What is LMS And Why Do Companies Use it?
Kenny Ilori
Shopify Store Designer | $500K+ Revenue | Minimalist Luxury | Fashion, Clothing, Jewelry | UI/UX Designer | WooCommerce Store | WordPress
The relevance of LMS and e-learning can’t be over-emphasized as more and more companies across the world have opted for the option of training their employees online.
In fact, the LMS or eLearning market is booming so fast and in the past few years, it has seen about 900% growth. Companies need the Learning Management System to deliver effective online training,?
A Learning Management System (LMS) is software that companies, businesses, and organizations use to create, organize, deliver, analyze training for their learners. The learners could be their employees, clients, and business partners.
In the past, what usually come to our mind after hearing the word “training” is an instructor teaching students in a classroom, and If we were talking about “corporate training” what comes to our mind is a picture of a large conference or a workshop that lasts several hours.
This is the old-fashioned way of training. eLearning or online training has gained widespread popularity, especially in this computer age. The eLearning market will keep soaring as more companies, instructors, and learners see its benefits.
Learners can easily connect with instructors whether in real-time or through recorded sessions from anywhere in the world when companies use an LMS to deliver online training. The learners also have access to the online course materials including the videos, quizzes, guides, courses, files… Anytime they want.
But what exactly is a Learning Management System (LMS) and how does it work? Read on to learn how companies are leveraging the power of the Learning Management System to build and deliver their training programs.
What is an LMS?
LMS stands for Learning Management System. An LMS enables you to create, manage and deliver eLearning courses or online training effortlessly. A Learning Management System is made up of two interfaces; the backend or the admin interface and the front end.
The backend is where the instructor or admin performs the core setup task, upload, and organize the company’s learning program. This is where the instructor or the admin create, manage, deliver courses, analyze learners’ reports, add learners, automate notification, and much more.
The frontend interface is what learners see when they enroll or are assigned to a course. The frontend interface includes the beautify page designs, the course page,?quiz page… Learners do not have access to the backend unless they are given access.
A Learning Management System helps you:
Who can use an LMS?
LMS is not just limited to educational institutions, anybody who is delivering online courses, online training, eLearning courses can use an LMS.?Here are examples of companies, organizations, and businesses that can use the Learning Management System for training.
With that said, you can see that a Learning Management System can serve a variety of training needs. For example, an expert can sell their courses online with an LMS, a company can use it to train their employees online, while a consulting agency can use a Learning Management System to educate their clients on various topics.?
How companies can use an LMS serve different purposes.
Companies and individuals can use an LMS for all kinds of learning activities, that is why the Learning Management System is an invaluable tool that has been adopted by companies, enterprises, and organizations both big and small.
Common uses for an LMS platform include:
Regardless of the industry or business, you may be operating in, most times, you need to train your employees and equip them with the right knowledge for them to be productive. For example, you might want to teach existing employees new skills or provide new employees with compliance training…
A corporate LMS can help you eliminate business interruptions associated with traditional learning and allow your employees to study the online training materials at their own pace. Using a Learning Management System to deliver training can help you significantly reduce the cost of employee training. Not only will you save money you will also save effort compared to inviting specialized instructors to give conventional seminars.
That is not all, An LMS will also help you track employees’ progress with its inbuilt progress report and tracking tools.
2. Onboard new hires:
With a business LMS, you can automate and simplify the process of onboarding new hires. Of course, you still need to meet and greet them in person and give them a tour around the workspace, but they can always study the rest at their own pace and refer back to the online course material anytime they need.
Most new employees struggle to remember the details about your organization’s history or compliance policies. With an online onboarding course, you can be sure they have access to important information whenever they want.
Your Learning Management System software is the perfect platform to conduct various training for new hires such as your company’s code of conduct, privacy guidelines, race, and sexual harassment policies. You can also share information about your employees’ roles and responsibilities as well as career advancement opportunities and benefits.
3. Retain employee knowledge:
Not only can LMS be used to conduct employees training it can also be used to retain employees’ knowledge and learn from them. Knowledge retention makes it possible to keep valuable skills, techniques, and information with your company even after your employees leave or retire.?
LMS platform is a great fit for this purpose as you don’t want valuable information lying idle in a document management system that nobody ever checks. Learning Management System is knowledge-based and readily available to train new hires or employees from other departments.
