The 2016 LMS market is not what you think. We have spent the last two years interviewing hundreds of global learning technology professionals on both the vendor and practitioner sides of the fence.  We ask them all about business drivers, trends, market opportunities, use cases, demand, competition and measurable successes.  We incorporate what we learn from each conversation into our analysis and understanding of the learning technology market.  It’s not what we thought - it’s much better. Here are our top ten 2016 trends, observations and predictions for the LMS and broader learning technology market.    #10 Culture Shift Driving Epic Innovation in the LMS Market Culture shifts happen slowly and then instantly.  The cloud, mobile devices, social media, ecommerce, Google and bandwidth have changed everything especially the way we all learn.  Simultaneously, there has been a shift from having a career at one organization to having a career comprised of numerous strategic roles at many organizations. Now individuals and not organizations are responsible for lifelong learning and continuing education. Today’s learners, of any age, want to consume just-in-time resources and to leverage the collective knowledge to get to best content instantly, inexpensively and reliably.  To address the culture shift, hundreds of learning technology providers are taking bold and unprecedented leaps and are creating net new opportunities in the market.  The next nine LMS market trends, observations and predictions are in response to the culture shift.   #9 - Four Main Types of LMS in 2016 For decades, there were only two types of LMSs - academic and corporate.  The unique capabilities required to support students vs. corporate learners were too great to overcome and there was little crossover of demand. In 2016, it is not so simple.  We discovered the current 2016 market is made up of 4 broad types of LMS including corporate, academic, continuing education and association LMSs.  All four groups share much functionality but each type contains functionality, use case workflow, integrations and specialties not required in the other three types.  The unique requirements for each type is where all the innovation in our industry is occurring.   #8 - Free Trial, Cloud LMSs Disrupting the Market                                                                                                             Only a few years ago LMS buyers could only gain sandbox access to a LMS after a lengthy sales cycle.  Today, based on our recent survey of 75 LMS vendors, 37% of LMS vendors offer an instant free trial of their LMS directly from their website without speaking to a sales professional.  This means that buying organizations/individuals, tire kickers, students or competitors can click right now on leading free trial LMS providers such as AbsorbLMS, Docebo, LearnUpon, Lesson.ly, Litmos, Service Rocket, Skilljar, SmarterU, TalentLMS and sign up without a credit card to try the LMS from both an admin and learner perspective.  After some trial period the free trial customer can optionally convert to a paying customer.  The barrier of entry for new LMS providers and new LMS buyers has never been lower.   #7 - Workday LMS Poised to Disrupt in 2016 In 2015 Workday announced that they are building their own LMS from the ground up.  Workday, accustomed to disrupting the broader finance and HR enterprise software industry, has decided to now target LMS.   This is big news.  The behemoth TM providers such as Oracle or SuccessFactors devalued the LMS when they incorporated their LMSs into broader HR software suites and took their foot off the innovation accelerator. This has led to a stampede of innovative LMS vendors entering the marketplace to win stand-alone LMS opportunities.  Expect the Workday LMS to be cool, social, mobile and also anticipate Workday winning stand-alone LMS opportunities which is something most talent management LMS providers don’t often do.  We predict this new dynamic will force the TM providers to modernize their LMS offering or acquire standalone, NextGen LMS providers like Expertus, Docebo, eLogic Learning, tessello or Growth Engineering to catch up.   #6 - The Revival of the Rogue LMS I remember when every business unit or geographic location of a large organization bought and maintained their own LMS.  Over time, LMS vendors grew their solution capability to support the needs of the whole and the many simultaneously and the end of the departmental LMS era commenced.  LMS vendors sold the fiscal and operational advantages of one enterprise LMS supporting all employees, contractors, channel partners, prospect and customers. In the last five years the cloud (free trial) LMSs were invented and changed everything.  Cloud LMSs are inexpensive to own and quick to install. If a business unit or region feels unloved by HR, they just get their own rogue LMS.  This is especially true for those groups responsible for training external, non-employee audiences.  Some rogue LMS enablers include Mindflash, Litmos, Docebo, Accord, Skilljar and Talent LMS.   #5 - The LMS Fight for Professional Continuing Education Professionals in almost every industry (doctors, lawyers, architects, auditors, barbers, real estate agents) have mandatory training requirement to maintain their right to practice their profession.  To complicate matters, each state, province or country has its own regulations and licensing rules on most professions. Managing that complexity from a LMS standpoint is difficult and most free-trial, cloud LMSs can’t come close and the more traditional vendors do it poorly.  However, the market is huge with millions and millions of global adults consuming CE annually.  There is really only a handful of LMS vendors that specialize in the complexities of continuing education including Abila,  eLogic Learning, WBT Systems, Digitec Interactive, WebCourseworks, EthosCE, Cornerstone, SumTotal, Saba and YM Learning.    #4 - Vacuum of Professional Service LMS Vendors A byproduct of the free trial LMSs is that these vendors don’t build out professional service expertise.  If you are a mid-sized or larger company shopping for your second or third LMS, most free trial LMSs are not a great fit because buyers need more services help.  Migrating from a previous LMS or managing the complexities of multiple business units, integrations and languages is too much to figure out solo. Sophisticated buyers with deeper requirements need an experienced professional service team to guide them through the process to ensure success.  Professional services depth and breadth is a big differentiator in the marketplace and an easy place for a buyer to go wrong.  Vendors that provide full service capabilities include Blue Sky Broadcast, Blackboard, CommPartners, eLogic Learning, Expertus, WBT Systems,  YM Learning, Cornerstone, Saba and WebCourseworks.   #3 - Content, Content Everywhere As organizations arrive at the realization that creating anything but proprietary content for their employees is foolish, content focused companies have flooded the marketplace.   The problem previously was off-the-shelf content was terrible but now content exists on most topics at a variety of price/quality points. There are many different approaches, strategies and business models for getting content to organizations and their employees.  