Skill is a new-age currency, and if you train and upskill your employees, you can witness better engagement, performance, productivity, and impact on your profitability. Business and learning dynamics are changing and people prefer to work or learn from anywhere. So, instead of inviting your employees to learn in a classroom and paying for travel and other costs, bring learning to them, all virtually with LMS. It will save your money, time, and efforts while giving them the flexibility of learning and upskilling from anywhere and contributing more to your organization. In this article, I’ll discuss LMS more and explore some of the best LMS for your organization.
What Is a Learning Management System?
A Learning Management System (LMS) refers to a software solution for administering, automating, reporting, delivering, and tracking training programs, educational courses, and learning and development (L&D) programs. The concept of LMS emerged from e-learning, heavily prevalent in modern times. LMS platforms were first introduced in the 1990s and have seen growth since then while their usage accelerated massively during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Modern LMSs also support various uses. It stores online content like courses and resources. In higher education, institutions use an LMS platform for classroom management and instructor-led training. Advanced LMSs can use intelligent algorithms for automatically recommending courses as per a user’s profile and skillsets using metadata from various learning resources.
Some Salient Features of an Ideal LMS
An LMS allows you to organize and store information in a single place and lets you track it. All you need is a correct login id and password to access this system and the information it contains. Some of the key features of LMS are:
User interface: A good LMS will have a user-friendly interface to help learners easily navigate the platform and access content. Responsive design: The LMS must have a responsive design that looks pleasing to the eyes and makes content accessible easily through a range of devices like smartphones, desktops, laptops, or tablets. Course management: It stores all the learning courses and related content that admins or instructors easily create and manage to deliver an improved learning experience. Analytics and reporting: The option to visualize and track course performance through a clean dashboard and detailed reports. It helps you measure your good and bad points and improve accordingly.
Gamification: Many LMSs offer game mechanics to offer more engagement and motivation through badges, certificates, points, leaderboards, etc. Automaton: It offers automation features like user and course grouping, onboarding, and more. Localization: It can support different languages to eliminate language barriers along with geolocation facilities. AI: It is used to personalize learning experiences by recommending suitable courses, suggesting interest-based topics, predicting success, and more. Social learning: It can connect with social media platforms to interact and collaborate with peers. Integration: An LMS must be interoperable and supports integration with various tools and technologies you use like SCORM, communication tools, security systems, and more.
Why Do You Need an LMS?
Using a quality LMS comes with many benefits for businesses, instructors, and learners.
Remote learning: Learners can use LMS from anywhere – at home, while training, working on a job site, etc., with an internet connection. This brings flexibility and convenience. Cost-saving: Since you don’t have to travel places to learn, it saves time and money for learners. Also, organizations don’t have to invest in employee travel and can optimize training usage and expenditure. Automation: You can automate regular, repetitive tasks such as onboarding, providing certificates, etc, to save time.
Training consistency: LMS centralizes course and training delivery to provide a consistent learning experience. Improved performance: Since you can track performance with analytics and tracking, you can find flaws easily and correct them to improve your learning delivery performance. Security and compliance: LMS systems are built with the latest security technologies and adhere to compliance requirements as they can serve regulated industries like pharma, construction, banks, and more.
So, if you are looking for the best LMS options, here are some.
Adobe Captivate Prime
Provide modern learning experiences using an award-winning cloud LMS platform – Adobe Captivate Prime. It can handle your entire enterprise needs by offering outstanding LMS features and usability. G2 has named this platform a Leader in corporate-level LMS software. You get an extensive content marketplace with 70k courses along with customer education, compliance training, employee reskilling, partner, franchisee, and sales training. It offers AI-based recommendation and personalization, headless LMS, gamification, social learning, and integrations. Boost product adoption using effective education programs for customers, improve retention by tracking progress, and easily manage the onboarding process. You can also collect deep insights from comprehensive reports to fuel retention campaigns, enhance customer satisfaction, and make proactive decisions by applying learning patterns. Adobe’s AI recommendations engine also facilitates skill-based learning programs. Its gamification points, badges, and certifications also encourage employees to upskill. In addition, managers can use data from reports to make pre-emptive decisions. Close deals faster by training your external and internal sales teams with this platform. It delivers effective learning programs quickly when employees need them. Organizations can also use audience management to provide personalized content and access comprehensive performance analytics to improve their business. In addition, you get compliance training to be audit-ready and set up your LMS easily and scale. Train your workforce by giving them access to in-house courses, and third-party content, and track metrics via reports. This platform is FedRAMP certified and safe with SOC2 and SSO and GDPR compliance and connects with top solutions like Slack, Zoom, LinkedIn Learning, etc. It also supports adaptive video streaming with Brightcove, scalable AWS, and fast CDN with Akamai.
