I’ve been researching the global LMS market place for over 15 years -first as an LMS sales guy for 13 years and now as the lead learning technology analyst at Talented Learning.  In the last 20 months, I have personally reviewed 92 LMS solutions and I have a whole list I’m trying to get to. I’m not talking about a cursory website drive-by review either.  I spend a lot of time with each vendor and learn about their business and industry focus, customers, history and success stories before I ever take a look at the product.  In many cases, I even interview their customers about how they are using training and technology for their business. For my paying day job, I help LMS buyers define what they really need and then help find the best LMS for them. I’ve taken a good chunk of all that data, effort and experience and built it into Talented Learning’s fall webinar series.  We’ve  created 5 new webinars on all things LMS and extended enterprise.  I think all are extremely interesting, engaging and insightful, but I could be biased.  We’re ending the series with the 1st Annual Talented Learning LMS Vendors Awards Ceremony. I hope to see you at one or all! How to Drive Profit with a Channel LMS September 16th @1pm-1:30pm EST Sponsor:  BlueVolt Register now to learn how you can increase your channel’s sales and effectiveness with an LMS.  Companies rely more today than ever on their partners, franchisees and resellers to sell and support their products. But are you being smart about how you attract, train and support your channel? Led by myself, this 30 minute webinar will outline proven strategies to get more for less out of your channel.  I will cover the importance of certifying your partner sales team, enticing the channel to participate, providing just-in-time access to job aides for those on the go and how to use technology for training delivery.  I’ll outline some enticing new techniques and technologies I’ve discovered. An effective channel and partner training program delivered via an LMS deliver impressive business results.  Learn how to drive revenue and profit with your channel LMS. Register now for How to Drive Profit with a Channel LMS. Top 10 Features of an Association LMS October 7th @ 11am-12pm EDT Register Now! Sponsor:  WBT Systems If you work in member training or professional education for an association, institute or other member organization, you are going to want to join John Leh, CEO & Lead Analyst of Talented Learning, LLC and Mike Bourassa, of WBT Systems as they present the "Top 10 Features of an Association LMS" webinar on September 30th 11am-Noon EST. Educating members, selling content, providing continuing education credit and managing tradeshow activities are all challenges that associations and institutes face but not typical corporations. As a result, association LMSs need an enhanced feature set to support and they are tough to find. In this fast paced and detailed session, we will cover the following: -Why associations are using LMS technology -AMS vs. LMS -Top association training challenges -Top 10 LMS features needed by associations -Tips for selecting the right association LMS -Case studies, mini-demos and polling throughout Please register even if you can’t attend and we will send you a link to the session recording. Hope to see you there! LMS eCommerce — What Do You Really Need? October 30th @ 12pm-12:45 EDT Don’t be scared by ecommerce functionality.  I’ll teach you what you really need to know on our Halloween special.  The ability to sell content is a core concept of an ecommerce LMS. ecommerce LMSs are also called extended enterprise or training for business LMSs.  As a learning technology research analyst, I’ve reviewed almost 100 LMSs and have documented great variation in available ecommerce features.  It’s much deeper and more sophisticated than just having a shopping cart and check out functions. Some LMSs are geared for global commerce, selling to individuals, members or business to business.  The features sets for each scenarios is different.  It’s not enough to ask if an LMS vendor has ecommerce.  You need to define what you need. In this informative webinar, I’ll outline the different ecommerce feature sets that are available in today’s marketplace and even show some examples from a variety of LMS vendors.  If  you sell continuing education or online courses, this webinar is for you.  Register Now!   2015 Talented Learning LMS Vendors Awards Ceremony November 13th @ 12pm-1pm EDT Register Now! We spent the last 20 months reviewing almost 100 global LMS solutions.   We have literally spent hours with each digging into their features, business focus and capabilities.  We’ve been grouping, cataloging, ranking and regrouping, recataloging and reranking the LMSs the entire time.  We are now ready to reveal our understanding of the current global LMS landscape and the different types of LMS solutions that are available and who we think are the top 10 vendors in 10 different categories.  Categories include Top All-Purpose LMS, Extended Enterprise, Academic, Social and Gamified,  Association, eCommerce and more! Nobody in the world has dug as deep into the global LMS marketplace in the last two years.   We have a very unique take on what is really going on in the market.  If you are starting your research into LMSs or just want to know who is the best LMSs are, register now!   Thanks for reading!  Hope to see you at one of these webinars.   The post 5 New Extended Enterprise LMS Webinars this Fall! appeared first on Talented Learning.

There are hundreds of LMS vendors in the world.  Many are generalists that build comprehensive and confusing LMS products that can manage the learning for any type of user population including employees and the extended enterprise audiences.   The rest of the LMS vendors are specialists in a particular industry or business application of learning.  I’ve found that buyers who buy an LMS for their employees are content with the generalist LMSs.  Conversely, buyers of extended enterprise solutions are very picky.  These buyers tend not to be HR/training specialists but rather professionals from marketing, sales, operations or customer support. These training for business buyers focus on the business problem, solution and measuring the results.  They are not interested in asking permission from HR to use the employee LMS.  If they are tasked to train and certify new channel partners, customers or prospects, they want a solution and more importantly a partner that is experienced in doing exactly - and in many cases - only that.  If they want to sell content and drive revenue, they almost never consider a vendor with tons of talent management and compliance features. In the last 21 months at Talented Learning, we’ve been heads down studying the LMS industry.  We have conducted in-depth reviews of almost 100 vendors, helped dozens of LMS buyers and shared notes with countless extended enterprise experts around the globe.  We crunched all this data and have mapped the different types of LMSs that exist today and what buyers want, need and buy.  Over the coming months we will release a series of Top 10 nominations for the varying types of LMSs we categorized and name the best-of-the-best in our upcoming LMS Vendor Awards Ceremony webinar.   Top 10 Channel LMS Solutions in the World Here are our nominees for the Top 10 Channel LMS solutions in the world.  Every LMS on this list actively promotes channel learning on their website with product offerings, case studies, webinars and client testimonials. The nominated LMS solutions all have varying degrees of sophistication in core channel functionality including domain segmentation, ecommerce, social learning, globalization, broad content support, integration, analytics, mobile delivery, dynamic audience grouping and ease of use.  The vendors in this list range from self service "free-trial" LMSs to heavy duty solution providers. Who are the top 3 channel LMSs?  Tune into the Talented Learning LMS Vendor Awards Ceremony Webinar on 11/13 to find out.   