4. Train partners and customers:
LMS usage is not limited to internal use, it can also be used to give online training to external partners and your customers. For example, you can use the Learning Management System to onboard new clients to your products. Or if you are an agency, that helps companies develop their employees’ soft skills, you can create a course in your LMS and share it with your clients.
5. Improve employee productivity:
Sales closers and customer support professionals need to update their knowledge regularly. Online training is the fastest way to inform your employees about industry changes, new products, and services introduction, or new selling strategies.
Additionally, new team members can get onboarding training online and get being productive sooner.
6. Train remotely without barrier:
Geographical barriers are one of the limiting factors for conducting effective traditional training. Multinational companies or organizations with multiple branches often find it hard to get everyone together in one place. Thankfully, with LMS and online training you can conduct training online without any barriers.
Hosting your training online gives team members access to the training materials. Better still, they can even attend a live webinar from anywhere in the world. This helps to save a significant amount of money and time.?
7. LMS Supports education:
An LMS is ideal for general educational purposes. Be it schools selling online lessons or traditional educational institutions supplementing its classroom-based course, a business educating its clients, or even a government agency or NGO helping educate the general population.
Benefits of using an LMS
Transitioning from traditional offline training to eLearning may sound challenging especially if you are not tech-savvy but the outcomes are worth it. Having the right tech in place will make the transition smoother. Benefits of LMS for training include:
LMS software are cost-effective, you just have to pay for it once then you can use it for different programs without having to organize different events e.g. conferences, presentation, etc. each time you want to train employees and customers.
2. Quick content update:
With LMS you don’t have to worry about outdated training guides anymore. Because everything is online, you can simply update your training contents anytime you want. This is not the case with written materials or in-person presentations as you will have to design and deliver from scratch every time you need to update something.
3. Train employees regardless of the distance:
Employees that work from different countries or locations should miss out on training opportunities. Regardless of their location, you don’t have to spend time and money to bring everyone to the same room. eLearning or online training helps build and deliver learning programs regardless of your distance or location.
4. Engage and motivate learners:
Training doesn’t have to be just about acquiring new skills, sometimes it is about getting familiar with the company’s policies, guidelines, or understanding compliance regulations.?
No more boring training, with LMS you can quickly spice up things a little and keep the learners focused, by adding some interactivity and gamification elements e.g. quizzes, awards, internal competitions, etc.
5. Train on the go:
Traditional training can cost you time, as we all know time is money. Traditional training that takes place during a work hours requires employees to step out of their offices hence hindering productivity.
But when you choose LMS, this gives the employees the privilege to keep learning even when outside the office, at a convenient time. With a mobile-compatible LMS, employees can access their training course during commute or work travel.
6. Improves employees retention rates:
Employees appreciate career development. Allow them to build on their skills by creating and granting them access to online course libraries in your LMS. This may be a win-win for you when you help employees acquire new skills, and develop their existing skills.
7. Measure progress and results:
Tacking, measuring the progress and results of a training program requires a lot of work. Thankfully an LMS has taken away the hard work from you. Most Learning Management System platforms generate reports about a learner’s engagement.
For example, how often learners log in, when they finish a course, etc. You can also use an LMS to measure learners’ scores and performance on follow-up tests and assignments.
8. Encourage a culture of continuous learning:?
Traditional or offline training is usually hard to organize, they often occur annually or when there is an urgent need for it. eLearning courses or online courses are much simpler to deliver either via online courses, online presentations, and webinars. Training is not just a one-off thing, it helps your company and employees to continuously improve.
Not only does the Learning Management System benefit companies it also makes learning easier and better for employees.
Benefits of LMS for employees
Offering a course library enables your employees to develop useful skills even outside of work. Like improving communication skills, showing empathy… This is a great way to groom your employees as they may not have the resources or time to enroll in this kind of training on their own.
2. Improved knowledge retention:
As an employer, you can’t control how much learners understand and remember after taking the training. eLearning beats traditional learning hands-down in this respect.
Instead of watching a presentation and forgetting about it, learners can pause the videos during an online course, take notes, go back to a previous lesson or take a follow-up quiz to test their knowledge.
3. Self-paced learning:
Everybody has their pattern of learning, some people can concentrate on a course for a long period while others prefer to study in chunks. Here is another illustration, some of your employees might have gone through training before while others are complete beginners and need more time to absorb the information.
A self-paced eLearning course or online course is the solution for these different learning preferences.
