Are You Leveraging the Full Power of Your LMS?

In the learning management system (LMS) market, business is booming. From recent reports, it’s estimated to nearly quadruple in size from 2018 to 2023. Fueled by the increased need to provide remote learning and operations during the pandemic, the LMS has become a critical component of L&D strategy. An LMS can be a powerful tool to support learning through:

• Smart administration
• Effective learning engagement
• Granular learning analytics

The key to leveraging the full power of your LMS is to better understand what it is capable of doing. Unlike using intranet sites or cloud-based collaboration tools, an LMS has automation capabilities and can provide detailed analysis of learning and engagement activities. Many organizations are turning to the LMS to become one-stop content and collaboration hubs to effectively connect their workforces and encourage coaching, communication, and knowledge transfer.

Let’s take a look at a few of the instances where your LMS can impact your business and your learning strategy. Ask yourself if it may be time to reassess your organization’s learning and business requirements over the coming decade and decide if it’s time to evaluate your current LMS.

Career Planning and Progression

Employees need to feel that their organizations are committed to their long-term career plans. As such, your LMS can provide specific learning paths to help learners connect with the training they need to upskill toward the careers they want to pursue. The pitfall many organizations encounter is that they try to use an intranet site to house learning resources. The problem here is that there is no intelligence behind all that content. Learners would need to know exactly what they want to learn and then search through a daunting list of potential courses.

Did you know that your LMS can support chatbots to help learners connect to the content they seek (and even content they might not know they’re looking for)? A chatbot agent works with very basic programming to help guide learners to the right content. Your employees can simply begin by asking a few questions and the chatbot can help determine what content from your library is the most relevant.

For example, if a learner demonstrates interest in people management skills, the chatbot can recommend specific courses in soft skills and management training. This can save a considerable amount of a learner’s time and reduce the frustration of searching manually. A key differentiator for an LMS over an intranet solution is that the LMS can house content libraries at the ready for quick queries.

Sales Training and Coaching

Your LMS can do more than connect learners to content. Some sales departments use their LMSs to connect new and existing sales associates with subject matter experts, managers, and mentors. By providing continuous check-ins and feedback on ongoing sales processes, sales associates can get the job support they need to succeed. 

Yes, this task could be achieved manually. However, the LMS provides a repository of all the learning material, communication, and assessments that L&D leaders need to tie learning back to the business and determine the ROI of the training. If coaching is done only through texts and emails (or even in person), there is little data to demonstrate the success of the coaching activities. Weekly (or even daily) assessments provide a clear data trail to identify areas of successful engagement and areas where improvement might be needed.

Prepare for Immersive Learning

Emerging learning technologies depend on the LMS to provide the architecture for learning content and resources. If you’re planning to expand your L&D technology scope to embrace virtual reality (VR) learning, augmented reality (AR) tools, metaverse learning, or any kind of immersive learning, your LMS will be key to keeping learning front and center.

Let’s not forget that there will also be an enormous number of new data streams available. Having everything connected through your LMS can help you track:

• Learning engagement
• Completion of learning programs
• Assessments
• User-generated content

In VR alone, facilitators and instructors can monitor learners’ biometrics, physical posture, eye movements, and much more. Consider how valuable these pieces of information are when they work together to demonstrate how well learners are absorbing information or changing behavior appropriately.

LMS Can Automate Tasks

Many LMSs can provide intelligent agents to supply timely feedback or check-ins with learners throughout their learning journey. Simple emails that welcome new hires to their onboarding program can make a huge difference in how well they engage with the content. If the system detects that a learner is struggling with their program based on assessment scoring, an intelligent agent can automatically send resources to help. It can also alert facilitators about a potential issue.

The same is true for yearly or biyearly certifications. The LMS can automatically send alerts and learning programs directly to employees based on their job roles, functions, or certification requirements. This can save a great deal of time and reduce human error by managing repetitive tasks.
Finally, let’s not forget about training the trainers. Whether you need to train your LMS administrator to manage the system, or you want to outsource the work to a staff augmentation company, having the right skills to run the LMS is key to leveraging its power. Talk to us to learn more about your LMS’s capabilities. Together we can determine what functions are critical to your organization and your learning programs.