In alphabetical order… BlueVolt  — BlueVolt has extensive expertise partnering with channel sales organizations to create, deliver and verify results-driven training.  The BlueVolt LMS provides a unique approach to measurable channel learning management by creating massive ecosystems of manufacturers, distributors, retailers and buying groups to share product knowledge.    Their targeted industry focus is building and tool industries like electrical, HVAC, plumbing, valves, lumber, welding and flooring.  They have taken gamification to the best level — awards that turn into actual cash or gift cards.  Check out a dozen examples of BlueVolt’s channel case studies here and my review here.   Digital Ignite - The Digital Ignite LMS is a pure extended enterprise LMS designed wholly for the business of high-stakes global training for business.  They provide a deep level of professional service expertise to provide hands-on active assistance in client success -during and after the implementation. DI comes loaded with tools to attract voluntary learners, build an active community of global learners, facilitate ecommerce and enable the growth of a channel business.  The user learner interface looks great and is as non-LMSey that I have seen.  Watch this recent webinar  recording and you will see some great global Intel live demo examples of channel learning and check out my recent review of Digital Ignite.   Docebo - The Docebo LMS is an economical, pure cloud, SaaS LMS designed to support common learning and elearning scenarios - easily.  You can gain access to a free trial of their LMS in minutes, create your channel partners areas, upload content and users and be ready to go live in a week.  They have a "connector" API integration strategy meaning you can turn integration on with a variety of 3rd party systems (virtual classroom, social media, CRM, HRIS, SSO, etc.) by checking a box.  As a result, they provide minimal implementation services and are frequently adopted by small and medium sized businesses deploying their first or second channel learning projects.  Check out their Autodesk, Veeam Software, Sealed Air and other cases here.   eLogic Learning - eLogic Learning is an all-purpose LMS that can support a lot of LMS scenarios well including channel learning.  Their LMS is powerful, deep and modern and they have a great reputation for customer service.  Solid domain segregation, ecommerce, notifications, gamification and analytics make eLogic a good solution for large scale franchise, dealer, agent, channel and partner solutions.  If you need a highly configurable LMS and you require expert guidance and help, eLogic Learning should be in your evaluation mix.  You can see samples of their customers’ successes here. New Webinar — "How to Drive Profit with a Channel LMS" — Register Now! Expertus  — Expertus is not your typical LMS provider.  They started off 17 years ago implementing other LMSs and encountered first-hand many of the functional and technical challenges of the traditional LMS industry.  They saw an opportunity and built their own LMS focusing on end learner usability and engagement making it ideal for the voluntary users of external sales and distribution channels.  Their cloud solution is based on a private cloud model so it can support complex integrations, customer specific workflow, SalesForce integration and other complexities mandated by large, global channel clients.  Here is my review of their LMS and a link to their channel learning section of their website.   LogicBay  — LogicBay is a pure partner LMS and even brand themselves as a Partner Relationship Management (PRM) software.  They developed their encompassing partner solution to specifically support global equipment dealer and partner networks.  They have been designing, hosting and supporting major training & development programs, including sales and service certifications, for companies of all sizes from small franchise systems to leading companies like Caterpillar, Daimler, Mercedes-Benz, Meritor and others for over a decade.  Check out these great LogicBay case studies.   Saba Software — Saba has been in extended enterprise solutions since the beginning of the LMS industry 20+ years ago.  A lot has happened in our industry since then but Saba is still here and still talking extended enterprise.   Although Saba is a TM system with lots of HR modules, their new pure cloud LMS still has plenty of aggressive channel learning functionality including domains, integration, analytics, ecommerce, social, gamification and their own virtual classroom tool.  They have some of the world’s best global organizations using them to manage their channel including Yum, Cisco, EMC, NetApp and hundreds more.  If you have global, large-scale external audiences, it’s hard to find a company or product with better channel credentials than Saba.  Some great examples of their channel clients are embedded in this recent webinar we did together and here is my review of their LMS.   SchoolKeep - SchoolKeep is an up and coming "free-trial" SaaS LMS.  Where many LMSs focus on the training administration, SchoolKeep puts the learner experience as the center of their platform resulting in better learning, increase retention via a pleasurable user experience.  Their LMS is mobile responsive and they have strong ecommerce capability including global taxation and international payments.  There is also an interesting CRM component tracking notifications, email opens and conversion tracking.  SchoolKeep provides a higher level of service than most free-trial LMSs and is a good choice to evaluate for new and growing channel learning projects.   Register for the  Talented Learning LMS Vendor Awards Ceremony Webinar and we’ll let you know our choice for the best Channel LMS in the world. TalentLMS  — The Talent LMS is a free-trial, pure cloud, SaaS LMS.  The LMS is simple and easy to setup, administer and use.  The TalentLMS is a great choice for your first LMS and maybe even your second if you are a small or medium business.  There are no implementation fees (or services) and if your usage scenarios are straightforward, it is hard to beat the license price and ease of this system.  Below is a video I created demonstrating some of the administrative and learner features of the TalentLMS from my trial account when I recently reviewed the TalentLMS.   ViewCentral - What do HP, Ariba, Synopsys, Abbott and many other companies have in common when it comes to channel and partner training? Yep, they use ViewCentral.  ViewCentral is a pure channel and customer LMS.  No need to talk to these guys if you want to manage employees.  They are focused on deploying some of the world’s most complex channel learning deployments for the software and hi-tech industry.  They can do professional level integration into global organizations, order processing systems, ecommerce, revenue recognition, training expenses and big data warehouses.  They are designed to allow for the selling of content in any global location, language, currency and taxation jurisdiction.  ViewCentral has some deep and informative resources on running a global channel training business on their website here.   Conclusion There you have it based on our research thus far — the top 10 channel LMS solutions in the world ideally suited to manage learning for external sales channel, partners, resellers, dealers or franchises.  The solutions are all very different.  Some assume self-service implementation and some assume months of effort to deploy an integrated global solution.  Some are good for any industry and others are dedicated to dominating one or two.  What do they all have in common?  They know that attracting voluntary users, building a community, selling content, changing behavior and making a measurable business impact with channel learning is the goal of most of their customers.   Thanks for reading!   Do You Need Help Finding the Right Channel LMS for You? I can help.  Use the form below to schedule a complimentary consultation call with myself — John Leh. [contact-form-7] The post Top 10 Channel LMS Solutions in the World appeared first on Talented Learning.