4. Learn from anywhere in the world at any time:
Traditional training makes it impossible for part-time employees to take part in offline training unless they show up at the office. Even full-time employees have to leave their tasks to attend pre-scheduled offline training. But LMS makes it possible for employers to build flexible training programs that employees can take anytime and anywhere in the world.
5. Unlimited access to training programs:
LMS makes it possible for learners to refresh their memory with ease by just logging in to their LMS accounts. This is so helpful for new employees who get information overload during their first days at work.
Types of LMS Software
Now that you know what LMS is and what it does, it’s time to know the types of Learning Management System software available in the market. There are different types of LMS software when you begin to research the types of Learning Management systems to use in your organization, you will be overwhelmed with the results.
While LMS software is designed for training, you may find some of them more suitable for your goal or industry than others.
Okay, now let’s break down the types of Learning Management systems available to help you determine which one is the best fit for your business or training needs. In this article, we will determine the types of LMS based on the deployment model and use case or industry.
1. Cloud LMS vs. Self-hosted LMS vs. Private cloud LMS
Cloud LMS:
This is the type of LMS that is made available to you by a third party, usually under a subscription model. The Learning Management System Vendors build a wide range of feature that meets your training needs. But if you want total control and freedom to make changes to the eLearning platform, you might consider a self-hosted platform.
The Learning Management System vendor takes care of the installation, updates, and server monitoring. The vendor might also provide free or paid backups, as well as various upgrade options.
The cloud-based LMS often comes in different packages, so you can choose the pricing, performance, and features that match your requirements. Cloud-based LMS are usually scalable – that’s, you can select a pricing plan that meets your needs now then upgrade to a more advanced plan as you grow.
Self-hosted LMS:
A self-hosted LMS software is a web application, mostly sold as a licensed product. The installation and maintenance of this platform are done by you and on your server which makes this option more secure. You handle the Learning Management System software installation and its maintenance like data backup, software server update…
You may need to contact your vendor to renew your license after version upgrades. The advantage of using a self-hosted LMS is that it provides extra flexibility for integration with your local infrastructure as well as the option to customize its code to fit any special need you may have.
Private cloud LMS:
Private cloud LMS offers a halfway between the locally deployed and cloud LMS. With Private cloud LMS, you get a secure and private Learning Management System platform that doesn’t share resources or codes with other businesses, offering you the best security and performance.
The provider takes care of the installation, maintenance, and updates while having access to your Learning Management System to customize and integrate it with other infrastructures.
2. Software as a Service (SaaS) LMS vs. Open-source LMS
Saas LMS:
A cloud LMS runs in a Software as a Service or SaaS model. This means you choose your software provider, run a free trial f available then pick a pricing plan based on the features you need. Most SaaS LMS software providers offer a variety of pricing packages, so you can select the one that best suits your needs. Free plans of some paid Learning Management Systems are okay if you have a basic training need.
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When your team grows and you need more advanced features you can upgrade to a paid plan. You can rest assured that your Learning Management System vendor takes care of data privacy issues and software bugs. Your LMS vendor takes care of your data privacy issues and software bugs.
Open-source LMS:
An open-source LMS requires a dedicated IT team you will have to take care of the software installation customization and maintenance on your own. Often you will need to update the Learning Management System manually when needed.?With an Open-source LMS, you do not need licensing costs but you will spend more down the road, as you will need to set up and maintain your system.
Open-source LMS can be hosted on your server, so you don’t have to pay for the server if you have one but you will need to hire an IT team to customize and set up your system.?
3. Based on use case and industry: Corporate LMS vs. Education LMS
Corporate LMS:
Businesses often go with the Corporate LMS to train their employees, partners, clients, or all of them. By so doing they keep the training materials, learners’ data, results, and progress on one platform. A lot of corporate Learning Management Systems offer white label solutions, so companies can rebrand and personalize their platform the way they want. Corporate LMS is usually flexible and customizable to cover various training needs, such as:
Education LMS:
Education LMS is designed for schools, colleges, universities, tertiary institutions, and other educational institutions. Students log in to their accounts and attend instructor-led training (ILT) or study online materials.
Students can also take tests and get graded by their instructors, all inside the same platform. Academic contents don’t have to be updated often as courses are scheduled in advance and organized in school terms. This simply means that academic Learning Management Systems won’t provide frequent features and upgrades.
In addition, organizations that choose an academic LMS do not have many tech requirements, like integration with other tools, but may need support as not all learners are tech-savvy. While an education LMS is designed for schools, a corporate organization can still use it. In the same vein, an academic institution may go with a corporate LMS if that better suits its needs.
