How to Compare LMS Platforms and Find the Best One For Your Company

Modern work is boundaryless and training should be too. In the last five years, traditional workplace experiences and roles have been disrupted and turned on their heads. Now, more than ever before, employees expect flexibility, agility, and adaptability. Companies must deliver on those expectations if they want to gain employee engagement, retention, and trust.

The learning experience is a critical part of this new way of work. Stakeholders are self-motivated; they want to learn and grow, and they want to be invested in the process. Companies must invest in technology to support this, or they’ll risk losing out on top talent because team members go elsewhere for better development.

An integrated learning platform—one that holistically combines the offerings of an LMS, LXP, and skills platform functionalities—is the best investment companies can make if they want to boost engagement, drive results, and build positive work environments for their increasingly distributed teams. To pick the best LMS platform for your company, you need to understand the new landscape of learning and development technology and take a close look at the features and functionalities that advanced training technologies have to offer.

Here’s everything you need to know.

Top LMS Features

When you’re training a diverse group of learners, you need tools on hand that improve the training experience. An LMS is more than a portal for training distribution; it is a tool that can be used to derive a better, more effective training strategy.

There are many LMS features to consider in your search for the right platform, but these will provide the most impact:

Rapid-Authoring Tool

Our rapid-authoring LMS tool, Interaction Studio, allows users to quickly generate online training modules with built-in tools to assist those who don’t have much time or experience. When working with our interaction studio, your company can quickly develop content, drive learner engagement, and boost learning impact by tracking progress and performance usage for your employees.

Learning Record Store

A learning record store stores essential learning interactions to help companies determine whether their training content is resonating with learners. The learning record store can find and report all training data from a variety of sources like MP4, YouTube, and gaming. The feature provides a complete view of the learner experience.

Data & Insights

This tool eliminates the need for guesswork or third-party resources to gather information critical to your business’s operations. It makes LMS reporting and monitoring easier than ever before—and ExpertusONE’s Insights tool was the first of its kind for enterprise learning.

Mobile Functionality

Mobile functionality in an LMS platform is crucial, especially now that many companies operate with hybrid and remote work styles. Offering them an LMS solution with a mobile LMS app can make training easier and support successful training initiatives.

Extensible Apps

To bring mobile functionality a step further, LMS platforms that offer integration into your current business operations behaviors (like Slack LMS, Salesforce LMS, or Microsoft Teams) will provide a one-stop solution for your employees and cut the confusion.

LMS Platform Uses

It is also important to consider the different kinds of learners your company is targeting when considering which LMS software is the right fit for you and your business. Many companies will need to meet a variety of training needs.

Employee Training

This kind of training includes onboarding modules, compliance training, and everything else in between. When targeting employees, it is important to keep in mind that they want to be engaged with their LMS, and are ultimately aiming to learn, grow, and upskill, so be sure to choose the LMS that can best suit their learning needs and boost employee retention.

Customer Training

Customer training offers the necessary access to information about the products and services they’ve purchased, allowing them to get the most out of their experience. Choosing the right LMS for them can foster trust between them and your business and increase sales and visibility in the process.

Partner Training

When running a business, it is essential that all parties involved share accurate and identical information with potential customers and clients. In short, you need partner training. These individuals need to be properly equipped to represent your company accurately and effectively through deep knowledge of your products, services, and offerings.

Sales-Team Training

Thorough training for your sales team is also essential, as they are typically client-facing employees and need to have an accurate and full understanding of what they are selling. A digital LMS platform will not only educate them on what they’re selling but how to sell it so that both the customer and your business benefit.

Compliance Training

Compliance training is regulated and mandatory industry training that provides employees with essential information about processes and procedures. It’s a non-negotiable in many industries and companies must keep thorough records of compliance training initiatives. Making sure compliance training courses are accurate and up-to-date—and tracked, measured, and reported—is the best way to ensure your company meets standards and passes any compliance audits that arise.

Onboarding Training

Onboarding training is a great way for new employees to understand the scope and requirements of their new position with your company. This will often include important resources to help support them in their new role. It has been shown that thorough and informative onboarding training leads to higher employee retention rates.

LMS vs. LXP vs. Integrated Learning Platform

In the search for the best training platform, decision-makers may wonder if they should choose an LMS, LXP, skills platform, or another type of learning technology. But this is an oversimplification of the challenge, and perhaps also an outdated perspective, too. The search for training technology is not “this or that” anymore. Learning platforms have advanced beyond this LMS vs. LXP dynamic. As learner needs have evolved, so have the technologies that are designed to serve them.