Vendors like BizLibrary, Grovo and Skillsoft provide an LMS that includes prepackaged content and the ability to support proprietary content.  Other vendors assume they have all the content you need to meet compliance or talent requirements like SurePeople, NavEx Global, 360 Training and QuestCE.   Content aggregators such as OpenSesame, Udemy, knoitall, Coursera, Lynda, Degreed and EdX are creating libraries of the world’s best content from private, public and university sources.  The content wars will rage on through 2016 and beyond.   #2 - Content Curation = Crowdsourcing Content If you can’t find off-the-shelf content, let your learners find it.  Curation is a fancy word that means taking the best user generated content and elevating it to featured content, formal content and sharing it more broadly - crowdsourcing.  For example, having your customers share projects, templates or workarounds they developed with your software product has broad appeal to other customers as well as internal product development and marketing teams. Curation is cutting edge and there is no consensus on the right way to do it.  To curate content it is important to have a learning platform that is completely socially enabled so that learners have profiles, contacts, news feeds, liking, posting, tagging, sharing and rating to facilitate the identification of great content.  Companies including tesselo, BraveNew, MindTickle, AccordLMS, Docebo, CommPartners and unleesh are leading the way in curation innovation.   #1- Doubling Down on Extended Enterprise In 2015 our #1 prediction was the explosive mainstream emergence of extended enterprise learning - the business of training your non-employees.  We will leave it as number one again this year because it is rampant in corporate, academic, association and continuing education sectors of the LMS market.  The biggest 2015 proof point was that LinkedIn purchased Lynda.com. Lynda is a large, very successful content aggregator. It allows individuals or corporations to consume unlimited content for only $25 a month.  Now this service is offered to LinkedIn’s 400 million users creating one of the world’s largest extended enterprise initiatives. For every one million LinkedIn users that buy this service, it generates $300 million in annual revenue! Extended enterprise learning projects don’t have to be big though.  Small training organizations, teachers and subject matter experts can easily find their way into the business of learning using platforms from LMS vendors like LearnUpon, AccessPlanIt, aNewSpring, Thought Industries, LogicBay, NetExam, Latitude Learning, Firmwater, Administrate, ViewCentral, SchoolKeep and Yardstick.   Conclusion We don’t have a crystal ball.  We do have a ton of current data, experience and research.  The broader culture shift is driving the innovation that exists in the learning technology market.  As the training content creation burden shifts from companies to content providers and individuals, new markets are evolving with patches of opportunity growing everywhere.  This won’t be sorted out in 2016 or even this decade.  Learning technology is now mainstream.  Fun times ahead.   Thanks for reading!   Learn More about the 2016 LMS Market Trends? The countdown continues to the release of our first, in-depth industry LMS report.   We’ll dig into these trends and many others as well as compare 75 LMS vendors.  If you want to be notified when we release the report and receive a discount because you were cool enough to let us know you are interested, please provide your info using form below. First Name* Last Name* Email Address* Company The post 2016 LMS Market Trends, Observations and Predictions appeared first on Talented Learning.

In 2016, most people are accustomed to social media and the conventions associated with profiles, friends, posts, liking and sharing.  But how are these new social business behaviors influencing social learning features of today’s learning management systems (LMS)? We wanted to find out, so we surveyed 74 diverse LMS vendors about the social learning functionality available in their platforms.  We targeted the LMS vendor community because these organizations have a vested interest in developing and supporting only the features they believe the market wants and they know they can sell. To achieve a representative sample of global demand, we limited each LMS vendor to a single survey response. Here is what we found: What’s Going on with the Social Learning LMS? Technically, social learning features were built into learning management systems long before social media was invented.  In the 1990s, the social LMS feature set included threaded discussions, coffee groups, collaboration centers, forums, FAQ and chat — typically occupying a seldom-used tab in the navigation menu. In reality, this social LMS feature set was all sales sizzle.  Social capabilities were underutilized, mainly because no one understood how to deploy, promote and support them.  Common logic was flawed — assuming training professionals and subject matter experts (SMEs) would regularly visit these social "spaces" and interact, keeping content fresh and learner engagement high.  Unfortunately, content quickly became stale and learning interaction ceased. But now, progressive LMS vendors are leveraging the recent business culture shift toward social media to fulfill the promise of social learning.  Social functionality has become integral to LMS solutions for extended enterprise, ecommerce and (to a lesser degree) employee LMS solutions.  These social LMS features serve many strategic business functions including: Community development and on-demand support Increased visibility to attract and retain volunteer learners Accelerated content curation and knowledge sharing Enhanced productivity for work groups and remote team projects Stronger collaboration for self-paced and live instructor content (peer-to-peer and peer-to-instructor) Effective drip, drip, drip micro learning and marketing With these LMS features, organizations have an opportunity to create and sustain learning communities around virtually any topic, course or idea.  More importantly, people can leverage all the social behaviors they apply elsewhere to the process of learning.  However, there is still tremendous room for improvement in designing and deploying social LMS capabilities. "Best practices" are still very much a work in process. Proof of Change? The large Talent Management providers are retaking a serious look at useful social learning after losing many pure LMS opportunities to the socially focused cloud LMSs.  For example, when finalizing this post I became aware of the new SAP Jam collaboration learning platform.  SAP is attempting to inject social learning into their platforms to adapt to the new way learners want to learn. The big talent LMS providers have been late to the social party- mainly because they focus only on employee development and not extended enterprise solutions where the social ROI is more evident.  With the recent announcement by Workday to release their own socially enabled LMS the other Talent providers are now following suit.  