Five years ago, only large, rich associations could afford the substantial investment of purchasing and deploying an LMS and online content.  With the advent of the cloud and software-as-a-service business model, association LMS solutions are no longer cost prohibitive or complex. As a result, associations of all sizes are adopting learning technology at an alarming rate and some of the most exciting LMS advancements are happening in the association LMS space.  In my review of almost a hundred LMS solutions in the last couple of years, I’ve found 20 LMS vendors who focus on association solutions. An association LMS is special kind of LMS.  Association LMS systems are similar to employee LMSs but have richer features sets to attract voluntary learners and members, build a community, integrate with an AMS and sell complex continuing education.  Many employee LMS vendors think and say that they are also good for associations but they are wrong. Register for the "Top 10 Features of Association LMS Webinar" to learn what LMS features associations really need to drive content revenue. World’s Best Association LMS Case Studies Below are links to 12 diverse association LMS case studies from 12 different LMS vendors.  If you read through these studies, you will find that these associations [...] The post World’s Best Association LMS Case Studies appeared first on Talented Learning.

There are over 80,000 professional associations in the U.S. alone.  Each of these organizations is involved in providing education opportunities as a member benefit or incremental revenue stream.  Historically, the association content medium was live presentations at annual trade shows or physical books, but over the last five years, due to the emergence of the cloud and SaaS business model, virtual classrooms, online learning and mobile learning ecommerce has exploded. The foundation of the association training business is the Learning Management System (LMS).  Not a traditional employee LMS, but an association LMS.  The two are very different and associations waste a lot of time evaluating the former.  Employee LMSs are geared towards compliance and HR issues, but association LMSs are about making money. Associations’ training for business focus requires enhanced LMS professional services and functionality to attract and engage learners, sell content, manage complex continuing education and uniquely integrate into the association technological and business process ecosystem.  Register for our upcoming "Top 10 Features of Association LMS Webinar" to learn more about the LMS features associations really need to drive content revenue.   Top 10 Association LMS Solutions in the World We’ve reviewed 100 LMSs in the last two years and at least 20 LMSs focus on [...] The post Top 10 Association LMS Solutions in the World appeared first on Talented Learning.

Last week, Workday announced a second half 2016 release of Workday Learning - their homegrown learning management system (LMS) that will be fully integrated into their enterprise suite of finance and HR products.    This is big news.  Change is in the air. Workday, founded by ex-PeopleSoft execs in 2005, disrupted the enterprise software industry when they built a pure cloud, affordable, easy to deploy and use, multitenant solution to compete with Oracle, SAP and the rest.  Just like Facebook or eBay all of Workday’s customers are on the exact same version of the application.  This ensures that every dollar Workday invests in research, customer support and professional services directly benefits every one of their 900 plus customers. Conversely, even though they are trying to get to all customers on their cloud, SAP and Oracle have legacy applications and customers they need to support and that dilutes their focus and limits the effectiveness of their investment.  Workday’s focused cloud approach allows them to build their own solution from the ground up faster and better than cobbling together acquired vendor solutions which is the strategy of most of their competitors. I’m a research analyst that studies the global learning technology market.  I’ve personally reviewed [...] The post Workday Announces New LMS — My Thoughts appeared first on Talented Learning.

    If you ask any sales professional in the world what Salesforce.com does, they would know even if they do not use it.  If you any ask most HR and training professionals what Salesforce does, you will get vacant stares and the occasional "Use the Salesforce, Luke" quip.  HR/Training and sales pros live in two different worlds (in a galaxy far, far, away). So what could Salesforce possibly have in common with a learning management system (LMS)?  As it turns out, a lot if you have an extended enterprise LMS.   What is Salesforce.com? Salesforce is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) software solution. Salesforce can do a wide variety of things but at its core it manages all sales operational activities and data about your prospects and customers.  It is the sales person’s and a sales organization’s daily tool and crutch.  As a sales individual, it keeps track of your territory, target accounts, contacts, sales opportunities and documents all marketing and sales interactions within those elements.  Sales leaders and company executives get macro rolled up sales performance reporting, make forecasts, manage pipelines and run their sales business real-time.   Salesforce even keeps managing the prospect after conversion to a [...] The post Salesforce.com + LMS = Measurable Training Bliss appeared first on Talented Learning.