But an integrated learning platform, like ExpertusONE, serves businesses of all sizes and industries, allowing them to tailor their training materials to provide detailed courses, learning modules, and more. It’s an agile enterprise LMS that meets all of the needs of learners that would, once, have been addressed by other technologies.

How to Compare LMS Platforms

When comparing LMS platforms, you should ask yourself these questions:

Who are you training?

Employees? Partners? Customers? All of the above? The digital experience is crucial for a learning and development program because it determines how learners will engage with and reap the benefits of the training. Knowing who you are trying to reach will help you decide how to best provide them with the tools they need to succeed.

What are the gaps in your current training program?

Are you finding that your learners aren’t satisfied or that there are growing skills gaps in your business? Find an LMS that allows for synchronous meetings inside the platform, or offers gamification to encourage healthy competition. Start by identifying the issues you are currently facing and find a platform that solves them.

What are the training challenges you’re facing?

Are you finding yourself limited on time, disorganized, or concerned about delivering the proper training requirements, regulations, and information? Try using an LMS with an AI or one that automatically manages compliance training metrics.

Overall, you should search for an LMS that provides an improvement from the systems that are currently in place. It should provide a positive digital experience for recipients with tools tailored to their specific needs.

How to Choose an LMS: A Step-by-Step Guide

1. Identify Training Needs

Determine the training requirements for your business and understand who you are tailoring this training toward (employees, partners, customers, etc.). Additionally, you should consider whether or not your learners operate in the office or at home.

If there are any recurring issues with your current L&D platform or process, consider the needs that those issues have revealed. Perhaps you are witnessing low knowledge retention rates. In this case, you’d need to find a platform that can boost knowledge retention and make training more interactive.

2. Evaluate Scalability

Ensure that the LMS platform can accommodate your company’s size and specific needs. Don’t look only at the number of learners that you will need to train, consider also the variety of courses you should provide or the ways you plan to expand your L&D program in the long term.

For example, if your company has a solid training program and wants to generate revenue by providing training for outside organizations, you may look for a learning platform that offers integrated payments and eCommerce solutions.

3. Analyze User Interface and Experience

Make sure that the LMS is user-friendly and easy to navigate for all parties and across all devices. In this case, you should judge a book by its cover. Choose an LMS that looks good, embodies heuristic design principles, and delivers a top-notch user experience. This is not simply for show; good design means better training results. If your learners can easily navigate through the platform and find the information that they want and need, training will be more effective.

4. Assess Content Management Capabilities

Determine the kinds of content formats compatible with the LMS and make sure it supports updates to existing content to keep information up-to-date. ExpertusONE does this with the rapid-authoring tool and “complex versioning” capabilities.

To create more engaging training, you’ll want to be able to offer live meetings, videos, audio content, and interactive modules within the platform. Look for an LMS that provides all of these features.

5. Consider Integrations

An LMS platform is part of your larger tech stack, and it should play nicely with others. Identify the integrations you may require based on current enterprise systems. To manage training effectively, you’ll want to look for an LMS that can integrate with HR, CRM, and CMS platforms.

6. Review Reporting and Analytics Capabilities

Data is crucial for training. Make your life easier (and your program stronger) by choosing an LMS that offers reporting and analytics capabilities within the app. Look for real-time reporting, customization features, data visualization, progress tracking, and an easy-to-use interface.

7. Assess Administrative Features

Training managers are a crucial part of the overall success of your L&D program. Make sure that your technology serves them well. Understand the administrative features of the LMS, including but not limited to user management, role-based permissions, automated notifications, and AI features.

8. Evaluate Learning Path and Certification Management

Assess the LMS platform’s ability to create and manage learning paths or curricula, as well as completion certifications, badges, and more. This is crucial for compliance management so that you can meet industry standards and provide accurate reports.

9. Analyze Support and Training

Yes, when you invest in an LMS, you’re buying a system. But you are also buying into an L&D ecosystem and you want to find the right partner. Challenges arise with training, so make sure that you work with a vendor who provides support and training for the platform.

10. Assess Pricing and Cost Structure

This may seem obvious, but make sure you understand the pricing of the LMS and how it will be billed (subscription-based, one-time fee, per-user, etc.). Some platforms require start-up and maintenance fees, so this should also be a consideration.

When you’re considering the licensing of an LMS, also think about how you plan to scale: costs may change or increase depending on future uses of the platform and you want to be prepared.

Learn more about the ExpertusONE LMS. Contact us today for a free demo.