I’ve been collecting extended enterprise case studies from the global LMS community for almost two years.  I’m surprised by how few vendors take the time to tell their customers’ extended enterprise learning stories.  I really have to scour vendor sites and comb through an agonizing amount of employee LMS stories to find the gems I’m looking for.    A page full of client logos isn’t the same thing nor is a testimonial sentence on the website.  Many vendors try to pull off  "blinded" case studies where they talk all the great things they have achieved for an unnamed client.  I won’t even read these as I have no idea if they are fiction. I want facts.  Buyers want facts.  Together we are seeking extended enterprise stories with real clients experiencing a demonstrable return on investment.  Personally, I think case studies are the best possible sales tool because they help buyers self-educate as well as illustrate vendor credibility with similar clients solving identical business challenges.  So kudos to the 15 vendors I’ve identified who are doing a good job telling stories.  It means they are doing a great job with their clients or their clients wouldn’t be willing to be a public reference. Channel, Partner and Supplier Learning How do you get your external sales channel to look, act and perform the same or better than your internal sales team? Best-in-class organizations train and certify their sales and distribution channel using a learning management system (LMS) and proprietary online content.  These organizations have proven that educating their channel provides a measurable return on investment and more importantly a significant competitive advantage.  As a result, these organizations treat channel learning as an ongoing mission critical initiative. Proving the worth of channel learning is simple though.  Use your LMS  to provide channel learning completion reports and compare with channel performance business reports. Here are the most common business metrics positively impacted by channel learning: Channel partner sales, cross sales and up sales Sale of premium "certification" content Cost per training interaction Time to market with new products Time to proficiency for new channel partners and partner employees Cost of customer support Increase in customer satisfaction Who are the best Channel LMS is in the world?  Here are Talented Learning’s Top 10. Top 15 Channel, Partner, Franchise LMS Case Studies No wonder channel learning is such a big business.  In alphabetical order, here are  15 LMS case studies of world class organizations using an LMS to train and certify channel partners, suppliers and franchises and achieving a measurable result.  Do you have extended enterprise case studies that should be on this list, please reach out to Talented@TalentedLearning.com.   #1:  Affiliated Distributors LMS Vendor:  BlueVolt Affiliated Distributors (AD) is the largest wholesale buying and marketing group in North America, comprised of over 530 independent distributor companies with over 3,000 locations.  Using the BlueVolt LMS, AD has created an ecosystem of manufacturers, suppliers and distributors of all types.  Product manufacturers host weekly live product roll-out educational webcasts that reach hundreds of channel suppliers in one session that requires no trainer travel costs.   Manufacturing suppliers have increased their reach, reduced their product launch time from 3-6 months to one day and have experienced an exponential reduction in training costs. #2:  Autodesk LMS Vendor:  Docebo Autodesk is a world leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software and services.  The Autodesk Certified Instructor (ACI) program certifies instructors who can train users and organizations to help them obtain the greatest return on their Autodesk software investment.  The Docebo LMS supports targeted certification curriculum and even the ability for learners to upload video of themselves teaching to obtain a practical exam grade.  Autodesk lowered cost, improved consistency and expanded their global reach. #3:  Azlan, Hewlett-Packard LMS Vendor:  Growth Engineering Azlan, Europe’s largest value added reseller of networking products launched a "HP Sales Excellence" program for its distribution network. combing sales and product content for resellers.  Using Growth Engineering’s gamified LMS they encouraged competition to facilitate content completion among resellers.  Active learners in the portal outperform inactive users by 75% in year over year sales comparisons.  #4:  Bluebeam Software LMS Vendor:  Mindflash Bluebeam Software develops and sells software for PDF creation, editing and collaboration with significant market share in the architecture, engineering and construction industries.  Instead of using time intensive webinars to reach their audiences, Bluebeam wanted to get its resellers excited about selling so they launched a highly interactive, 3-tiered certification program on the Mindflash LMS.  The average reseller doubled sales as a result of completing the base tier certification.  Those resellers that completed all tiers averaged a 400% increase in sales. Register for the  Talented Learning LMS Vendor Awards Ceremony Webinar to find out who the best LMS vendors are in 10 categories. #5:  Chrysler Group LMS Vendor:  Latitude Learning Chrysler Group has approximately 6,000 dealerships in the US, Canada and over ninety other countries worldwide. Training and certification programs help establish consistent levels of performance throughout its large dealership network by allowing technicians to stay current with various certifications while training dealership personnel and selected suppliers in new product-related content, service and repair techniques and financing protocol.  Deployed on the Latitude Learning LMS, Chrysler achieved a significant decrease in training administrative costs as well as increased the the consistency of the Chrysler experience. #6:  Hewlett Packard LMS Vendor:  LogicBay HP uses LogicBay, a role-based, SaaS Web application, to streamline and manage all communications and content management between Product Development, Marketing and Sales within the Workstation Product Group. This reduced frustration among the functional teams, but most importantly increased responsiveness to the consumer with accurate information delivered on-time. In the channel, results showed that those sales reps who used the site and went through the associated sales development program outsold those who did not by 3X. #7:  Jiffy Lube LMS Vendor:  Blackboard Jiffy Lube earned this distinction for training on new services, customer service skills and leadership that resulted in a 900 percent increase in the number of stores at 100 percent certification, a reduction in turnover and a 93 percent franchisee approval rating. Jiffy Lube has experienced eight consecutive years of increased average revenue per customer and improved customer service scores. #8:  LPL Financial LMS Vendor:  SumTotal Systems LPL Financial is one of the nation’s leading financial services companies and the largest independent broker/dealer. LPL Financial offers industry-leading technology, training, service and unbiased research to more than 12,000 independent financial advisers nationwide.  Using SumTotal Systems LMS to reach its external  agent audience,  LPL increased the knowledge of agents, boosted agent retention, increased course completions by 30% and reduced their overall training expenditures by $75,000/quarter. #9:  Mace Business School LMS Vendor:  accessplanit Mace Business School provides learning and support services to key businesses in the Mace supply chain.   Its aim is to work closely with suppliers, offering a range of accredited management training courses, to maintain standards and compliance and improve performance within the supply chain for Mace clients.  Mace achieved a 30% reduction in admin resources, increased their client base by 200% and reduced reporting time by 50%. #10:  Massage Envy Spa LMS Vendor:  eLogic Learning Massage Envy Spa through its franchises is the leading provider of therapeutic massage in the United States. To guarantee a consistently excellent experience for customers in any franchise location, Massage Envy Spa provides world-class online training to all franchise employees.  