The behemoth laggards are finally back to investing in learning innovation.   Industry Social Learning LMS Feature Set In addition to conducting our LMS vendor survey, Talented Learning has also conducted over 100 in-depth LMS reviews in the last two years.  We have documented all the social features we encountered and divided them into two groups: basic and advanced complexity. Basic Social Learning LMS Features Billboards and news Email and text notifications Question and answer tools Discussion boards, threaded discussion, forums and best practice centers tied to classes or topics Blogs — Often these look more like threaded discussion than WordPress "Friending" and "following" - users must become "friends" to share deeper information User profile (and ability to see others’ profiles) with bios, user photos, biographies and status tracking visible in LMS Ability to like, share and comment on content in catalog Ability to create and share content in user profile and in peer newsfeeds Ability to recommend content to peers Content tagging (new word for keyword metadata) and search by tag Most popular content, highly rated content and frequently accessed content Find-the-expert functionality with people search and communications via chat or mail Allow users to create accounts, log in, port contacts, access feeds using their existing Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, SharePoint, Twitter or other existing social account credentials Advanced Social Learning LMS Features Integrated social interface - not a separate tab in the LMS Intra-content social discussion for learners and teachers Newsfeed, leaderboard, "find expert" or other social widgets on user homepage Integration with existing corporate social networks (like Yammer or Bloomfire) to share courses on timeline, invite users from contact list and share success in personal feeds Post course enrollments, completions, awards, badges, levels or other gamification progress to external social networks to encourage comments, competition and additional enrollments Personal activity feeds, journals and news streams Ability to provide peer "recommendations" or "kudos" Web conference events integrated into social groups - video, screen sharing and recording Capture chats, video chats and webinars. Record and use for discussion and continued learning Polling and response stats Seamless integration with LMS gamification features Volume of comments or level of social interaction can be used as criteria for learning activity completion Manage social engagement of users and have relative scores for users (more engagement = higher score) Conclusion Use of mainstream social media has been the guiding force for social learning LMS relevance.  New and progressive cloud LMS providers have been integrating the best of social media features with social learning — and guess what? It’s working. These features don’t replace popular social channels and tools nor are they intended to do so. However, with more sophisticated social capabilities integrated into LMS platforms, organizations are finally able to create sustainable learning communities within an LMS environment.  And that means the long-awaited benefits of more continuous, holistic formal and informal learning are beginning to be realized. Do you Like this Type of Data and Analysis? Much more is coming!  We are in the final stages of consolidating LMS survey data with our research from the last two years. The result will be our first comprehensive Buyers and Sellers LMS Almanac. Due to be released early this year the report will deeply define what is going on in the global LMS market.  It includes: Corporate and Extended Enterprise LMS Market Academic LMS Market Association and Continuing Education LMS Market Hundreds of features defined Dictionary of LMS Definitions and Acronyms Case Studies from Dozens of Vendors Over 50 Charts and Graphics Vendor Comparisons License and Pricing Guidelines 75 LMS Vendor Profiles Want us to notify you when we publish the report? Fill out the form below and you’ll quality for an "early bird" discount! First Name* Last Name* Email Address* Company The post Top Social Learning LMS Features appeared first on Talented Learning.

"How much does an LMS cost?"  As an LMS research analyst and vendor selection consultant, I get a version of that question often from both LMS buyers and sellers.   The true yet unsatisfying answer is that "it depends." With over 650 LMS solutions in the world there is no universal LMS license model nor commonly accepted standard price ranges. Licenses fees can be based on usage, learner records, location, concurrency or revenue share.  Many vendors require three year contracts and many more are monthly.  The license cost can be front loaded in year 1, grow with you or be contractually consistent over time. Every LMS provider has a unique pricing or license model based on a secret recipe of guesswork, functionality, industry, definition of user or usage, number of users, bandwidth consumption and overall service level agreement.  Most vendors think they are priced too high or too low and they are right.  Every LMS buyer has an unique, often undocumented set of business, functional, technical, professional service and support requirements. Aligning a buyer’s total set of requirements and  business model with a vendor’s capabilities and license model is the critical key to finding the right LMS partner at the right price. Easier said than done. Define the Undefinable Always up for a challenge, we at Talented Learning decided to sort this mess out for buyers, define the undefinable and develop an accurate guide for LMS pricing.  We gathered LMS pricing from vendor websites, public RFP results, interviewed buyers and asked the vendors.  We have been categorizing and defining the various licensing models, surveying vendor support for the various models and documenting pricing at any and every level as we go. In this post, we will define the different types of license models available in the LMS industry.  In follow-on posts we define known pricing tiers in each model and ranges of cost a buyer can expect to pay. Order, here we come.   LMS License Models There are at least 6 ways to license an LMS in 2016 with countless variations.   To further complicate matters there are multiple terms used to describe the same models — none are wrong.  Many LMS vendors offer multiple license model options.  All vendors have a preference for a certain model. We wanted to know not only the most common ways to license an LMS but also what were vendors’ preferred license models - if any - so we asked 74 diverse vendors in our recent 2015-2016 LMS Vendor Survey about their license habits. It turns out the industry is moving away from perpetual and named user models and moving towards usage based models.  This makes sense because there has always been buyer contention about having to pay for a user license even if the learner never logged in.  Additionally, the named user model never made sense for the extended enterprise (non-employee) audiences because it was too expensive for infrequent, unknown yet often numerous learners. Vendors, ever adapting to avoid unnecessary selling roadblocks, have introduced fairer models based on actual usage of the LMS.  