  Selling online learning content is a huge and rapidly growing business in 2015.  Corporations, associations, universities, training companies, public institutions and individual subject matter experts are all creating and selling content on every conceivable topic. The content providers are in fierce competition with each other for learners resulting in significant industry innovation in marketing tactics, content design, user engagement and learning technology.  Plenty of reasons are driving the demand for the content, but I believe the two biggest factors are 1) Closing the gap between the world’s educational system and the skills actually needed by employers and 2) Ongoing professional continuing education.  The business of selling content, not to your own employees, but to others is called extended enterprise learning. There are two main business models for selling learning content: Business to Consumer (B2C) — Sell content to individual learners directly Business to Business (B2B) — Sell content in bulk to organization for their learners To sell online content in either model, you need an extended enterprise LMS with ecommerce capability.  Over the last 20 months I have conducted in-depth reviews of 102 LMS solutions and have found 85 that promote some level of ecommerce but there is a wide diversity of capabilities.  The biggest difference is primarily due to whether the LMS [...] The post LMS eCommerce: B2C and B2B Feature Sets appeared first on Talented Learning.

By Gauri Reyes, frequent contributor to the Daily Mindflash blog Often, we think of corporate online training as synonymous with employee development. Certainly, internal training is critical, especially in such learning areas as on-boarding, product training, leadership development, and closing. But, companies are also creatively using online training to put external groups "in the know", particularly partners/resellers/vendors and customers. A host of benefits can be reaped by consciously providing customer training, consumer education and community building opportunities through online training. Meet your customers where they are increasingly congregating—in the cloud—and consider the following focus areas for educating your customers. Leveraging Innovation Ideas Your customers can be an objective source of inspiration for innovation ideas. Consider creating training modules which are, in effect, focus group vehicles. Introduce your customers to the product ideas you are considering through online training, and leverage embedded surveys, quizzes, social media, and mobile enablement technologies to have conversations with your customers. Or, create idea-generation contests and challenges that are communicated via online training modules. An advantage of using online training as a vehicle for customer communication is that your LMS’ built-in reporting capabilities allow you to gather advanced customer data analytics that you may be unable to collect easily via [...] The post 5 Reasons to Put Your Customers "In the Know" appeared first on Talented Learning.

LMSs didn’t die.  They evolved and today we recognize them.   Quick LMS History Corporate LMSs were invented almost 30 years ago to manage and report on the training and compliance of their employees and contractors.  They were expensive to purchase, implement, maintain, host, upgrade and replace.  Much of the investment was upfront and only the largest companies or companies with the most compliance risk exposure could afford an LMS. Every LMS tried to be all things to all types of customers in all industries.  The field of LMS competitors for the first 15 years or so was limited to an evolving 12-15 viable yet dismally average, bloated solutions. The LMS market started changing after the dot com bust in 2001.  LMS companies (and many software companies) were top heavy, poorly run organizations and the strong gobbled up the weak.  A steady flurry of acquisitions disrupted customers’ lives but never the market as a whole.  Innovation was stagnant and most LMS vendor effort was invested in stealing customers from one another. Starting around 2010, the market began changing again.  LMS and performance management companies started merging and then the big HR/talent players acquired them.   SAP acquired SuccessFactors who had acquired [...] The post 2015 Talented Learning LMS Vendor Award Recipients appeared first on Talented Learning.

Getting Started With gomo Learning Get started creating HTML5 adaptive and responsive eLearning with gomo Learning! This video will introduce you to some of the key features of gomo Learning to help you create your own beautiful multi-device content. Specifically, it covers the following topics: how to log on, how to set up a new project, how to add content and how to use our intuitive content editor, as well as how to preview and publish your project. The post Getting Started With gomo Learning appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.

Lectora Inspire V11 Tutorial: Getting Started This Lectora Inspire V11 Tutorial presents how this easy-to-use authoring tool provides you with several options to begin creating your e-Learning courses. The post Lectora Inspire V11 Tutorial: Getting Started appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.

Lectora Inspire V11 Tutorial: Bring Your e-Learning Courses to Life with Characters in Lectora V11 This Lectora Inspire V11 Tutorial presents how to incorporate characters in your e-Learning course and take advantage of the fifteen different character poses in Lectora V11 e-Learning software. The post Lectora Inspire V11 Tutorial: Bring Your e-Learning Courses to Life with Characters in Lectora V11 appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.