LearnDash
LearnDash claims to be the only WordPress-based LMS developed by e-learning experts. It is trusted by popular organizations like Yoast, Keap, University of Florida, and more. In LearnDash, you will find the course content structured with top online learning practices and principles to optimize content delivery and boost completion rates. It offers superior quizzes, certifications, and assignments to offer students an immersive learning experience. This LMS is built to scale with you; you can sell more courses online by getting complete control of your courses, choosing the suitable pricing model, setting up automatic reminders, and up-sell offerings to watch your profits soar high. You can choose from different pricing models – subscriptions, one-time sales, bundles, memberships, etc. LearnDash supports multiple payment gateways such as PayPal, 2Checkout, Stripe, and 300 more with WooCommerce. You can also schedule content to reduce refund rates while increasing your revenue. It’s easy to get started with LearnDash with the resources it provides you so that you can create courses online quickly. Furthermore, you will get a 1-click WordPress install, the option to schedule your courses automatically to deliver content, and notification emails to inform users. It also features powerful user management and extends its capabilities by connecting to various tools.
TalentLMS
Use the training platform of TalentLMS to build a smart organization that’s focused on employee upskilling and growth. It provides an intuitive interface that is easy to access on all types of devices to help learners use it anytime they want. This platform allows creating courses easily with a few clicks, adding users, and getting started faster, instead of taking lengthy setups. You personalize it to match your branding and language to enhance learners’ experiences. It offers:
Onboarding training Compliance training Customer training Sales training Partner training
You get an extensive library of pre-made courses covering soft skills for learners to help them get more success at work.
Eduflow
Leverage an easy-to-use and powerful LMS platform of Eduflow to manage and create social learning. This scalable tool has the proven potential to generate better results for organizations. In fact, 1000+ organizations trust this platform, including Google, Hyper Island, and more. Eduflow makes course creation a delight, never a drag. It empowers you to design courses, even the most complex ones, quickly using world-class authoring. It offers maximum freedom and flexibility to be innovative, without compromising user experience. You can use its powerful editor to effortlessly design your courses and look professional yet beautiful across all screens. In addition, upload files, import your SCORM packages, and embed content from hundreds of different tools. Drive meaningful learning with better collaboration and feedback from instructors, managers, and experts, apart from quizzes and videos. Make the learning process more memorable and engaging through peer review and save instructors’ time. You can also create async activities to promote a sense of belonging and teamwork among the learners. Additionally, use data-driven insights to iterate and improve learning experiences. Eduflow lets you track performance by utilizing the data from the dashboard, progress charts, metadata, and scores. You can also utilize their comprehensive GraphQL API to access your learners’ data as you like. It also offers hundreds of pre-built, FREE course templates for activities like onboarding, sales, etc.
Brainier
The Brainier LMS is an enterprise learning and development solution focused on educating, empowering, and engaging learners more. This cloud-based is built for all types of learning activities, whether it’s in the office, remotely, or on your job site. Brainier helps you deliver powerful e-learning on all types of screens and devices, whether it’s a desktop, tablet, laptop, or mobile, through their native mobile application or a browser. It’s available in both iOS and Android marketplaces and lets you access content from anywhere. This platform can be highly customized for branding, lingo, and colors. As a result, you get superbly-looking skin that can facilitate an immersive learning experience and feels natural with your existing systems. It has won several accolades from G2, Brandon Hall Group, and more as a leading LMS due to its advanced features, flexibility, and enhanced learning experiences.