Another takeaway is that unlimited user licenses and monthly pricing models are still popular with buyers but vendors would prefer not to sell that way - but will.  In the chart below, you can see a summary of vendor license model preferences. Each of the license models is defined below: Named User LMS License (Annual or Monthly) Named User is the most common license approach used for employees LMS and a long-lived model.  If you have 20,000 employees, you need 20,000 licenses and it does not matter if a learner logs into the LMS in a given time period or not.  If an employee retires or moves on an organization can inactivate the license, keep the user record for reporting purposes and reuse the license with a new employee. Per named user licenses are usually invoiced annually for the year in advance and the price is all inclusive of license, administrative support, hosting and maintenance.  Costs will only increases with the purchase of additional modules and/or users. The named user model license is not advantageous for extended enterprise audiences where users are generally unknown and usage can be high volume, sporadic and infrequent.  But the steady cost for a known set of users makes sense for many employee initiatives. The LMS industry seems to be moving away from named user model with only 26% of LMS vendors responding to our survey prefer the model. Actual Usage LMS License (Annual or Monthly) Actual Usage LMS Licensing is the most popular license model for both extended enterprise (non-employee) and employee LMS initiatives in 2016.  Associations, training companies, corporate channel, customer and other extended enterprise buyers can create any number - hundreds of thousands even - of active ongoing accounts but a buying organization only pays for active usage. Usage definition varies widely by vendor and business situation. Usage can be counted based on users logging in, registering for an event, buying a course or launching a course and can be measured and paid for monthly, quarterly or annually.  Typically vendors will provide discounts for a buyer contractual commitment to a certain minimum threshold of usage and cost.  Not all LMS vendors support all the combinations of usage licensing- some prefer logins per month, others prefer course registrations per year and some will negotiate a custom model. This flexibility of usage definition makes the model ideal for extended enterprise (non-employee) learning programs because buyers can negotiate or find agreeable models to their unique usage making the relative cost of the solution more agreeable. 48 of 74 (65%) LMS Vendors surveyed offer a flavor of actual usage model of licensing.   SaaS LMS License The Software as a Service (SaaS) LMS license is a broad and often vendor interpreted term in the LMS industry.  It can be interpreted broadly to mean any hosted or pure cloud LMS solution that has an ongoing monthly or annual subscription fee or more narrowly as only pure cloud, multitenant LMS solution.  Both the above usage and named user models can be considered a SaaS license.  It’s best to dig a little deeper to understand the exact model and not settle for a SaaS categorization.   Perpetual LMS License Perpetual pricing is not as popular as it was 10 years ago but it still exists.  Perpetual is how all licensing used to be before the cloud - you buy it up front, install it and pay annual maintenance to get tech support, updates and upgrades.  Although perpetual licenses can sometimes be found in a hosted manner in most cases perpetual is limited to locally or 3rd party installed LMSs. Organizations in highly regulated industries still tend to bring enterprise systems like an LMS in house and prefer perpetual for their employee solutions.  A perpetual license is a capitalized cost and paid up front.  Some buyers have use it or lose it budget and a perpetual license is ideal. The three or five-year total cost of ownership of an LMS is typically less when paying upfront for a license. 32% of LMS vendors surveyed offer a perpetual model option and only 10% state that they prefer the perpetual model.  Although the lump sum up front is tempting, getting a client to pay for the next 10 years straight is much more lucrative. Per Location LMS License The per location LMS license is a specialized model popular in retail, dealer, restaurant and other multi-location franchise industries.  A franchisor often provides franchisee locations with an LMS loaded with the appropriate content, roles, reports, etc. for a franchisee to succeed.  With the high turnover in these types of industries, counting users can be laborious for LMS vendor, franchisor and franchisee.  Per location licensing solves the complexities by assigning a fixed price per franchise location - not learners - making it easy for locations to be added over time at a predictable rate.  This also makes it easy for franchisors to charge franchisees a fee for the shared LMS service. Only 6% of vendors offer and prefer this approach to licensing.  I believe the need for this type of license has been replaced by an actual usage license.   Unlimited Use LMS License The unlimited use LMS licenses allow exactly that - unlimited users, courses, bandwidth.  They come in two distinct flavors - inexpensive and expensive.  Tiered pricing is the concept of a lower price/user with more users. With many vendors you can eventually have enough users or usage to enter their highest "unlimited users" tier which can be as low as 20,000 learners or as high as 250,000 or more. The biggest providers typically don’t have an unlimited tier because they see it as leaving money on the table.  On the other side of the spectrum, newer vendors just entering the marketplace offer an all you can eat license for nominal fees mainly because they are trying to get customers at any price.  Once a vendor has a regular flow of predictable license revenue they tend to move away from low cost unlimited usage and introduce tiered pricing over time.  42% of vendors of survey respondents offer some version of an unlimited use license option.   Conclusion Our research hasn’t led us to the "right" LMS license model in the industry.  Rather, we learned there are more variations of LMS license models than there are LMS vendors.  Based on dozens of variables, different LMS license models make more sense than others to different buyers.   Buyers have lots of choices.   As always, it is important to take a step back and completely define your LMS requirements and compare vendor pricing through the lens of a common license model to get an accurate view of true costs. Thanks for reading!   Want More Info About LMS Licenses? Do you want more detail about LMS licenses?  Price ranges?  Dozens of vendor pricing examples? Setup, configuration and implementation pricing? We’ve got it all and will be publishing it all in our upcoming 2016 Talented Learning LMS Buyers and Sellers Almanac.  Fill out the form below for advance notice of publication and an early bird discount on the cost! First Name* Last Name* Email Address* Company The post LMS License Models: What in the World is Going On? appeared first on Talented Learning.