Using the eLogic Learning eSSential LMS, Massage Envy Spa has increased their ability to support franchises, decreased time to ramp up new franchises and has  positively contributed to long-term success and growth of the organization. #11:  Medline University LMS Vendor: KMI Learning The nation’s largest privately held medical distribution company, Medline Industries, uses a KMI LMS and online education to educate medical professionals (partners) about Medline products and services.  In four years, they increased their registration reach from 15,000 users to almost 400,000! #12:  Real Mex Restaurants LMS Vendor:  Litmos Real Mex Restaurants is the largest operator of full service Mexican restaurants in the nation, operating over 120 restaurants and eight brands including Chevys Fresh Mex, El Torito and Acapulco across the country.  To maintain a high quality, consistent experience in each restaurant, Real Mex needed to ensure flawless execution of its strategy and develop a fully embraced learning culture throughout franchise network.  Deploying a franchise LMS reduced their travel and training materials costs by 60% and dramatically increased the availability of learning. #13:  Siemens LMS Vendor:  Expertus Siemens is a global powerhouse in electronics and environmental engineering.  They holistically provide training and certification to 8000 employees, 400 distributors/dealers and 2500 customers from the same ExpertusOne LMS system.  Siemens enjoys increased channel readiness, increased use and satisfaction with the LMS and an overall decrease in training administrative costs. #14:  TGI Friday’s LMS Vendor:  Cornerstone TGI Friday’s inspires franchises and their employees with anytime mobile access to all learning in a self directed training, on-the-job support format.  Managers have mobile access to observation checklists to confirm their employees skills and abilities.  Friday’s has seen and measured increased guest satisfaction, increased average spend per franchise location and a decrease in guest complaints when franchise and employee owned locations are properly trained. #15: Yum! Brands LMS Vendor:  Saba Software Yum! Brands, the world’s largest restaurant company, is the umbrella organization for well-known quick-service restaurants including KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. Its 40,000 restaurants around the world are staffed by more than 1.5 million associates. Learn how YUM! uses Saba to deploy learning, training and virtual classroom to its associates around the globe reducing turnover by 20% and increasing customer satisfaction by 2% globally. Thanks for reading!   Need Some Help Writing LMS Case Studies? We got you.  All you need is willing clients and we will do all the rest.  Check out our case study service here. The post 15 LMS Vendors - 15 Channel LMS Case Studies appeared first on Talented Learning.

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 are enjoying the following measurable benefits from using an association LMS: Increased revenue generation from sale of content and professional development Global expansion of organization into areas impossible to reach previously Increased perceived value for the membership Economies of scale of creating great content and getting to use over and over Manage continuing education for the members’ entire career  In alphabetical order… Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA) LMS Vendor:  Digitec Interactive Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA) has been making life more comfortable for contractors and their customers through the professional growth and success of its members.  Using Digital Interactive Knowledge Direct LMS, the ACCA supports eCommerce, blended learning and annual meetings to educate and certify a target audience of 300,000 workers nationally. American Cancer Society LMS Vendor:  Totara and Kineo US For more than 100 years American Cancer Society (ACS) has worked to save lives and create a world with less cancer. At the core of achieving ACS’s mission are more than 3 million volunteers.  Via Totara and Kineo they provide consistent, easy to use, effective blended learning to volunteers who range from high schoolers to retirees. American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) Blue Sky Broadcast American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) is a global clinical organization dedicated to helping chest medicine professionals optimize every clinical decision they make.   CHEST has an annual 5-day event every year with over 900 presentations.  They decided to record each presentation and make available to professionals worldwide who can not attend the live event.  Within two weeks of the event, they rolled out the content to 3200 professionals. Association of Clinical Research Professionals LMS Vendor:  WebCourseworks The Association of Clinical Research Professionals (ACRP), a global association with more than 18,000 members in over 70 countries.  ACRP provides comprehensive professional development and content services to its members on key clinical research competency areas via their CourseStage LMS.  In an effort to attract more learners, ACRP created a program of gamified mobile content to compliment their traditional catalog. Big Brothers and Big Sisters LMS Vendor:  Expertus As the nation’s largest donor and volunteer supported mentoring network, Big Brothers and Big Sisters’ mission is to provide children facing adversity with strong enduring, professionally supported one-to-one that change their lives for the better, forever.  Big Brothers and Big Sisters uses Expertus to connect disparate learning audiences, link hundreds of thousands of users and improved training readiness by 84%. International Parking Institute (IPI) LMS Vendor:  Docebo Founded in 1962, IPI’s purpose is advancing the parking profession through leadership, education, professional development and connections.  International Parking Institute utilizes Docebo to train, certify, measure and report on learning for parking professionals from member organizations in every industry globally. National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) LMS Vendor:  Peach New Media NACUBO, like many associations, is no stranger to challenges that come with fluctuations in the economy and the impact that can have on their members.   NACUBO recognized a shift in their members’ needs and budgets and pivoted to an LMS and online learning that is tightly integrated with their NetForum AMS. National Education Association (NEA) LMS Vendor:  WBT Systems The National Education Association (NEA) represents some 3 million public school educators, at all levels, across the United States. The National Education Association (NEA) launched the NEA Academy on WBT Systems TopClass LMS and offers approximately 500 online courses, the greater majority of which are provided by third party training suppliers. New Jersey State Bar Association LMS Vendor:  Classroom 24/7 The New Jersey State Bar Association’s division, the New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education, is a premier provider of the Continuing Legal Education (CLE) programs to attorneys licensed to practice in New Jersey. In 2010, New Jersey became a mandatory CLE state requiring all New Jersey attorneys to complete 24 hours of CLE education every two years. The New Jersey State Bar Association uses Classroom 24/7 to market and sell the CLE content to a broad audience statewide. The Institute of Food Technologists LMS Vendor:  Naylor The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) exists to advance the science of food. Composed of more than 18,000 members from virtually every discipline related to food science and technology, and from more than 100 countries around the world. IFT increased revenue by 130% by providing online synchronous and asynchronous courses, web meetings, webinars, and interactive eLearning solutions for its members around the world. UNISON LMS Vendor:  tessello UNISON is the 2nd largest trade union in the UK with almost 1.3 million members and 1200 dispersed staff and volunteers. UNISON created an online organizing to connect their staff and activists, all powered by the tessello LMS. Using the cutting edge xAPI (Tin Can) in tessello, UNISON allows staff and activists to share content, experiences, and knowledge, while also providing a place to find support from within the community. Thanks for reading! Do You Have an Association LMS Case Study? We’d love to hear about it.  