There are specific characteristics of eLearning projects that highlight if the project is best suited for Rapid eLearning. Projects that are best suited for Rapid eLearning have the following characteristics:

Rapidly changing content Projects where the content is rapidly changing or is updated frequently are good candidates for Rapid eLearning. A rapid eLearning project is one that can be identified, produced, and made available to learners within days. Time sensitive material or information that will quickly become obsolete is also a good Rapid eLearning candidate. Industries with rapidly changing content are retail, banking, high technology, pharmaceuticals, and health care. Within most companies there are departments that are responsible for rapidly changing content. Departments like sales, call centers, and human resources may have information that changes rapidly. For example a human resources department may need to update employees on new or changing public safety issues or explain how changes in a law may effects hiring or benefits. A call center may need to train employees on how to handle a myriad of issues that can pop-up quickly like a product recall, news making announcement, or service outage.

Limited or short shelf life Limited or short shelf life projects/products are also great candidates for Rapid eLearning. A company will not actualize revenue if they don't have a way to train their sales people on these new offerings. Rapid eLearning provides companies with a quick way to get the latest information, in a digestible format to the people who need to have the information. For example, an eLearning course can provide a mortgage company with a quick and easy way to train their entire network of brokers on their latest mortgage programs.

Small or low funded projects or products Many companies have small projects or products. Small products or sub-releases of major products may not get the funding of a full release or larger project. It can cost up to ten times more to produce a Traditional eLearning course then a Rapid eLearning course. A product manager who is responsible for add on products may not get a large budget they can use to create Traditional eLearning course. Their products may change on a quarterly basis not giving them the necessary lead-time to create Traditional eLearning. Rapid eLearning may provide them with the means to produce less expensive courses in a workable time frame. They can use these courses to train sales people, distributors, and customers on the features and benefits of their add on projects. A rapid eLearning course provides them with a delivery mechanism to getting information out.

Just in time information - hot topic In some industries new information hits the airwaves and employees need to be trained immediately. Rapid eLearning's quick turn around time can provide them with a way to get information to the people that need to know. One such case was the 2003 SARS scare. CHEX, a consortium of 41 American children's hospitals, realized that they needed to train all 98,00 employees on how to identify and respond to SARs symptoms. By using Rapid eLearning, in less then 48 hours, CHEX went from identifying a need, to having a SARS course available to all employees.

Content that is best suited for Rapid eLearning: There are specific characteristics of content that lends its self to Rapid eLearning. Content that lends itself best to Rapid eLearning tends to be content that already exists and subjects that can be explained in words. Training materials that already exist are good candidates for Rapid eLearning since the time it takes to identify and outline the project has already been spent. Many course creators use existing Power Point presentations as their eLearning course outline. The course creator can then add exercise, articles, links to resources, and tests to make the material robust and interesting. To build training fast it is necessary to limit graphics and interactions to only those that are necessary. Good candidates for rapid eLearning are subjects that can be easily explained using words and can be explained with simple graphics, diagrams, or a digital photograph.

WebMD, a provider of physician management software, is continually updating their products and services. They need a fast and effective way to train their employees and customers on new offerings. Prior to implementing online training, WebMD's internal and client training was done onsite. The cost of onsite training and the challenge of being able to deliver that training in a timely manner required WebMD to find alternative solutions. Initially WebMD had their corporate trainers and product manager use Rapid eLearning to develop eLearning for their sales organization. The online courses became so popular, sales people gave their customers access to the training courses. WebMD decided to provide their technical sales folks with a copy of their Rapid eLearning tool so that they could customize already produced courses for individual customers. To date WebMD has produced over 600 unique courses and served over 2,000 employees and 3,500 clients.