As little as five years ago, it was common for an average LMS implementation to exceed $100,000.  An LMS needed to be installed and then configured in either the vendor’s data center or at a client location.   IT played a time-intensive, authoritarian role in the selection, deployment and maintenance of the LMS.  Firewalls, server sizing, bandwidth, database preference, historical data migrations, customizations and integrations were complex and problematic. A typical LMS implementation could last six-nine months and was more like off-roading than highway driving.  Unprepared buyers had huge expectations and vendors inevitably under delivered.  By the time the first learner ever hit the LMS, the honeymoon with the LMS vendor was long over.  Divorce was fiscally and politically out of the question. LMS Implementation Cost in 2016? So how much does a modern LMS implementation/configuration cost?  We wanted to find out.  In our recent Talented Learning 2015-2016 LMS Vendor Survey (full report to be published in March) we asked 74 diverse vendors about their typical implementation fees.   The chart below summarizes what we found:   None of the 74 vendors stated they have typical implementations over six-figures.  It is possible though to spend that much with more complex projects.   Surprisingly 26% of vendors have free implementations.  99% of vendors responded that their typical implementation/setup is under $50,000!  That’s truly an amazing market transformation in a relatively short time frame.  The shrinking LMS implementation fees has opened up LMS to the masses. The Cloud Redefines LMS Implementation The cloud LMSs changed everything.  The cost and time required to configure an LMS is now a fraction of what it used to be.  A cloud LMS is already installed and implemented in the cloud.  When an organization buys or licenses an LMS they only need to configure their own, private, secure area of the LMS.  The LMS vendor is responsible for the servers, security patches, backups, disaster recovery, updates, upgrades, browser support - everything.  The terror of the technology has been tamed and the buyer IT role has been reduced from autocrat to strategic project adviser. Additionally, vendors have productized common integrations and historical learning data migrations.  Integrations that used to take weeks and cost tens of thousands now can be activated instantly for free or near free.  Customizations are generally forbidden so buyers need to find one of the 650+ LMS vendors that meet their requirements. Removing the prohibitive fiscal barrier of implementation has also led to a dramatic expansion of the LMS marketplace.  If buyers are not happy they can fairly easily and inexpensively take their LMS business elsewhere.  All of this has led to a nice equilibrium in the industry of satisfied buyers and sellers.  It’s a regular love fest out here.   Change Breeds Opportunity and Danger With all the change comes new opportunities and dangers for buyers.  The good news is that there are many lower priced options but with that comes the risk of over or under buying.  I’ve seen buyers have entry level needs but pay top dollar for an unnecessary implementation.  I’ve seen the opposite where buyers with complex requirements think they can get by on a $10,000 assisted setup.  Neither scenario turns out well. Before buying or even shopping for an LMS, it is imperative for a buying organization to define the level of configuration/implementation support they will need.  It is fool’s errand to review LMSs that do not provide the appropriate level of professional services and support.  Most LMS vendors list the type of services they provide on their website so a buying organization just needs to get internal agreement on what they want, need and can afford.   Defining LMS Implementation Requirements Defining LMS professional services need is about asking the entire LMS selection team and stakeholder the right questions. Most organizations don’t know what they need until they get together and talk it through.  Here are some professional service LMS questions to ask, answer and use to qualify potential vendors: Do you have resources to support the LMS implementation and roll-out?  If so, what?  If not, what is the plan? Do you have an established project team and decision making process for the many in process implementation and configuration questions/decisions? Do you want onsite implementation support — at least some of the time? Scope of unique audiences and number of users?  Global, employee, extended enterprise? Do you want to migrate users, completion and progress data and content from an existing LMS? What are the types/media of learning you currently manage? What integrations do you require?  eCommerce, HCM, ERP, SSO, AMS? Do you need help defining your LMS governance or overall strategy? Do you need ROI definition and measurement help? FDA CFR Part 11 or federal validation services? Mobile and eLearning content strategy or development services? Adoption marketing services? Administrative training requirements? Global service teams? Is there a compelling go-live event date that must be achieved?  What and why?   Conclusion All of this translates into more organizations being able to afford an LMS and the rapid expansion of learning technology.  If an organization can start off for as little as free and prove a business case, asking for more money is a cinch.  Hundreds and hundreds of LMS vendors have flooded the market and all have different capabilities in the depth of professional services they can and do provide.  Making sure your LMS selection team is on the same page in regards to implementation/configuration needs will allow a buying organization to quickly disqualify many vendor options without the labor of investing a ton of time.  There is no sense evaluating or buying any vendor’s LMS at any price if they don’t provide the level of professional services required to make you successful.   Thanks for reading!   Want More Info About LMS Implementation Costs? What are LMS implementation price ranges by vendor?  What specific services do 74 different vendors provide? License models and license costs?  Market analysis, trends, observations on employee, channel and customer learning technology? Case studies?  Feature, acronym and leaning technology dictionaries? All of this data and much more is included in our upcoming 2016 Talented Learning LMS Buyers and Sellers Almanac to be published in March 2016.  Fill out the form below for advance notice of publication and an early bird discount on the cost! First Name* Last Name* Email Address* Company       The post Shrinking LMS Implementation Fees Drive Market Expansion appeared first on Talented Learning.