Please send them along to John@TalentedLearning.com and we’ll get it on the list!  Be sure to see our full compilation of LMS Extended Enterprise Case Studies.  If you need help creating LMS case studies, we can do it for you. Are You Shopping for an LMS for Your Association? Are you shopping for a new or replacement LMS for your association?  Talented Learning can help.  We are LMS selection consultants and can help you define your requirements and get to the right solution quickly and cost effectively.  Please fill out the form below to contact us for a complimentary consultation call. First Name* Last Name* Title* Email* Company* Tell us about your LMS woes Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.   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 association learning.  We think they are all good but somebody needs to win.  In additional to outstanding functional capabilities, to be on this list an LMS vendor needs to make the majority of revenue from associations and have great client case studies on their website.  In alphabetical order, here are our picks for the Top 10 Associations LMS Solutions in the World.  (If you want to know who the Top 3 are, register for the Talented Learning LMS Vendor Awards Webinar on 11/13! ) Blue Sky Broadcast — Blue Sky Broadcast is a pure association LMS that provides LMS combined with event services.  Associations need great content and an optimal source are member subject matter experts that present sessions at association tradeshows.  Blue Sky provides heavy-duty services to capture educational content from live or virtual settings, then manage, sell and deliver that content to a global audience through the learning platform. Classroom 24/7 —  Relative newcomers, Classroom 24/7 brings a new definition of  the LMS acronym — a learning marketing system.  Love it.  These guys are serious about the business of associations.  They  offer an assessment service to evaluate an association’s content assets, staff capability, market viability of their content and creates an action plan to take them from 0 to 100 with their modern, powerful continuing education, ecommerce enabled  LMS. Digitec Interactive —  Digitec has been providing professional and trade associations and nonprofits technology for 25 years.  They just released a complete SaaS, mobile responsive rewrite of their application in the cloud that enables associations of all sizes to get in the LMS game. Digitec has a strong production and content development arm that can produce gamified mobile content, simulations, video and more. EthosCE—  EthosCE rocks the healthcare association world.  If you are a healthcare association managing CME or CPE and want deep and proven experience and expertise to guide you, EthoseCE is perfect.  90% or more of their clients are in healthcare resulting in healthcare specific capabilities and workflow you just don’t find anywhere else including mobile support for doctors’ ground rounds, vouchers and PARS and CE Monitor integrations. Peach New Media — Freestone, Peach New Media’s LMS, is a pure, full-feature association LMS that offers specialized solutions for CLE, CPE and CME.  They have an integrated webcast tool that has cool (and audit defensible) "checkpoint" features to ensure learners are actually earning their CE credit and learner engagement features such as integrated Twitter conversations, view materials, take notes, polls and surveys.  They also have strong AMS integrations with their own NetForum AMS and virtually every other AMS for single sign-on, catalog, ecommerce and reporting established workflows. tessello — Out of the U.K, tessello is marching to the beat of their own drummer.  Employing xAPI, they focus on the 70:20:10 model of learning which asserts that 90% of learning is informal and social and only 10% is formal.  Their LMS enables learners to document experiential learning experiences and engage in meaningful social learning experiences.  These types of features enable associations to support the evolving performance improvement requirements of the ACCME and AICPA documenting on-the-job performance for credits. TOPYX -The TOPYX (pronounced topix) LMS has a unique business model in the industry.  They offer annual flat rate price ranging from $22,500-$50,000/year (based on optional functional and support options) for unlimited learners, admins and bandwidth making them an economical choice for many associations.  Their LMS is full featured with xAPI, mobile and social features and there are no implementation fees. WBT Systems — Dublin based WBT Systems has been around a long time supporting associations and they are the association feature powerhouse.  Designed to support the most complex association deployments, WBT is modern with a mobile response LMS, sophisticated ecommerce, AMS integration, accreditation body integration, complex CE management, dozens of language localizations and integrated social/gamified features.  When associations are really serious, have complex requirements and even a tiny % of failure is not an option, WBT Systems rises to the top. WebCourseworks — Associations and nonprofits have unique needs and WebCourseworks tailors custom solutions to meet them.  With LMS, course development and managed services, they provide holistic solutions to grow non-dues association revenue.  Their user-centric LMS has powerful association features to manage complex continuing education, AMS integration and social learning. YM Learning — Your Membership AMS acquired the Digital Ignite LMS in early 2015 and integrated them into the YM suite of products and services providing a broad association solution that helps grow membership and revenue.  The LMS is fully mobile responsive, engaging and easy for learners to learn.  Social, global and highly scalable, YM Learning is designed to manage and sell continuing education in the medical, legal, finance and most any other industry.  Advanced psychometric reporting and reporting analytics in general is a strength of the solution. Other Posts in the Talented Learning Top 10 Series There are 600 LMS vendors in the world and the majority provide specialist solutions based on industry, region and business application of the LMS.  Serious LMS buyers prefer specialist vs. generalist LMS solutions.  At Talented Learning, we have been studying the LMS market full-time for two years and have been grouping, rating and stack ranking the LMS vendors by their target market solution.  Our top 10 lists are exactly that — the top 10 LMS solutions in each target market.    Register for the Talented Learning LMS Vendor Awards Webinar on 11/13 and we will reveal who is 1st, 2nd and 3rd in ten different categories. Top 10 LMS Demonstrators in the World Top 10 Channel LMS Solutions in the World   Are You Shopping for an LMS for Your Association? Are you shopping for a new or replacement LMS for your association?  Talented Learning can help.  We are LMS selection consultants and can help you define your requirements and get to the right solution quickly and cost effectively.  Please fill out the form below to contact us for a complimentary consultation call. First Name* Last Name* Title* Email* Company* Tell us about your LMS woes Email This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.   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 100 LMS solutions over the last couple of years and before that I sold high-end learning and performance management systems for 13 years.   I’ve read the publicly available information about the Workday Learning announcement, sounded vendors and buyers alike and here are my thoughts:   The Return of HR/Talent LMS Value I heard a story recently how Oracle went into a major new account opportunity and pitched for 2 days straight and the LMS portion of the pitch was five minutes at the end of day two.  To say that learning is not a core competency of the enterprise software providers is an understatement.  Typically the enterprise HR and finance buying decision happens at the highest levels of an organization and the LMS is just thrown in for free or near-free with a new enterprise software purchase although efforts are continually made to sell the LMS at regular price to existing customers. The HR/talent suite LMSs are the old school LMSs that were acquired over the last five years by the large HR and ERP providers.  