to start. The shape of the work, at the end, looks like the engagement above.
The Programme Design Audit and the Programme Design Board Briefing are both available ungated on the resources page — they're shorter, lighter-weight versions of the framework described here, useful before you commission a paid engagement with anyone.