  It is too easy to overpay for an LMS in 2016.  In recent posts, I’ve described how cloud LMSs are disrupting and expanding the market with their customer friendly license models and shrinking implementation fees. They are at it again with a novel trend — public LMS pricing.  Cloud LMS vendors are already installed in the cloud allowing new clients to be on-boarded instantly with no sales interaction.  Cloud LMS vendors advertise their fees clearly.  If buyers think it is too high, so be it.  Cloud LMS vendors just need to keep a steady and growing flow of web traffic and a certain percentage will automatically convert into paying customers at any price point. The public pricing is typically provided in tiers based on number of learners, functionality or both.  A monthly or annual cost is standard.  Implementation and set up charges can be extra or factored into the tiered offering.   Some vendors charge additional for content storage, number of administrators and number of courses.  The range of LMS functionality available with each vendor is all over the board.  All of this can make comparing LMS pricing laborious and tricky.  For every LMS buyer big or small, there exists a range of vendor pricing so wide a ship could sail through it.   Real Life LMS Pricing To illustrate the range, I went public price shopping for a 1000-user annual license with standard LMS functionality needed for employee learners.  I only captured vendors who provided pricing specifically at the 1000 user tier to keep the results relevant.   I found solutions from free to $27,500/year with similar capabilities.  Check out this diversity from a dozen of LMS vendors with public LMS pricing: $0/year - Coggno (Free LMS and only pay for content) $2,574/year - JoomlaLMS $4,188/year - TalentLMS $6,108/year - Big Step Consulting Inc. $7,800/year - SmarterU.com $8,940/year - Accord LMS $9,588/year - LearnUpon $11,690/year Paradiso Solutions $12,000/year - ICS Learning Group’ $17,900/year - Mindflash $24,000/year - Skilljar $27,500/year - TOPYX (for any license level) From private pricing I’ve seen, I know definitively pricing at 1000 users can top $50,000/year.  What does all this mean?  It means that even with publicly available pricing LMS buyers can and do overpay.   If there is at least a $27,500/year  range on a 1000 user LMS with simple requirements,  imagine what it is  at 10,000, 35,000 or 100,000 learners mixed with complexity and private pricing.  In the many large-scale LMS selections I run,  I commonly see vendor price ranges in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Public pricing proves it.   Conclusion It is foolish to pay more than you have to and get nothing in return but it is impossible to know if you are overpaying if you first don’t define your LMS requirements.  Determine exactly what you need now and over the next 3 years and use the requirements to compare the vendors apples-to-apples on requirements, pricing and reputation.  Smart buyers will be able to save a significant amount of cash they can invest in content or other program improvements.  If all of this sounds time consuming, complex and risky, well, it is unless you know a certain LMS selection consultant that has it all figured out. Thanks for reading! 2016 LMS Almanac:  Corporate LMS Edition It’s almost here folks and it is good.  The 2016 LMS Almanac: Corporate LMS Edition will help LMS buyers cut through all the fluff in the industry and get a true view of what is going on.   Deep detail and statistics about the corporate LMS market trends, 75 vendors profiles, 100+ comparison graphics and charts, 100+ case studies, learning tech dictionary and more.   If you are looking for an LMS for your employees, channel partners or customers, this report is vital to helping you quickly qualify vendors and find the best for you.  Fill out the form below to be notified of the impending release and receive an early-bird discount: First Name* Last Name* Email Address* Company     The post Public LMS Pricing: Proof You Can Overpay appeared first on Talented Learning.

Nearly 700 LMS vendors compete in today’s LMS marketplace.  These LMS vendors range from global software companies to tiny cloud vendors.  Why are there so many?  How do they all survive?  Who is doing all this buying? I believe a combination of the cloud, SaaS and rise of extended enterprise learning can help explain the spike.   The Cloud and SaaS Business Model Cloud technology has lowered the barrier of market entry for LMS vendors.  New LMS vendors with minimal investment can create a SaaS cloud LMS of limited scope to target a specific business problem, industry or region with a low cost solution. The SaaS model implies that the vendor puts its LMS online in the cloud, and all of their customers access the same LMS via a web browser.  Every customer has its own unique, secure area with its own content, users and business rules, and is unaware of any fellow clients on the common platform.   This approach eliminates many technical considerations and implementation tasks/fees.  It also simplifies the process, and cost of support and maintenance.  This makes it a good deal for buyers and sellers if buyer requirements match seller functionality. In a SaaS model, customers pay a monthly or annual fee to use the platform — forever.  So with each new customer, the vendor builds an incremental, predictable, profitable and recurring revenue stream.  Revenue is reinvested in expanding functionality to broaden the vendor’s market and price point.  It’s a great business model, and I know over 100 vendors who think so, also!   Extended Enterprise is the Growth Sector If the cloud and SaaS model made new vendors possible, then extended enterprise learning gave them something in which to specialize. Corporations have the need to train both internal employees and their extended enterprise audiences — channel partners, customers and prospects.  The responsibility to train these distinct learner audiences many times falls to unrelated business units.  Each business unit can have its own budgets and buying cycles.  The purchase point for employee LMS initiatives is typically in human resources, while the purchase point for extended enterprise initiatives can be in sales, marketing, channel management or customer service departments.  Unless these groups explicitly decide to work together, they won’t.  This leads to multiple LMSs in the same corporation. Because extended enterprise LMS buyers are not from HR, they do not know the HR nomenclature, making it tough for them to describe their requirements and communicate with HR-focused LMS vendors.  Extended enterprise buyers know, for example, that they want to easily train their customers with online training, but do not know the terms LMS, authoring tool or SCORM.  They have a business problem they want to solve, and are looking for the most direct path to qualified, specialist vendors. In reaction to the market demand, LMS vendors have been founded specifically to target customer, channel, franchise, dealer, customer or prospect use cases.  With unique audience and purchase points, these vendors leave employee learning behind and compete freely anywhere in the global extended enterprise marketplace.  There is no dominating vendor in extended enterprise learning, encouraging even more vendors to enter the market. Conclusion All of this has led to a fragmentation of the corporate LMS market.  There is now an LMS for every industry, need and budget, from individuals to the largest global corporations.  Due to a better license model and technical efficiency of the cloud, new LMS vendors have flooded the market.  Many have chosen to target the extended enterprise market because of the independent, non-HR buying point.  Taken together, it is a perfect storm for fierce competition.  Fun times ahead! Thanks for reading!   New Webinar — State of the 2016 LMS Market 4/22/2016 1-1:45pm ET Have you struggled to understand the 2016 LMS market and the hundreds of LMS options?  You are not alone.  LMS buyers and sellers globally are lost. In the last two years, I reviewed 111 LMS vendors (and counting) after spending 13 years selling high-end LMSs.  Let me, John Leh, sort it all out for you.  With the evolution of cloud LMS providers, the market has shifted from behemoth generalists to nimble specialists.  Gone are the two oceans of academic and corporate LMSs, replaced by 675+ ponds of specialization.  There are LMSs for every industry, business need, organizational size and budget. In this fast paced webinar, I will discuss: * Top 5 trends driving the LMS marketplace * 4 Types of 2016 LMS solutions * Common and unique feature sets of the 4 types * LMS Vendor examples in each type * Real life case studies Register now, we hope to see you there!  It’s going to be a busy session. The post Why So Many LMS Vendors? appeared first on Talented Learning.