They were born before the cloud, are admin heavy, tough to install, terrible to use, mobile as a boulder and as social as a hermit.  Organizations typically are not buying HR/Talent LMSs if learning is their primary decision and focus.  The big HR players appear to see little or no value in LMS. Workday recognized this trend and strategically held off acquiring or building an LMS in lieu of prioritizing other HR components (payroll, expense, recruiting, etc.) to catch up to the market leaders.  For LMS, instead of a having nothing, Workday chose to identify quality LMS partners, primarily Saba and Cornerstone, to provide that piece of the solution if LMS was important to the opportunity. At first I thought this strategy was shortsighted and left a plateful on the table.  Upon reflection, it wasn’t a bad strategic decision.  Workday has had years to watch Saba and Cornerstone, two extremely powerful and popular LMS choices in the world, up close.  They have observed the LMS sales process, implementation, Workday integration, and their customers’ reaction to it all.  They became LMS experts without having to incur any costs to do so. Workday’s customers never get a free LMS, but always have to pay top dollar for their integrated partner LMS solution.  The LMS has value, lots of it, in a Workday solution and they don’t even have their own - yet. The enterprise software, HR, training and LMS industries are officially on notice.   Better Mousetrap Workday asserts in their recent blog post that they spent 120 hours with 16 customers interviewing and brainstorming to identify learning pain points. They discovered what everybody already knows - organizations and learners are disenchanted with old school LMSs. Workday is looking to change the game by building their own LMS targeting the millennials and the new way they learn.  They claim to be designing a fully integrated LMS capable of managing any type of learning from formal to informal, large to micro while providing an engaging, modern, mobile, social and contextual learning experience - or as we say in the business - a NextGen LMS. The LMS bar is low in the HR/Talent LMS market so Workday has the opportunity to knock it out of the park by just following the blue print of the standalone LMS specialists and make a usable LMS that looks and acts more like Facebook and less like a database. If Workday does indeed succeed in building their LMS as they intend, they will be one of the only HR/Talent LMSs able to compete in standalone LMS opportunities.  This is going to cause heartburn with the current tier 1 standalone LMSs and HR/Talent providers in general.   When Partnerships Sour Saba and Cornerstone are the scorned lovers here.  They have been great partners, enjoyed the easy sales and have been living it up remora style on the Workday shark.  No more, I’m afraid.  Going forward they won’t get invited to the larger Workday sale and they have to compete with Workday on other LMS opportunities. No matter what Workday says about being a good partner, I’ve seen this movie before and you can’t change the ending.  Years ago, SumTotal partnered with SuccessFactors, learned how to sell Talent and then bought a talent company to compete with SuccessFactors.  Skillsoft, once a partner to all LMS companies, went ahead and bought SumTotal and introduced an LMS competitor into all their partners’ backyard.  Workday has 900+ clients with some significant unknown portion having partner LMSs that they are dissatisfied with yet paying a premium for.  Seems like fertile hunting grounds to a recovering LMS sales guy like me…   Missed Opportunities In all I have read about Workday Learning, one thing struck me - not a single syllable about supporting extended enterprise learning with their LMS.   Of course their DNA is HR and finance and they have precious little experience in non-employee learning, but with their client base they have a huge opportunity to turn their LMS into a channel, partner and customer facing solution and triple down on the size and value of their LMS sales.  (Workday, that tip is for free.) Employee LMSs are about cost savings, compliance and automation - extended enterprise LMSs are about making money.   Conclusion The HR/Talent LMS providers devalued the LMS market when they acquired the former tier-1 LMS providers and halfheartedly integrated them into their broader suites.  Employee LMSs became a commodity and certainly not a competitive differentiator when included in enterprise software sales opportunities.  The losers were all learning and training professionals as well as the employee learners. Workday has taken the first step to change all that.  With Workday Learning an incremental competitive advantage will once again tilt the playing field.  Other enterprise software providers will need to figure out what to do with their antediluvian LMSs, will decide it is too difficult to build a NextGen LMS themselves and another round of LMS acquisitions will kick off in the industry.  History will repeat itself with delicious, predictable irony.  Fun times ahead. My thoughts anyway.   Thanks for reading!     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 customer documenting everything they do, buy or say.   What is an Extended Enterprise LMS? A learning management system is online software that brings learners and content together and keeps track of it all.  There are LMSs for employee, academic and extended enterprise audiences.   Corporations in most industries use an extended enterprise LMS to train and certify external channel partners, prospects and customers.  An organization’s extended enterprise LMS users are often the same organizations and individuals being tracked and managed in Salesforce and therein lies the opportunity.   Salesforce.com + LMS (If You Don’t Read Anything Else - Read This) Bring Salesforce and an LMS together and you have the most measurable training platform in history.  With shared common audiences, user experiences and most importantly data, organizations have an unprecedented view into the value of training.  Have partners sold more or less after being certified?  Do customers renew at a higher rate or buy complimentary products when trained vs. untrained?  An integrated Salesforce and LMS solution can answer all these questions and many more turning learning into a strategic, measurable tool and competitive differentiator in any industry.  Oh yeah.   Salesforce.com and LMS Integration Points LMSs can be integrated with Salesforce via custom web services or via an app that LMS vendors list on the Salesforce App Exchange.  Typical integration points in both approaches include: Single sign-on Contacts, users, accounts Courses, course offerings Training assignments and course recommendations Progress, completion and certification status Sales leads, opportunities, sales   Use Case Examples of the Salesforce LMS Integration Prospect or customer actions that are documented in Salesforce or the LMS are called "triggers" and they can then cause actions in the other system.  The sky is the limit on what workflow triggers can kick off.  Here are some use case examples I’ve seen recently: Prospects Learning — When a prospect visits a tradeshow booth, downloads a whitepaper, signs up for a blog, gets a demo, registers for a webinar, is sent an email, opens that email, clicks on any link, goes to your website, pages they visit are all being tracked inside Salesforce.  Each one of these triggers can be shared with the LMS to drive training recommendations, assignments, promotions and more. Customer Learning — Salesforce knows who each of your customers are, what they purchased, when they purchased, renewal dates and any interactions with customer support. Sharing those profile triggers with the LMS can provide custom training plans and recommendations for customer learners.  