Why Your Business Needs A Learning Management System: 5 Ins And Outs
Originally published at opengeekslab.com on September 17, 2020
Online learning has established a firm place in the modern world making learning management system a must for successful business running. Learning management software is now widely used by learning and development company departments to simplify and improve inner training processes.
In this post, OpenGeeksLab will explain what an online learning management system generally is, describe its essential features, main issues to keep in mind while developing own LMS platform, and the benefits of its implementation.
What is a Learning Management System?
Learning Management System (LMS) is a software designed to plan, create, distribute learning materials to learners and hold control over the educational process.
As a rule, minimal functionality of any LMS offers opportunities to upload educational materials, deliver courses to students, send notifications to stay/keep informed, and share information with other authorized users.
Learning management solutions fall into several types according to the following criteria:
1. User Type
- Enterprise
Training management solutions designed for large scale organizations like enterprises stand out in complexity and the number of provided features. As enterprises manage big amounts of specific courses/training, enterprise LMSs often represent custom solutions, which are maintained by software vendors and develop together with the organization.
- Individual
Learning management systems for businesses of smaller scale or individual educators provide basic functionality that varies depending on the user’s needs and objectives. LMS software providers offer different pricing plans for diverse user types.
2. Price
- Free LMS
Free training management solutions are available for everyone (an individual or an organization) wanting to create their own eLearning course. These LMS platforms usually offer enough tools to create a course and deliver it to learners, though free LMS requires a person to monitor the product’s work and updates.
- Paid LMS
Paid LMS may be either ready-made or built on request. Ready-made paid products are cheaper as they are designed to suit varied organizations irrespective of their niche affiliation or inner specificity. Custom systems are built exclusively for a certain organization, so they are more expensive, but perfectly fit the company’s needs.
3. Ownership
- SaaS
SaaS (Software as a Service) model offers all the advantages of adopting a training management system with no need to maintain local servers. Users get access to a cloud-based system after paying fees according to the general subscription plan.
- Custom Product
Custom learning management service belongs exclusively to the organization, which bought it. As a rule, custom products are made in collaboration with the development team which may additionally provide LMS platform support. Custom LMS products can be either cloud-based or stored on local servers.
4. Deployment
- Cloud-based LMS
Cloud-based learning management software presupposes the system itself being stored on off-site servers allowing users to access it from different devices (desktop or mobile) via the Internet connection. It is easily scalable and may even provide certain features offline.
- On-premise LMS
On-premise LMS products are stored on local servers and frequently are designed specifically to be stored on the peculiar server. Locally-based LMS is less scalable than cloud-based one but offers a higher level of corporate data security.
5. Compatibility
- Integrated LMS
Integrated learning management software possesses a high level of compatibility with other services used by the organization (ERP, CRM, HRIS, etc.) and can be integrated into the company’s ecosystem with minimal effort offering wider perspectives for interrelated processes organization.
- Standalone LMS
Standalone LMS has low compatibility opportunities and connects with other systems used by the organization mainly through vicarious data sharing or manual integration support.
The abundance of available solutions has created a fertile ground for rapid LMS market growth.
Learning Management Software Market State
Learning management software market proved to be a productive niche with promising prospects, as the interest around eLearning strengthens because of increasing learner mobility. In 2020, the LMS market has amounted to $13.4 billion and it is projected to grow up to $25.7 billion by 2025. The CAGR during the forecast period is expected to reach 14.0%.
The most influential LMS market players include Adobe, Docebo, SAP, Cornerstone OnDemand, and Blackboard, which struggle for greater market share in all regional markets. However, the demand for innovative solutions only grows, offering stunning benefits for companies developing and adopting LMS.
Benefits LMS Implementation Brings to Your Business
Here are seven advantages SMEs get choosing learning management system development. Let’s look at them in more detail:
1. Boosted Productivity
Learning management services increase the overall organization’s productivity. LMS allows conducting time-efficient training for newcomers or other employees, so they continuously improve their skills. The growing productivity of each worker makes the organization more efficient as a whole.
2. Availability & Convenience
The adoption of LMS platforms significantly simplifies the learning process making it more convenient. With adaptive LMS, employees can access the courses from their mobile devices as well. Online learning management systems make information more available, so learners can continue learning on the go.
3. Automated Workflow
Implementing LMS introduces a high level of automation into the workflow organization. It allows educating several learning groups at once without attracting additional human resources. Educators should not waste time onto tedious routine tasks like checking and assessment because the results are usually processed by course algorithms.
4. Cost-Effective Results
An LMS allows conducting employee training on the most advantageous terms for both course providers and students. Despite custom LMS development requires significant investments at its initial stages, it will pay off after product deployment, as learning management systems lead to reducing expenses onto additional human resources or refresher courses.
5. Equal Training Possibilities
By adopting learning management services, the organization offers equal possibilities to all its departments and subsidiaries. Employees from different places can easily access the same course and fulfill the necessary tasks at a convenient tempo.
6. Effective Learner Engagement
Custom learning management system development improves learner engagement as well. The product designed for an organization on purpose usually offers tools and patterns perfectly fitting a particular business case. Using them, organization’s educators are more likely to keep employees interested and motivated about their further training.
