EdTech: An industry that scaled by 200% ARR with Remote teams

Introduction

The education industry combining itself with technology is doing wonders in some unexpected ways. With every new technological advancement the education industry is putting all the right foots. But everything that shines is not always gold. For any industry that aims to scale in this highly competitive market needs to stay ahead from a technological aspect.

Some Edtech businesses are in need to develop a custom software that helps them meet their needs, but finding the right IT professionals has become a challenging task especially when organizations are seen building remote teams to meet the skill scarcity gaps.

In this article we’ll cover what are some skill gaps present within the EdTech industry, its impact on business growth and how you can minimize the gaps.

Before, going into the details let us begin by understanding the EdTech industry from a global viewpoint.

EdTech Industry: A Viewpoint from Global Perspective

The education technology, i.e. EdTech industry has become one of the important sectors contributing towards the growth of the global economy. The global education technology market is projected to develop at a compound annual rate from 2024 to 2030, . growth rate (CAGR) of 13.4%.

In 2023, the market reached a valuation of USD 142.37 billion, according to analysts. This is not the end, we’ve a few more statistics to talk about that shows why the EdTech industry is a great success.

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1. Industry Size and Projections: The worldwide EdTech industry is predicted to surpass $285 billion by 2027 due to increasing investment in and use of technology-based learning solutions.
2. Dominance of Segment: In the EdTech space, the K–12 and higher education sectors are the biggest, with substantial investments going into online learning environments, digital textbooks, and learning management systems.

But what fuels this growth? Let’s see in the below section

1. Growing Internet Adoption and Device Access: With over half of the global population now connected to the internet, there is a growing trend toward digital learning environments. More people have access to cellphones and more affordable internet services, which is helping this trend, especially in poorer nations.
2. Need for Personalized Learning: EdTech platforms can meet the growing need for personalized learning experiences by utilizing data analytics and adaptive learning technology to cater to individual learning styles and speeds.
3. Government and Institutional Support: To enhance their educational infrastructures and results, several governments throughout the world are providing support for digital education, which is hastening the implementation of EdTech solutions.

Now, further let us understand what are the skill scarcity gaps present in the EdTech industry

What are the skill scarcity gaps present in the EdTech industry?

1. Technical Expertise: As our own EdTech increasingly depends on a sophisticated algorithm and data analytics, there arises a need for professionals having skills in AI, machine learning and big data analysis which are found in very few IT professionals on a whole.
2. Instructional Design: As interest in traditional education shifts to digital methods, there is a great demand for skilled people who can create interactive, high-quality digital courses.
3. Regulatory expertise: With the global adoption of digital learning, practitioners from a variety of nations who possess in-depth regulatory expertise will be more crucial in resolving compliance-related issues pertaining to student data protection and online learning standards.
4. Customer Support and Interaction: Solving technical problems for students and interacting with them online require a careful balancing act between technical and customer service skills.

Now, let's understand the problems that the EdTech industry faces.

What are a few problems faced by the EdTech Industry?

General Problems

1. Dealing with Rapid Technological Changes: New technologies change quickly and make businesses reorient frequently. Repeat changes become very difficult for EdTech players to follow without heavy investment banking.
2. Engagement and Retention of Users: Learners from the even younger demography show less attention, and there is constant pressure to attract and hold their attention. This demands innovation in the manner of presentation and delivery.
3. Access and Inclusivity: Making educational technology accessible to, and usable by, all students, especially those who come from underprivileged sections of society or who are differently abled.

Skill Gaps and Their Implications

1. Technical Expertise: Developers often lack the skills needed to create high-quality educational software while understanding educational needs and outcomes.
2. Data Privacy and Security Expertise: As EdTech organizations gather data and handle a huge amount of important yet sensitive data, it becomes important to hire professionals having the skills to manage data privacy.
3. Change Management Skills: Because they lack experience in facilitating the shift from traditional to digital learning environments, many educational institutions are hesitant to implement new technologies. An Educause analysis that highlights organizational culture as one of the primary obstacles to digital transformation in education emphasizes this.

So, these were some problems faced by the Edtech industry, let’s understand the major one, i.e. “IT problems of EdTech” at length with its impact and solution.

What are the IT problems of the EdTech industry?

IT challenges harm the growth and scalability of the EdTech Industry. some of the IT problems are mentioned in the below section:

Platform Scalability and Performance:

EdTech platforms should scale resources efficiently, especially during peak times, such as school opening dates or the period surrounding the administration of exams when user numbers tend to fluctuate. Poor scalability leads to slow load times and eventually to downtime. This really affects user experience and retention.