At end of the day, everything boils down to which Learning Management System platform serves your needs better.
How an LMS works
Once you’ve selected the right LMS for your needs. It’s time to start building your online course. Below are the steps to take.
Before you can deliver your online training you need to add it to your LMS. You can do this by either creating the course materials from scratch or adding existing course materials. Advanced LMS software often lets you add course materials from different sources and an in multiple formats. You can even add multimedia files like video, audio, etc. to your lessons.
Another good thing about course creation is that you can leverage the inexhaustible assets available online from YouTube videos, wiki articles… and include them in your training.
2. Organize your courses
Now, it’s time to organize your eLearning courses. You can organize your online courses by setting up how many courses you want your learners or employees to have access to, this can either be single or multiple courses.
How you organize your eLearning course is determined by your organization’s needs and structures. The best LMS software should allow you to structure your online course contents the way you want.
3. Deliver your courses
Once you’ve created and organized your courses, the next thing to do is to deliver them to your learners.
A modern LMS software should be able to help you control and deliver your content to different audiences. Such that, you have the option to deliver your training course to a restricted number of audiences, or make the training available to all audiences.
A good LMS software should also be mobile responsive and have a friendly user interface for mobile and desktop users.
4. Managing LMS users
“M” in LMS means management. In this section, we will be talking about how an LMS can help you manage your users.
LMS users are grouped into 3 categories, are admins, instructors, and learners.
Admin – The admin is the person setting up and configuring the LMS and platform.
Instructors – The instructors are the people preparing the lessons and measuring learners’ progress on the LMS platform.
Learners – learners are those that enrolled to be taught.
In smaller organization settings the admin and the instructor could be the same person. The learners could be your employees (if you run a business) or students (If you are an educational institution.)
Managing LMS users include:
5. Tracking learner's progress
One of the amazing features of an LMS is the ability to measure or track learners’ progress in real-time?
An LMS platform gives you access to different measuring metrics which include the course enrollment stats, attendance stats, students scores, and many more. This helps you track students’ performance effectively regardless of the number of learners.
A good LMS should also allow you to set custom notifications. For example, the instructors should get a notification when students submit their assignments or notify students when an instructor is about to start a webinar.
An advanced LMS software should have data reporting feature, ie. Ability to track and measure data with graphs and charts. This helps in tracking students’ performance, spotting trends, and issues.
You could also filter students with different parameters. For example, student departments, courses enrolled in, test scores… You should also be able to export this in an Excel file.
LMS features to look for
In this section, you will learn about the recommender features that every LMS websites need to achieve your business goals and provide a better user experience for you and your learners. These LMS features are:
How to choose the right LMS for your business
With hundreds of advanced LMS software out there, it could be pretty confusing to choose the right LMS that meets your needs. If you type the word “LMS” on the Google search bar, you will be overwhelmed with the different types of LMS available online.
The goal is not to buy any advanced LMS but to go with LMS software that meets your requirements, is within your budget, and gives you the best value for money.
In the following section, I will be talking about the 10 important things to consider when choosing the right LMS software.
1. Clear Idea of what you want:
The first and most important thing when choosing an LMS software, have a clear idea of what you need. Here are examples of the questions to ask yourself to get a clear idea about what you need.?
Do you want interaction between the instructor and the learners or not? For example, if your organization is offering a basic programming language to your employees, this doesn’t require much interaction between the instructors and the learners.
But if you are offering graphic design or video animation training. This requires more interaction between the instructors and the learners because the learners have to submit their assignments and the instructor has to grade their works.
Do you want learners to have the option to download the courses and watch them later via offline mode? These are some of the questions you need to answer and be clear about your needs.
2. Choose mobile responsive LMS software:
50% of web traffic worldwide comes from mobile devices. That means if your LMS platform is not mobile responsive you’ll be losing more than half of potential learners daily. A mobile responsive LMS platform makes it possible for learners to log in to their LMS accounts from anywhere and learn on the go.
If you intend to go with a WordPress LMS platform, some mobile responsive LMS platforms you may consider include Learndash, Learnpress, Sensei…
Or if you prefer a standalone LMS platform, you consider Moodle, Teachable…
3. Easy integration with other tools
Ensure you go with an LMS platform that supports a wide range of useful integrations that are important to your business. Examples of this integration include:?
4. Pricing model
Your budget plays an important role in choosing the right LMS for your business.
