In order for the learning ecosystem within your organization to be effective, you need to combine multiple resources and technologies for facilitating learning and development. You need to provide your employees with the right tools for improving their knowledge and skills, but you also need to monitor their progress, so that you can step in whenever someone needs help and ensure that their training is actually effective.
This is why you should add an LMS (Learning Management System) to your organization’s learning ecosystem. Implementing a SaaS Learning Management System will help you not only create and deliver training courses, but also keep track of your learners’ progress and evaluate their performance, as well as reduce your learning and development costs.
Take a look at the key features that a SaaS Learning Management System can provide you with, followed by the most essential benefits of implementing it into your learning ecosystem, so that you can better understand why you need it.
Essential Features of a Learning Management System
Different SaaS LMS providers offer different solutions, each designed to meet the needs of a particular industry and niche. That is why you need to make sure that you choose a Learning Management System that will work perfectly for your organization, and looking at the features will help you make a smart decision. However, no matter what niche you are in, the following features are the most important to look for.
Anytime, Anywhere Access
Your Learning Management System should enable your learners to access the training material anytime they want and anywhere they are, regardless of what devices they are using. This encourages independent learning, as they can continually work on improving their skills and performance even when they are at home or on-the-go.
A SaaS Learning Management System provides a centralized knowledge hub that can be accessed online, so you can easily train not only your employees, but also your customers and partners all around the globe.
Simple Content Creation
A SaaS Learning Management System is intuitive, so you can easily create professional training courses and deliver them to your learners. The system is very easy to navigate and you can even import content from other LMSs.
What’s very important is to make sure that your LMS allows you to add documents, presentations, images and videos to your courses, as well as add online tests and quizzes. That way, your courses will be engaging and they will leave your learners hungry for more. Most importantly, such courses enriched with media and quizzes are great for better knowledge retention.
Easy Knowledge Sharing
Your LMS should enable your learners to share knowledge with one another and get real-time answers and advice on any issue related to their learning and training. They should be able to share various files and documents that can benefit their learning, but they should also be able to easily reach you or whoever is responsible for training delivery in your organization.
That is why your LMS should include various communication and collaboration tools, such as discussion forums, live chat, wikis and social media platforms, so that you and your learners can always communicate in real-time.
Tracking and Reporting
Tracking and reporting are some of the best features that a SaaS Learning Management System can provide you with. You can easily keep track of your learners’ progress and see what parts of the training they have completed well, and in which areas they need improvement.
Your LMS should provide you with detailed reports and analytics so that you can easily assess your learners and create certifications. With custom reports, you can gain a clear insight into the impact of your courses, so that you can make sure that they are effective and that you are truly helping your learners acquire the knowledge necessary for improving their performance.
Seamless Integration with Other Tools
Your elearning platform should seamlessly integrate with various third-party applications, which is something that nearly all SaaS LMS providers offer. You should be able to import courses and training materials from other LMSs. Also, you should make sure that your LMS can integrate with your CRM and email marketing software, as those integrations can significantly improve sales training.
Benefits of Including an LMS into Your Learning Ecosystem
A SaaS Learning Management System can help you centralize your eLearning resources and effectively train your employees. It can help you significantly cut employee training time and help your learners stay on top of required training. You can also cut learning and development costs since online training is considerably less expensive than traditional corporate training.
You can maintain compliance and, by tracking the progress of your learners, you can make sure that each and every one of them improves their performance and becomes much better at their job. You can get a clear insight into their strengths and weaknesses so that you can address them properly and help your learners advance in their career.
By measuring learning and identifying potential skill gaps, you can leverage that data in order to create personalized training that will help your employees improve their skills and performance. That way, you will ensure that they really contribute to your organization’s success.
Most importantly, an LMS can help you maximize knowledge retention, as you can create engaging courses enriched with various types of media that enhance learning. You can increase engagement even more by enabling gamification.
As you can see, an elearning tool can be an incredibly beneficial addition to your learning ecosystem. All SaaS LMS providers understand how important training is and how big of an impact it can have on an organization, regardless of industry or niche it operates in, which is why most of the LMS available provides all of the aforementioned features and more.
Summing up
Learning and development is an essential part of every organization, so make sure that you take the first step towards enhancing learning and improving performance and engagement by implementing an LMS.
Author Bio :
Kamy Anderson is an ed-tech enthusiast with a passion for writing on emerging technologies in the areas of corporate training and education. He is an expert in learning management system & elearning authoring tools – currently associated with ProProfs.