Integration with other systems:

It integrates with most of the functionality over the legacy systems common to educational institutions today. Introducing new EdTech systems can be complicated because most organizations develop custom solutions, which consume time.

Cybersecurity threats:

The sensitive data going through EdTech platforms has increasingly attracted cyber criminals. Constant vigilance is very important with the assurance of strong defense in such serious attacks with data breach and cyber threats around which there needs to be critical, constant vigilance, and investment in sustaining.

Data Management and Analysis:

In this endeavor to personalize learning experiences and improve teaching and learning outcomes, educators need to collect, store, and competently analyze huge amounts of educational data. However, big data presents a huge technical challenge in gleaning useful meanings out of it.

User Interface and Experience:

Educational software should have simple and accessible user interfaces in order to be effective across different age groups and education levels. This often means extensive, resource-intensive user testing.

Cost Saving:

The more advanced features and scalability they need to build, the more development of cost savings EdTech solutions becomes a big challenge. Budget overruns lead EdTech companies to make trade-offs in features, scalability, or enhancement of security, just cutting the edge of being competitive and innovative.

This is intensified by the high costs related to the wages of EdTech development qualified staff who are able to correctly and fully operate both in the technical and educational domains.

Effective solutions to these IT problems must enable EdTech companies to provide smooth, safe, and effective yet economic educational experiences that either meet or exceed the requirements of standards for quality and innovation.

Now, finally let us understand how building a remote team can be a beneficial idea for EdTech organizations.

How Building Remote Teams can help EdTech Business?

Building a remote team comes with a couple of advantages for the organizations in the EdTech industry especially; while working across the border or in need of diversity in the talent pool.

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Access to a Better Talent Pool:

In this manner, remote teams allow EdTech companies to unlock the global talent pool, in turn breaking the geographical constraints that most often limit the right set of skills.

This is particularly beneficial for finding that rare skill set related to emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced data analytics, which are very fundamental to developing innovative educational tools.

Cost Effectiveness:

Companies save a lot of overhead costs, including office spaces, utilities, and miscellaneous expenses, by building remote teams instead of setting up physical offices.

You can reinvest these cost savings in R&D to develop a better product, offer various products, or even enter new markets. It becomes further possible to hire qualified talent from areas with relatively lower costs of living thereby, in a way, maintaining low costs and high expertise.

Scalability and Flexibility:

The flexibility of remote teams allows EdTech organizations to scale their operations up and down while avoiding the logistical and financial complexities associated with reshaping physical office spaces. This scalability benefits the EdTech landscape, as it allows demand dynamics to fluctuate with academic cycles, providing an added bonus.

Enhanced Productivity and Innovation:

Various studies suggest that a remote worker is more productive than their on-premises counterpart.With the teams spread to work across time zones across the globe, the business keeps working even outside traditional office hours, speedily pushing development cycles and new product updates.

Further, a geographically distributed team can not only cover a larger area of operation but also bring diversity in problem-solving strategies.

Higher Employee Satisfaction and Retention:

Job satisfaction, work-life balance, and overall happiness of an employee all contribute to positive employee retention. This happens to be of spectacular importance in the tech-savvy world of the tech field, in which skilled professionals are in stark competition.

The better the conditions under which an employee works, the less likely they will be to look for new employment somewhere else, which results in cost saving due to the clear reduction in employee turnover.

Now, finally let us understand how Acquaint Softtech helped their EdTech client in scaling their ARR by 200%

How Acquaint Softtech can help with Remote Team Setup?

The team of Acquaint Softtech helped one of our Singapore based clients in building a Remote team to turn their EdTech idea into a complete education solution.

The organization “RealSchool” was successful with our help as we helped them hire remote developers (3 in all, i.e. 2 React Native and 1 Node developer) and they also hired one QA and project manager to build a remote team that helped them achieve a successful project execution.

Read eLearning Software Development solutions to know everything about the project.

Wrapping Up!

This means the scale, making of 200% ARR, all through remote teaming an EdTech start-up is kind of a ratification of a windfall global digital collaboration that bodes change in the educational sector. Remote teams allow EdTech companies to fill critical skill gaps, enhance scalability and flexibility, positioning them to take advantage of the growing global demand for innovative educational solutions.

This is a way in which strategic partners at Acquaint Softtech, an IT Staff augmentation

company and software development outsourcing company helps companies get the right help to streamline their development process by helping them hire remote developers.