Well trained customers renew at a higher rate and spend more over time. Channel Certification — With specialized apps you can create Partner Certification Programs that support a tiered channel relationship structure and launch unique training programs that drive partner entitlements. For example, after completing training to achieve a "Gold Certification," partners are automatically paid a 30% vs. 20% commission. Sales Staff Learning - Whether it is your channel partners’ sales staff or your own, they are already in Salesforce and it’s the perfect place to push them onboarding and ongoing product training. A new tab is deployed in Salesforce application that shows the training plan for reps to accelerate through new hire sales training and then meter lead flow based on ongoing training performance and certification completion.   Who Are the LMS Vendors Embracing Salesforce? In the last couple of years I reviewed 100 LMSs and so far I’ve found 12 LMS vendors who have integrated with Salesforce, have apps or are building Salesforce apps with a wide diversity of sophistication including NetExam, Cornerstone, Expertus, Blackboard, Docebo, Litmos, eLogic Learning, Skilljar, Paradiso, LogicBay,Saba, ViewCentral  and BlueVolt.   Conclusion Salesforce has been a wild market success because it provides measurable marketing and sales data that allows organizations to make smart business choices.  LMSs have done the same for training data.  Integrating sales and training workflows and data elevates training from a cost to profit center because you can definitively prove the effectiveness of training and the impact on the business.  Progressive LMS vendors are automating the integration providing a business tool that is a lethal competitive advantage.  Knowledge is power.   Thanks for reading!   Are You Shopping for an LMS? With 600 vendors out there, it can be quite a challenge!  If you would like to schedule a complimentary consultation call with John Leh, fill out the form below. First Name* Last Name* Title* Email* Company* Tell us about your LMS woes Phone This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.   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 is designed to sell to individuals, organizations, both or neither. For this post, I’ve consolidated and organized all the ecommerce features I have found in the industry to illustrate what is out there for either business model.  If you are shopping for an ecommerce LMS, it is really important to find one that specializes in your ecommerce business model. B2C LMS eCommerce Features Selling to individual consumer learners is typically the first level of ecommerce support that LMS vendors develop because the features are very similar to the ecommerce features that exist to sell anything from books, laptops to tractor parts with existing ecommerce platforms.  Typical features in B2C LMS ecommerce include: Basic Features Deep-linking directly to content from anywhere outside the LMS Browse catalog of content before logging in or creating an account Sell any type of learning of any media uniquely or in a bundle Product reviews and ratings Coupons, promotions discounts Credit card, PayPal or Stripe payment types Add to cart, checkout and integration with payment gateways for credit card authorization Immediate access to purchased content Emailed receipts, notifications Fiscal reporting, sales analysis, reconciliation reporting Advanced Features User specific content recommendations Dynamic grouping of users based on actions recorded in LMS Sell physical product, manage shipping rules, fulfillment and inventory management Recurring and automated billing Language localizations and multi-currency support Manage unlimited tax rules including global VAT LMS PCI compliant (vs. only payment gateway) Most LMSs develop the above features natively but several integrate with pure ecommerce engines like Shopify or Magento to provide the above.  The integration approach provides for rich pure commerce functionality but mandates the administration and maintenance of two applications resulting in higher costs. Who are the best ecommerce LMS vendors?  Register for our LMS Awards Webinar to find out! B2B LMS eCommerce Features Selling content in bulk to organizations for their employees is tougher than it looks.   For example, if a hospital buys 100 seats of a continuing medical education course, how do they get their doctors to find the LMS, the course and consume it?  Just that learner provisioning piece alone causes administrative nightmares if an LMS hasn’t developed work flow to support. To further complicate matters, the actual "commerce" transaction can happen in an external system and passed to the LMS via API integration or the organizational purchase can happen directly in the LMS .  B2B eCommerce features include: Basic Features Client domains and branding Bulk purchase of content Credit account - organizations are invoiced after content is consumed Prepaid debit account - organizations prepay for content and account depletes as content is consumed Tokens (Registration codes, enrollment keys, vouchers)—Purchased in bulk and distributed to the user for one-time use, timed use, per course or per organization access to LMS and content. Bulk purchase discounts Purchase order support Subscriptions - timed access to content Advanced Features CRM, ERP or AMS Integration to create accounts, users and content assignment when organizations purchase in 3rd party system Tight integration into existing corporate order fulfillment, ecommerce, taxation and data warehouse ecosystem Delegated client level administration and reporting 3rd party content sponsorship, ads and promotions Bill me later ala Amazon, electronic invoice or paper invoice Conclusion Like never before, content providers of all types have the tools and technology to run a first class ecommerce business.  Innovation and competition is rampant. At first blush when reviewing LMS vendor websites, it appears that they all have the same ecommerce features and to an extent they do.  The big ecommerce differentiator is if the LMS is geared towards selling to individuals, organizations or both however there are many other factors to consider if you want to sell content.  My best recommendation is to fully develop your business model, LMS use case scenarios and resulting requirements before engaging LMS vendors so you can find the best qualified options to drive your extended enterprise business.   Thanks for reading!   Do You Need Help Finding an eCommerce LMS? There are 600 LMSs and thousands of potential features.  It’s confusing but not for us here at Talented Learning.  We’ve figured out the LMS industry and can help find the perfect solution based on your business.  Fill out the form below to schedule a complimentary consulting conversation with John Leh to discuss your LMS needs. First Name* Last Name* Title* Email* Company* Tell us about your LMS woes Comments This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. 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 other methods. Data such as attendance, completion rates and quiz/survey results, for example, can be used to segment your customers. You can then reach out to relevant target audiences through additional training-based conversations or other communication methods, as needed. Community-Building Online training programs can help increase collaboration, build communities, and improve relationships. For example, if you’re in the construction business, consider providing online training courses that teach people the basics of successfully engaging contractors. If you sell artisan yarn, consider providing courses that teach people to knit or crochet. Offer certifications or continuing education credits for courses in industries where credentials are valued. Of course, judicious use of social and mobile tools integrated with your training courses is required for online community building. Communities thrive when they are related to work of interest to the customer. And your business thrives when what you sell enhances the communities that your customers choose to inhabit. Increasing Product Knowledge Free your customers from being buried under product manuals and technical documentation. Sure, manuals are important, especially as product complexity increases. But, if customers can get useful overviews and quick start tips first—potentially through short, engaging online training—they can then delve into the manuals as needed. Targeted direction on where to look for direction can go a long way towards saving your customers time and frustration, increasing customer loyalty