While every company has its own set of goals and strategies, one thing they all have in common is a need to recruit, train, and hold onto great talent. To accomplish this, businesses must explore and effectively implement methods of attracting qualified employees and offer them paths to growth that benefit these workers, as well as the company overall. For most organizations, the solution is in investing in their employees’ skills, knowledge, and professional development.
In the past, most companies relied on in-person, classroom-based training as the foundation for their corporate training and employee development programs. But in recent years, as cloud-based technologies have continued to evolve and workforces have become increasingly remote (a trend that was in place even before COVID-19), online learning, or “eLearning” has emerged as the preferred method of training and development for most organizations.
Implementing an LMS for Corporate Training
A Learning Management System, or “LMS” is the core technology that supports all types of eLearning programs, including corporate training. An LMS is the application that is used to build, deliver, and manage your training program and its implementation represents an investment in your employees and the future of your company. A comprehensive LMS provides the tools you need to build and scale flexible training programs that address the unique needs of your organization.
LMS technology is not new to corporate training, but two options have emerged that are particularly well-suited for the unique and ever-changing needs of corporate training.
Cloud-Based LMS
While some companies choose to “stand up” an LMS on their own servers (self-hosted) they tend to be large organizations that have the financial and labor resources for this significant effort. It is far more typical for companies today to work with a third-party cloud vendor that offers access to an LMS platform on a subscription basis. This approach eliminates the need for a large, up-front capital spend and shifts the investment to an ongoing operational expense, which tends to be the preference of most CIOs. And with a cloud-based LMS, all of the efforts and expenses regarding the ongoing management and maintenance of the system are handled by the cloud vendor.
Multi-Tenant LMS
A more recent option for LMS deployments is in the availability of multi-tenant architecture. Where a single tenant LMS dedicates its entire infrastructure to use by a single audience, a multi-tenant LMS allows the administrator to “spin up” new instances of the application to create a customized learning environment for each of your corporate training audiences. This cost-effective approach is particularly well-suited for companies that will be implementing extended enterprise corporate training programs, as well as third-party training and consulting firms.
Budgeting Considerations for a Corporate Training LMS
The budgeting and overall cost considerations when planning for your LMS implementation can be divided into two categories: hard and soft costs. The hard costs consist of the easily identifiable elements, such as software and hardware (in the case of a self-hosted LMS) and subscription fees (in the case of a cloud-based LMS). The vendor may also charge setup and training fees.
It’s important to note that budgeting for an on-premises LMS is typically considered a capital expenditure, while cloud-based LMS expenditure is more often considered an operating expense.
The soft costs of an LMS-based corporate training program consist of the labor you will need to allot for the setup and administration of the system, as well as the time it will take for your employees to learn the system and engage in training activities.
Content creation, or the licensing of content, can also be a significant expense, especially for organizations that have diverse and dynamic training needs.
LMS Portals for Corporate Training Programs
LMS Portals provides our clients and partners with a cloud-based, multi-tenant learning management system that allows you to launch and manage multiple, private eLearning environments (portals) on-demand, from a single administrative console. Each portal you launch can have its own branding and includes powerful tools for course development, user onboarding, collaboration, analytics, and more.
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