As the business world continues to increase in complexity and competition becomes more intense (in nearly every industry), companies of all sizes are looking to corporate training to prepare their employees for this challenging new climate. More and more business leaders are now are realizing that employees are their most valuable assets and are investing in employee growth through the development of comprehensive and ongoing training programs.
In years past, the preferred approach to corporate training and workforce development was through the use of classroom-based, in-person training. But over the past decade, as cloud technologies have continued to evolve and workforces have become increasingly remote (a trend that was already in motion before COVID-19), online learning or “eLearning” has become the preferred method of training for many businesses.
eLearning offers a number of advantages over classroom-based training, including:
Cost Savings
eLearning eliminates the need to recruit and hire trainers and put them on the road. It also removes the need for venue fees, catering, and the printing and distribution of training materials.
Speed
With classroom-based training, there can be a significant lag between the decision to offer a particular training and its actual delivery. eLearning can shorten this gap significantly, which can be critically important for time-sensitive training topics, such as compliance.
Convenience
While classroom-based training requires all participants to be available at the same time (and, often times, pulled away from the job duties) eLearning allows employees to conduct their training activities at any time and from any place that is convenient for them. All that is required is an Internet connection.
Self-Paced
One of the challenges with classroom-based training is that students must keep up with the pace set by the instructor. eLearning, on the other hand, allows students to work at their own pace and provides the ability to review material multiple times before moving onto the next section.
Detailed Analytics
For administrators, a challenge with classroom-based training is in capturing and analyzing user engagement and success metrics. Most eLearning platforms today make this easy by allowing for the easy collection of important data and analytical tools that convert this data into useful information and reports.
Working with an LMS for Corporate eLearning
The core technology that supports all types of eLearning programs, including corporate training, is a Learning Management System, or “LMS”. An LMS is the application for building, delivering, and tracking your corporate training program. When evaluating an LMS for corporate training, there are two primary options to consider:
Cloud-Based v. On-Premises
While some companies choose to deploy their LMS on-premises (self-hosted), these tend to be larger organizations that have the resources (both financial and labor) to “stand up” the LMS themselves. Today, a more common deployment is through the use of a cloud-based LMS from a third-party vendor. This approach eliminates the need for a large, up-front capital investment and places the responsibility for managing and maintaining the system with the cloud vendor. And a cloud-based LMS is typically offered on a subscription basis, meaning you only pay for the capacity you need when you need it.
Multi-Tenant v. Single Tenant
A recent development in LMS architecture is the availability of multitenancy. While a single tenant LMS dedicates the entire hardware and software infrastructure to a single audience deployment, a multi-tenant LMS allows you to “spin up” new instances of the application to support various learning audiences, such as employees, customers, and channel partners.
LMS Portals: An Affordable LMS for Businesses of All Sizes
LMS Portals offers a cloud-based, multi-tenant LMS that is affordable for companies of all sizes. Our platform allows you to build, deliver, and manage multiple, private eLearning environments (portals) to support each of your training audiences with their own branded and customized eLearning environment.
Visit our Partner Program pages to learn more or contact us today to get started
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