7. Private & Corporate Data Security
Adopting custom training management solutions, the organization ensures higher information security than while using third-party platforms. Custom LMS offers more tools for corporate data protection including privacy and copyright policy compliance.
However, to get maximum profit out of the LMS project, one must consider basic priorities before learning management system development.
Issues to Keep in Mind While LMS Development
Before adopting learning management services, a business runner should explore essential niche KPIs. Here are the eight core ones:
1. Market Trends & Business Analytics
Knowing current market trends stands among priorities while deciding on learning management system development. Market research and business analysis enable you to understand your competitive chances, learn from competitor experiences, and calculate rough profits your idea will bring after successful implementation. Business analytics also helps customer companies in choosing between different types of LMS software.
2. Challenges You Overcome
Before starting development, you must clarify the challenges your product will overcome. LMS may aim at improving learner experience, expanding toolkit, increasing integrations, maintaining relevance. Besides, a well-developed online learning management system must encourage students and keep the educational process interesting.
3. Security Issues
Ensuring proper data security stands among the top issues you should care of before launching your online learning management system. You should assure user and corporate data being safe after it was uploaded onto your LMS, moderate information not to violate copyright policy, and monitor user accounts to eliminate frauds.
4. Accessibility & User-Friendly UI/UX
Information accessibility is a must for eLearning services. To make an LMS platform accessible one should mind modern UI/UX guidelines. A properly designed, intuitive, user-friendly interface will help in engaging and retaining learners of different ages.
5. Adaptive Opportunities
A good eLearning system must be accessible from any device a learner can choose. Mobile learning management system must have correspondent responsivity and intuitive interface as in its desktop version. Making sure that your product is equally available and adaptive for different devices creates a product’s positive image as well.
6. Interactive Interface
Interactive elements and gamification appear among the most important issues while developing learning management services, as modern learners mind not only the quality but the delivery as well. Adding competitive tasks, ratings, and varied achievement systems will make your LMS product unique and attractive for learning process participants.
7. Reliable Software Vendor
Partnering with proficient developers is a half-way to success, as they will quickly embody your idea into reality with minimum time and money spent. Make collaboration with the reliable software vendors, provide clear requirements, and discuss milestones to get the results perfectly fitting your organization.
8. Proper Feature Set
Depending on learning management software peculiarities, different educational processes may require diverse features. To cover the organization’s needs, the development team must agree on corresponding functionality.
However, there exist common features that must be implemented in any LMS irrespective of customer company-specific preferences.
Basic Feature Set to Implement into Your Online Learning Management System
An LMS platform functionality may differ depending on your business targets. These are the essential features most systems have in common:
1. Content Adding & Editing
An in-built content management system compliant with Experience API (Tin Can API) is a basic feature needed for developing LMS. It usually includes varied tools allowing educators to create, upload, and edit learning materials of different kinds (texts, videos, audios, presentations, tests, quizzes, etc.).
2. Course Makers
Introducing an online course management system feature ensures convenient learning materials arrangement. Divided into specific courses educational information becomes more accessible for learners. Course making feature implementation also improves educator experience offering convenient structure for info organizing.
3. Automated Task Assessment
Automated task assessment stands among the most in-demand features offered by learning management systems for businesses. In-built algorithms processing test and assignment results automatically significantly improve educator experience while using the LMS services, so course providers should not waste time onto a tedious routine and redirect energy onto enhancing learning process productivity.
4. Certificates & Rewards
A well-developed rewarding system is an important tool of learner encouragement and engagement. Giving students small rewards or badges and introducing competitive tasks make them more motivated to complete the assignments. Besides, an LMS product must provide a verification system for learners to get confirmation of them having passed the course, which will be acknowledgeable by employers.
5. Scheduling & Reminders
Including scheduling possibilities into the LMS service allows organization to hold courses easily, as with a clear in-built schedule both learners and educators can create an individual learning plan and adjust it up to group lessons or other activities. Besides, developers may add notifications and reminders sent automatically for users not to miss important events.
6. Student Progress Tracking
Student progress tracking tools serve as a dashboard for educators to understand whether their courses were productive or not. With learner progress analytics at hand, course providers can make adjustments to a student’s individual plan if they require additional attention. Besides, with progress tracking tools, educators can adjust courses to diverse employee groups depending on their knowledge level, learning tempo, etc.
7. Web-Conferencing & Live Classrooms
Live classrooms and web-conferencing tools are of primer importance while going for custom LMS development, as they ensure a convenient remote learning process. Online learning management system allows having live learner-educator communication without the need for physical presence of all participants in a certain place.
Need Your Own Custom Learning Management System?
Learning management services keep gaining popularity offering profound online learning possibilities not only to individual customers but to enterprises as well. Despite expenses required to build an LMS platform, custom training management solutions have proved to pay off and bring multiple benefits to customer companies.
If you look for a reliable development team to develop custom LMS software, it is high time to contact us. Our company is always ready to deploy the best available tools bringing to reality bold LMS ideas that will suit exactly your organization. Still hesitate? Go for online consultation with our experts to get an efficient response to your disturbing questions within 15 minutes.
