Companies of all sizes and from most every industry understand the benefits of corporate training and employee development. As the global corporate climate becomes increasingly competitive and complex, the need for comprehensive and effective corporate training has never been greater. In fact, any company that does not offer any type of training program for its employees is at a tremendous disadvantage.
Over the past ten years or so, as cloud-based technologies have continued to evolve and workforces have become increasingly remote, the primary approach to corporate training has shifted from in-person based training to online training, also referred to as “eLearning”. And the core technology that supports all types of eLearning programs, including corporate training, is a Learning Management System, or “LMS”.
What is a Learning Management System?
An LMS is the architecture on which you build, deliver, manage, and track your corporate eLearning program. A company that considers an LMS as the foundation of its corporate training program is faced with sever options:
On-Premises vs. SaaS-Based
While some companies choose to deploy an LMS on their own severs, they tend to be larger organizations that have the financial resources required for the up-front purchase of software, hardware and other supporting infrastructure. They also have the in-house talent required for the ongoing management and maintenance of the system.
A SaaS-based LMS delivery, on the other hand, eliminates the need for a large capital investment as the SaaS vendor provides the LMS features and capacity you will need to support your program. And with a SaaS-based approach, the responsibility for the ongoing management and maintenance of the platform is shifted to the LMS vendor.
Single-Tenant vs. Multi-Tenant
A single-tenant LMS is one in which the entire architecture is dedicated to a single audience. In contrast, a multi-tenant LMS provides an architecture that allows the administrator to allocate a dedicated instance of the application to each of their training audiences. A multi-tenant LMS is ideal for any corporate training program in which there is a need to identify and isolate multiple audiences and offer a unique training experience for each. Extended enterprise training programs can benefit greatly from this architecture. Also, an organization looking to offer training as a service to their corporate clients will require multi-tenancy for an effective delivery of the technology.
Essential LMS Features for Corporate Training
Today’s LMS market includes vendors with all types of offerings and features. But for corporate training needs, there are several features that are very important to consider:
Powerful Course Development Engine
The best LMS platforms include a course development engine that will allow most anyone on your staff to build and deliver engaging training courses, quickly and easily. Importantly, the development engine should support a variety of training content types, including video, PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, images, websites, documents, and more.
SCORM-Compliant
SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) is a content standard that allows for portability among learning management systems. Deploying a SCORM-compliant LMS will allow your organization to include SCORM courses as part of your training curriculum.
Learning Paths
A learning path is a group of courses that an employee will complete in a logical progression in order to add structure to their training activities. For example, sales, customer service, and HR might each be assigned a learning path (or multiple learning paths) to ensure they are receiving training that is specific to perform well in their roles.
Group Management
The ability to create and manage groups is essential, especially as your LMS user count grows. Group management will allow you to assign specific courses and paths of learning to collections of employees with similar training needs. It will also allow for communication to those groups as well as progress tracking at the group level.
Live Remote Training
While on-demand training is typically the core of an eLearning-based training program, there may be times when you want to utilize your LMS to facilitate live, remote sessions. Your LMS should offer support for this and incorporate those sessions into the corporate training curriculum.
Assignment Engine
While Assignments have a broad definition in corporate training, it typically refers to a freeform type of engagement in which the employee is asked for a writing sample, a video recording, or some other content submission to ensure comprehension of the training material. An Assignment engine is particularly useful for higher-level training used for leadership development and digital coaching of employees.
Certificate Awarding
Employees tend to perform best when they receive awards for learning achievements. Given this, your LMS should allow you to design and deliver certificates and badges for the successful completion of courses and learning paths.
Analytics
Finally, your LMS should enable you to collect, analyze, and share data regarding employee engagement and progress. Your corporate Learning and Development (L&D) team can then analyze this data as revise and guide your corporate training program into the future.
LMS Portals for Corporate Training
At LMS Portals, we provide our clients and partners with a SaaS-based, multi-tenant LMS that allows an administrator to launch and manage a dedicated eLearning environment (portal) for each of your unique training audiences, both internal and external. Each portal you launch includes a powerful course development engine, along with robust supporting tools for learning path creation, group management, live remote training, certificate awarding, analytics, and more.
We also offer a library of 140+ ready-made and customizable courses, covering most every aspect of corporate training and employee development.
Contact us today to get started or visit our Partner Program pages