Expertus survey reveals increasing frustration with “old school” LMSs and a growing desire for next-gen LMS capabilities like real-time integration, advanced reporting and mobile access

Santa Clara, CA – January 17, 2014 – Expertus released today their much anticipated ‘Future State of the LMS’ research report. Detailing what today’s LMS buyers want and how their current LMSs stack up, the report polled 358 top learning leaders. Three key findings included:

  1. Only 40% of learning organizations are happy with their existing LMS and its ability to handle advanced learning capabilities
  2. The top three desired features for next-gen LMSs are superior flexibility, real-time integration and advanced analytics
  3. Social and mobile accessibility are also trending among top learning needs

Read full report here.

“Expertus is fully committed to delivering what’s next in learning software and solutions… today,” Ramesh Ramani, Expertus’ President and CEO, said. “That’s why we regularly poll our industry’s CLOs, thought leaders and analysts to deem what’s most critical for achieving the current and future learning goals of the world’s top enterprises.”

Frustration with Existing LMSs
60% of the learning leaders polled said that their current legacy LMS (built in the ‘90s to the mid-2000s) was “very ineffective” or only “somewhat effective” at performing next-gen capabilities. This shows a lot of opportunity for improvement in LMS applications or better education and expectation setting with regards to what an older LMS can and should provide.

Key Next-gen LMS Capabilities
An impressive 84% of survey participants selected “advanced reporting” as a must have feature for their next LMS, as well as 78% marking “real-time integration” and 70% noting “personalization”.

In regards to reporting, one learning executive that was surveyed remarked… “Creation of new ad hoc and customized reports from the administrator and manager sides would be useful to meet the unique reporting needs of the organization. Managers always come up with new ways they would like to slice the data and usually we can’t help them because the reports we have aren’t flexible. Data lives in the database, we just can’t get to it.”

As for integration, connecting in real-time with Performance Management Systems was mentioned as the top need because respondents see the opportunity to identify, and fill, gaps in training and accelerate the achievement of performance goals and objectives. Surprisingly, only 23% of participants currently have this integration!

The five most valuable personalization areas cited were: “personal training plans” (29%), “profile data – courses pushed” (28%), “actions taken – courses pushed” (9%), “other” (9%) and “delivery preferences” (5%). However, the most telling statistic was that 21% of pollees selected “all of the above” for personalization, as this quote references… “All of the above (for LMS personalization) would be most valuable. Employees have unique training needs and learning styles. The one-size-fits-all approach that many LMSs currently have does not work and frustrates many learners.”

Trending Learning Needs
In regards to determining what social learning capabilities are most valuable to modern learning organizations, questions surrounding this topic received 45% more responses than anything else! This indicates a lot of pent-up, or unmet, demand for social learning features – and based on the survey’s mentions, the more the better. In fact, one-in-five respondents want all the social learning features they can have. One participant replied… “All of these social aspects are important. It’s how people live − how we get things done outside of work − why should it be different (harder) at work?”

The survey’s findings also pointed to a rapidly growing demand for mobile learning…

  • More than half of the survey’s respondents’ LMSs support eLearning devices and delivery methods
  • However, fewer than half supported any mobile phone platforms or other non-Internet, playback of content or content synchronization

It’s important to note that mobile learning platforms are expected to grow dramatically since more than 85% of millennials now carry smartphones and many are eschewing laptops and eBooks for smartphones.

To read the ‘Future State of the LMS’ in its entirety or access other Expertus research reports, please visit the company online at expertus.com/resources/.

###

More Resources & Information

About Expertus & ExpertusONE
Expertus delivers next-gen, cloud-based learning management system technology that represents a whole new way of thinking about learning. Based in Silicon Valley, Expertus serves customers from offices in the US, Europe and Asia, and provides a full range of LMS delivery and support services to ensure smooth transitions from legacy systems, rapid technology deployment and sustained learning success.

The company’s flagship product, ExpertusONE, is an enterprise-class, cloud LMS that learners, admins and executives love. Built with simplicity of use in mind, only ExpertusONE leverages the heuristic design principles developed by today’s most popular websites − Google, Facebook and Amazon − resulting in a user interface that’s incredibly easy to use, next-gen architecture that’s exceptionally simple to run and a highly productive learning ecosystem that rapidly builds learning value organization-wide.