The pricing model of LMS software differs from vendor to vendor. That is why it’s a bit tricky to determine the best pricing plan as some vendors charge based on features, some charge based on the number of students…
Below are some other most popular pricing structures.
You must find out if there are any hidden charges or extra charges when you exceed your limit. Also, find out about their cancellation policy.
5. Keep it simple:
One of the common mistakes businesses make when choosing the right LMS platform for their business is choosing LMS platforms with tons of high-end features.
Most of the time getting an LMS with tons of high-end features can be a waste of money. Think about it, why should you be paying for features or tools that you are not using and do not intend to use in the nearest future. The goal is to get LMS platforms that you can exploit all its features.
Oftentimes, complex features make it hard for learners to use the platform, thereby causing confusion and distractions to learners. You might also need to pay an expert to set up, customize and maintain these complex platforms thereby incurring more costs.
With that said, the goal here is to start with an LMS platform that has a user-friendly interface, limited features and avoids complications.
6. Supported course materials:
Content is the foundation on which your online courses are built. Having the right content or course materials is imperative to delivering effective and outstanding online training.?
It has been proven that learners get a better understanding of a topic when visual content is used to deliver demo training.?Likewise, slideshows are perfect for delivering precise information.
The first step is to identify the course materials you will be using. The content or course materials may be in the form of videos, audios, pdf files, slideshow presentations, and much more.
In addition, course materials also include quizzes, surveys, certificates… These course materials are to be taken into account when choosing the right LMS platform for your business.
Once you’ve decided on the course materials the next step is to find a compatible LMS platform that supports these content types.
7. Comprehensive analysis and reporting features:
Having a comprehensive analysis and reporting solution is a non-avoidable feature when choosing the right LMS platform for our business. This feature gives you insights into what’s going on on your LMS platform, it helps you track learners’ performance and gauge the effectiveness of your online course.
Furthermore, with the analysis and reporting feature, you can monitor your platform effectively as an administrator. You can analyze learners’ quiz reports, track learners’ compliance, time spent on a particular lesson, and the number of attempts made to pass a quiz.
8. Effective customer support:
24/7 customer support is essential to running and maintaining a successful eLearning platform. Before purchasing any LMS software, find out the quality of the customer support, the availability of the customer support, and the medium with which you use to communicate.
The most common mediums are live chat, email, support tickets, and phone calls. But my favorite is the live chat support because it helps me resolve issues faster.
In addition, the availability of knowledge-based support like guides, tutorial videos is also important as you don’t want to buy software that has no users’ guide. The readiness of the customer support and their display of professionalism speaks a volume about how much they value their customers.
9. LMS Security & Reliability
A security breach is every organization’s concern, you don’t want sensitive information about your organization or employees being exposed by hackers. A Security breach can destroy an organization’s trust and reputation.
Therefore it is your responsibility to ensure that all your well protected from hackers. Ensure that SSL protocol and firewalls are implemented on your LMS platform.
You can determine the reliability of an LMS software by its downtime, disaster management, and other technical issues experienced by its users. You can’t afford to have your website go offline while learners are learning. Frequent downtime or crashes can make learners lose focus, patience, and lack the motivation to continue learning.
Also, learners can’t afford to lose their work and start all over again due to LMS technical issues. Going through the reviews left by existing and past clients of an LMS software will help you determine how reliable it is.
10. Update and Upgrades
Finally, check to see how often the software is upgraded. Frequent software updates are a sign that the LMS software is evolving new technologies. Check how often the LMS software is being updated. Check the community also, if it has an active community and support group.
Try to know the current version of the LMS software you are using. Check to know if it supports further changes, and the time it takes for setting up new versions of the software. Also, ensure you find out if it will cost you extra to extend the software functionalities in the future.
In closing, If you’ve made up your mind to go with a WordPress LMS plugin, then Learndash is the perfect LMS software for you. Learnedash offers solutions to most LMS needs and supports several add-ons for additional features.
On the other hand, if it’s a cloud LMS software you are looking for, Moodle could be a safe bet for you as it supports a wide range of functionalities you may ever need.
Need An LMS Specialist? Contact Excelnetsols
That is all for this article, if you are looking for an LMS Specialist to do the hard work for you, ExcelNetsols is the perfect man for the job.
They help set up professional WordPress LMS platforms that give your learners the best experience they can ever ask for. You can reach them here.
Send them a message and they will respond to you promptly.