Following a good night’s sleep after a crazy two days at Learning Technologies 2016, the gomo team have been catching up on the conversations we had with everyone who visited us. As we continue to build, develop and enhance the gomo learning suite, Learning Technologies 2016 gave us the opportunity to reveal the new gomo central native app.  The app is an extension of gomo central, our learner portal which allows learners to download and run courses and content offline on a tablet or smartphone.  When running a course offline (e.g. on a plane or train), tracking (via xAPI) is stored within the app and then synchronises back with gomo hosting upon reconnection. Chatting with MD Mike Alcock (gomo Mike) this morning ahead of this roundup, he said "We’ve been blown away by the response to the gomo central app. The ability to easily create and deliver courses that can be consumed offline on smartphones and tablets is something the industry has been waiting for. With gomo, you get full tracking via xAPI, even for courses delivered in the gomo central app. This means that we can give organisations the best of both worlds. Easy course creation and instant delivery to devices with full tracking. We believe that this a unique and game changing capability for our e-learning customers". The gomo central app builds on our strategy to provide flexibility in how content is distributed within an organisation to ensure content can reach the intended audience in the most effective way possible. The feedback from people who visited us was fantastic, and we can’t wait to see the app being used within our customers distribution strategies for learning resources. In addition to the launch of the app, from the conversations we had, the standout themes were: Team collaboration As gomo is a SaaS / hosted solution, one of the major benefits this provides is the ability to provide team collaboration. Not only can teams work on the same project at the same time, but gomo also includes a feedback / review capability, allowing reviewers to log tasks and comments when reviewing a course that is in production. True multi-device support gomo is built from the ground up to deliver true multi-device support without requiring any technical / development knowledge, allowing Learning Designers to do what they do best and focus on creating truly amazing content.  We have taken care of the complexities around this, so you don’t have to. Nor do you have to build multiple-versions of the course to run on desktop, tablet and smartphones.  A gomo built course will run on all of these devices from one codebase. Distribution options that suits your business We recognise and embrace the fact that not all organisations work in the same way. That is why we built gomo hosting to provide a variety of ways to distribute content within your organisation. The launch of the gomo central app now allows us to extend this reach further. Themes and customization When building courses in gomo, we have streamlined the editing interface to allow you to focus on creating great content. The look and feel is controlled by themes, with a number of themes, which can all be customised to match your brand, coming as standard with a gomo subscription or trial. However, if that does not go far enough, we can create a bespoke theme for you that meets your exact requirements. This can be applied to every course you build to ensure a consistent look and feel is achieved without the worry of having to select the right font, colour and size on every screen and every text element. Instant previews on every device gomo authoring tool provides an inbuilt review capability which includes the option to preview what it will look like on desktop, tablet and smartphone. Whilst this provides a great way to quickly check what your content will look like on these devices, we have also made it super-easy to preview your course on an actual device through the implementation of QR codes. If you have a QR code reader on your smartphone / tablet, just point it a gomo to preview your course on your actual device. We love exhibiting at Learning Technologies.  Not only does it give us the opportunity to meet prospective and existing customers but it also gives us great insight and feedback as to how we should be prioritising and shaping our roadmap over the next 12 months. This year’s event was also the first time all our companies from the Learning Technologies Group exhibited together.  This even included our newest family member, Rustici software -  an amazing achievement given the acquisition only completed a few days before! A huge thank you must go out to the event organisers, but also the gomo marketing team (the gomoteers) who ensured everything was in place and ran smoothly over the two days!  It certainly was busy, and by the end of day 2, Jake was exhausted! The post Learning Technologies 2016 Roundup appeared first on gomo Learning.