TalentCards
TalentCards is an excellent mobile training platform for frontline workers, deskless workers, and field workers. It allows you to create microlearning courses quickly in minutes and train your employees no matter where they work. Using this platform, you don’t have to pull your frontline employees away from their job for training; bring training directly to them via mobile and deliver information. Get started by creating card sets filled with the training material, adding users, inviting them for downloading the application, and sharing the cards with everyone to enable mobile access. This LMS leverages the true potential of microlearning to create an impact on learners. All they require is a few minutes of their time in a day to learn the skills learned in the training topics. It also delivers tangible results such as higher completion rates, lower learning costs, and more engagement. Start TalentCards for FREE.
Moodle
This list of LMS platforms won’t be complete with this name – Moodle, a popular learning platform. It has recently released a new version of Moodle 4.0 that comes with a new look and improved user experience to enhance online learning and teaching for learners, educators, and administrators. This platform features a new interface and smart tabbed navigation to redefine the learning experience. It helps the trainers and educators create courses easily and edit them to prioritize their tasks and reduce distractions. Visualize all your content with a click, view the structure, and track how far you have reached. You can find any piece of content easily and spot pending work. You can also improve focus by reducing visible content on your screen, collapsing blocks, and effortlessly accessing additional data when required. You get these features:
The option to turn off advanced features with a 1-click, save configuration settings, and import and export site configurations. Works as both consumer (an LTI platform) and an LTI 1.3 Advantage host (an LTI software provider) Accelerates onboarding with highlights and hints explaining the functionality and features of every page A drag-and-drop interface, instant preview, and custom, shareable reports to make informed decisions Notification of course changes via mobile app alerts and emails Built-in video conferencing using BigBlueButton’s open-source solution that lets you create breakout rooms, share notes, slides, videos, and audio, chat and communicate in real-time and get analytics of user participation View course deadlines in a dashboard and plan your tasks in a Calendar Integration with other learning tools and platforms through the LTI 1.3 Advantage protocol to offer a secure and seamless data exchange
Moodle is an open-source platform that’s globally supported and community-driven and already makes a difference with open, quality learning for all. It is supported by 70+ certified partners worldwide, including Nomad, Ballistic Learning, VidyaMantra, and more. If you decide to go with Moodle, you can host on these platforms.
Looop
Automate the complete process of learning and development (L&D) with Looop, from onboarding, and training to customer education and compliance. You can train your sales team, managers, and partners with this LMS platform and generate greater business impact. You can easily create campaigns and deliver useful resources when needed while automating your routine tasks to save time. Looop enables you to send resources automatically and communicate, whether the users are 100 or 100k. It also helps you visualize engagement, improve ROI, and iterate quickly on feedback. This next-gen LMS lets you easily create and upload content and deliver it directly to learners through SMS, team chat, email, or app. It is created for learning and impact and lets you gain insights with detailed analytics. It offers these features:
Smart, rule-based automation Pre-built, customizable templates, and resources to launch advanced campaigns, reducing the hassles of creating everything from scratch L&D learning community to share learning, solve problems and learn together Integration with your team chat, existing content, and HR stacks, such as Salesforce, Google SSO, Drive, Okta, Slack, Teams, iOS/Android apps, LinkedIn Learning, SCORM, AICC, and more.
SkyPrep
More than 1000k+ learners have used SkyPrep to upskill themselves. It is an intuitive LMS designed to meet the expectations of the modern workforce. It helps you automate training, offer distance learning, and boost employee productivity. SkyPrep streamlines employee onboarding and gets them working from day one. It also helps the employees grow and the organization scale efficiently. With customer training, you can build trust, strengthen relationships, and support customers. Furthermore, centralize your compliance records in a single place and safeguard your company. It offers webinar tools to digitize your classroom experience and provides robust e-commerce tools to monetize courses. SkyPrep has user-friendly software for both learners and admins and is fairly easy to start with creating and running courses. It offers social learning, gamification, and advanced learning features to enhance employee engagement.
Conclusion
Learning Management Systems are a great way to deliver your courses and training online and improve their accessibility and usage. It comes with helpful features to save you time and money, ease your work, meet security and compliance needs, and improve the overall learning experience for users.