In case you needed yet another acronym, Bring your own technology (or BYOT) is a workplace policy that makes it easier for you, your colleagues and your business as a whole to work, collaborate and learn. If you work in an office, you will most likely leave your smartphone on your desk all day by default. The same goes for nearly everyone else in your office - in 2016, everybody has their own device and will carry it almost everywhere with them, so why not begin taking advantage of it? Introducing a BYOT policy and fostering a connected workforce presents very exciting possibilities for organisations, from how a business communicates but also to how it learns and thinks. Gone are the days of mobiles and personal laptops being seen as a distraction or hindrance, today they provide some pretty exciting means of collaboration and learning. With that in mind, we’re delving a little deeper and looking at five reasons BYOT is pretty exciting for your organisation… Collaborate Flexible working opportunities are quickly becoming less of a perk and more the accepted norm, meaning it’s important staff have the means in place to work most effectively despite not being sat in the same room. BYOT supports collaboration, with cloud-based applications such as Google Drive and Hangouts allowing your business to communicate and work together effectively, whether they are on the move to visit customers or working from home. Save money A company phone was once very much a job perk, but today having to carry a company iPhone or Galaxy S alongside your own, identical smartphone can be a bit of a hindrance. Not having to invest in company devices presents quite a cost saving, which is never a bad thing, while the use of personal devices for work (and learning) makes for a completely personalized experience. Users can integrate work and learning alongside a familiar look, feel and layout, keeping them in control of their content and presenting a non-threatening means of support. learning isn’t just about e-learning, an LMS and other (quite expensive) stuff Training interventions such as e-learning, performance support and classroom training form an important part of the workplace, although a personal smartphone is often a go-to choice for a quick fact check or YouTube tutorial. The rise of mobile devices and the implementation of BYOT can begin to cultivate a culture of informal learning, with staff turning to their devices for unscheduled means of learning to improve how they work. After all, the 70:20:10 framework suggests only 10% of learning takes place in a formal training environment, with BYOT strategies allowing mobile and tablets to be on hand in supporting learning in the workplace by doing, collaboration and more. BYOT can help to change the perception of learning Much of the working population may shudder when they hear the word e-learning after a rough experience with some dull, slow Flash training back in the day, but BYOT strategies and the use of connected technologies for learning can do a lot for the perception of formal training. Learning has historically existed very separately from the day-to-day jobs of staff, resulting in unloved LMS’ and a lot of unexplored training. Devices, BYOT strategies and training which integrates with the working and thinking of organisations helps to improve efficiency and the perception of learning. Make downtime useful Time without an internet connection can often mean time without learning, as devices and laptops require a connection back to an LMS or portal. Connectivity is often somewhat of an Achilles heel for mobile or remote learning, leaving learners pretty unstuck. Being mobile and having access to learning is great but if we can’t guarantee internet connection, there’s only so mobile we can be. The addition of native apps to gomo, however, bridges the gap between learner and learning even when connectivity is nowhere to be found. It’s the final piece of the BYOT puzzle - learners download the gomo central app, which can be branded, and download individual courses from the gomo cloud, leaving learners to roam to the ends of the earth and still access your organisation’s learning via the app. Creating the means for offline learning, and promoting the use of personal devices via BYOT, can lead to improved productivity, cohesion and collaboration through new and more flexible means of working. For more information on the gomo central app, join us for a detailed look at native apps for learning at our next webinar, taking place on 24th February. The post 5 reasons BYOT is super exciting for learning in your business appeared first on gomo Learning.

gomo learning, the multi-award winning cloud-based authoring suite, is delighted to announce an all-new offline distribution method, the gomo central app, which is set to revolutionize the delivery of e-learning using native apps. The latest innovation will give learners offline access to content on the smartphone or tablet of their choice. This is an important step for the e-learning industry, allowing authors to deliver learning content to personal devices ready for consumption with or without a WIFI or 4G connection. The gomo central app also supports xAPI tracking and dynamic content updates. It will be available to download from the Apple and Android app stores. "The evolution of gomo continues apace. In 2014, gomo started life as a pure HTML5 authoring tool. In 2015, we launched the gomo learning suite, allowing users to distribute content instantly from the gomo cloud. With the launch of the gomo central app, we now have a complete solution, catering fully for the needs of mobile and disconnected users. There is no other authoring tool in the world that offers the kind of content distribution capabilities of gomo. We now allow organisations to get content to learners instantly, on any device, with full offline access and reporting." Mike Alcock said. The gomo central app joins four other cloud-based learning distribution methods within the gomo learning suite. The end-to-end suite allows teams to seamlessly create, host, update and track multi-device learning from one tool. The North American launch of the gomo central app will take place at ATD ICE 2016 (22-25th May 2016), where the brand will exhibiting its multi-award winning learning suite.  The post gomo learning to revolutionize e-learning distribution with native app delivery appeared first on gomo Learning.

From backing up your photo library using iCloud to working ad-hoc in a spreadsheet through Google Drive, cloud technology has, over the past few years, become an integral part of our connected lives. What is SaaS? Software as a Service (SaaS) is the business model that many software providers use today (including us at gomo) to deliver programmes of software via the cloud. It brings whole suites of software into your browser, signalling a real shift in software delivery from the traditional means of paying for and installing a programme directly onto one computer. At first glance, there might not seem much of a difference between the two, but the SaaS model has huge benefits it can bring to e-learning teams. From a straight up cost saving to collaboration and constant product updates, here are some of the reasons SaaS is the way to go for e-learning authoring. Save money SaaS products across many industries come at the fraction of the cost of traditional, self-hosted software. You only pay what you use, often monitored per month, whereas a higher one-off fee is charged with self-hosted software, which is charged annually. A SaaS tool is particularly useful for organisations who only create e-learning for a portion of the year - or for the length of a project - as SaaS allows them to pay for a fixed amount of time and not for the whole year. Save time Software packages can be pretty big, so downloading them takes time… and installing them takes time too, which isn’t ideal if you need thirty users up and running with a tool. With SaaS, as soon as you purchase, you just log in and begin creating, saving a lot of time and letting you get on with what matters, building beautiful learning. Collaboration Because SaaS tools and products are based in the cloud, they allow teams to work collaboratively on a single project. This does wonders for productivity while ensuring that a team can benefit from the creative input of others throughout course development. Also, the latest version is saved back to the cloud servers for the next time, place or person who needs to work on it, easy peasy! Work anywhere No one likes last minute changes outside of office hours, but they do happen. SaaS allows a team to work from anywhere in the world, and without the software installed onto one particular computer, users can just log in and begin creating. Of course, you will need a computer and an internet connection to access your tool, but changes can be made wherever you end up, saving late night trips back to the office for minor amendments. Because gomo is a SaaS tool, it gives you an array of cloud-based e-learning distribution methods. SaaS also offers teams the opportunity to try a tool out for a period of days or weeks before deciding whether it’s something they want or need. This is important for allowing organisations to test out both the authoring side and the e-learning output side of things, both of which are equally important. To get an idea of how SaaS e-learning authoring can benefit your training team,  begin a free, 21-day small team trial of gomo today!   The post What is SaaS and what does it mean for e-learning? appeared first on gomo Learning.