and retention, and reducing support instances. Reducing Support Issues Speaking of reducing support instances, an accepted premise is that customers with good product knowledge submit fewer support tickets. Is that true? Leveraging the built-in reporting capabilities of your LMS allows you to validate that premise. If trained customers are still having issues, perhaps your training itself is insufficient. Or perhaps you have an organizational or a product issue. In the case of insufficient training, map training content to top support issues, and mine data on quiz scores, learner engagement, course completion rates, etc. In the case or organizational or product issues, investigate product bugs, workflow, inter-department touch points, customer support practices, etc. With regards to support, leveraging your LMS’s built-in reporting capabilities allows you to identify people who truly need extra help. Proactive customer outreach can reduce time to close support issues, retain customers who might otherwise abandon you for your competitors, increase customer loyalty, and identify opportunities to cross-sell products and services. Spreading the Brand Excellent customer training programs can convey a message of customer-focus, human-centeredness, and a premium on knowledge. By using video, infographics, games, contests and other engaging content vehicles, you can "train" your customers on your company’s history, mission, values, and culture. By providing interactive training in a case study format, you can help your customers determine how to leverage best practices. Make sure that you apply a blended learning philosophy for your best brand champions where you meet on site for live training as well as mix Also, consider partnering with other businesses to create content that helps your customers increase their productivity, similar to the partnership between Khan Academy and Bank of America to help people develop better money habits. To Charge or Not to Charge? There are clear benefits to providing online training to your customers. But should you charge for training? The answer, as in so many other areas of life, is, "It depends." It depends on your industry, what you charge for your products and services, whether customers need training to successfully use your products, and a host of other considerations. Online training can be a value-added option to set you apart from your competitors. If you can convince the customer of the value of your training (through success stats, exciting and engaging training programs, need, or ROI) it may make sense to charge for your training. On the other hand, if you sell multi-million dollar technology solutions, perhaps free, robust online training access can help you to make the sale. Or, if you’ve historically had a high number of support issues, you may choose to provide free online training until you are able to change customer perception. Regardless of your decision to charge or not, take advantage of the opportunities afforded by training your customers well. Start small, test, get feedback, and determine if educating your customers can be a part of your business growth strategy. How have you used online training programs—from a module or two to full-blown online universities—to engage your customers, increase loyalty and retention, and grow your business?   The post 5 Reasons to Put Your Customers "In the Know" appeared first on Talented Learning.

Learning management systems 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 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 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 Plateau.  Oracle acquired Taleo who had acquired Learn.com and the list goes on.  LMS innovation was stifled yet again and innumerable customers became lost in the bureaucracy of behemoth software companies.   Cloud to the Rescue To save the day the cloud was invented and with it the significant fiscal barriers of entry for new LMS providers were removed.  The cloud enables new LMS vendors to create and support one product that all customers use providing economies of scale in research, customer support and required investment capital.  Over the last five years, new LMS companies have poured into the marketplace filling an obvious need of customer service and targeted business solutions.  The cloud LMSs provide learning management to the masses. Cloud LMS solutions are easy-to-use, modern, mobile, social and incredibly affordable.   Now small businesses and even individuals can easily and rapidly get going.  Many cloud LMSs have "free trials" that provide instant access to their solution directly from their website providing the opportunity to test out use cases. The LMS industry in 2015 now has hundreds and hundreds of viable vendor solutions. The good news is there is an LMS for every need, industry and budget.  The bad news is there is an LMS for every need, industry and budget.  It costs at least$1500 for an organization to qualify a LMS vendor and even figuring out where to start the process makes calculus seem easy. Our Research and  Process We founded Talented Learning, an independent learning technology research firm, to figure it all out for buyers and sellers.  Our mission is to map the LMS world.  We’ve spent the last two years going LMS vendor by LMS vendor and identifying who they are, what they do, who they sell to and why they are unique. We read the publicly available information, converse with executives, receive briefings, get deep product demonstrations, test drive their applications and even interview their customers.  We solicit in-depth survey responses from vendors that highlight hundreds of business, technical and functional data points.  In the last 20 months, we have reviewed 103 LMSs. We also have the advantage of running LMS selection processes for dozens of buyers, and have broad access to vendor data, stories and experiences.  Prior to co-founding Talented Learning, I sold LMSs for 13 years and generated over $50,000,000 in revenue.   All of this experience and research was factored into our Talented Learning 2015 LMS Vendor Award rankings and market categorization. We didn’t take this task lightly.  Here are the best of the LMS best.   The 2015 Talented Learning LMS Vendor Award Winners    Types of LMSs in 2015 Before releasing any rankings or awards, we first needed to determine what types of LMSs existed in the marketplace so that the awards were relevant and helpful to LMS buyers. We discovered that the LMS marketplace is made up of 4 broad types of LMS including corporate, academic, continuing education and association LMSs.  All four groups share some functionality but contain special functionality and experience not required in the other areas. The corporate LMS market is further fractured into LMSs that focus on employee compliance, talent management, channel (partner, dealer or franchise) and customers learning applications.  Some corporate LMSs can do it all (all-purpose corporate LMSs) but many focus on just employee or external applications. The hottest area of innovation in all groups are the ecommerce features and functions to support sale of content to their audiences - also called extended enterprise learning.  Corporations are selling content and certifications to their channel partners and customers.  Academic institutions are selling college courses to remote global audiences.  Associations are selling content to their members and continuing education training providers are selling content to anyone.  Continuing education, associations and universities are all selling their content to corporations. And without further ado, here are the best of the best LMS vendors in the world in 11 categories.   BEST ALL-PURPOSE CORPORATE LMS All LMS vendors in this category are capable and focused on supporting all aspects of the learning inside and outside an organization.  Vendors are able to be used for any combination of employees, channel, dealers, partners, customers and prospects.  All-purpose corporate LMSs have considerable administrative configuration, domain and audience segmentation, globalization, ecommerce, ILT management, online learning management, reporting and integration capabilities.  eLogic Learning Expertus Cornerstone    Honorable Mentions Blackboard IMC Docebo SumTotal Litmos Saba SwissTeach WBT Systems   BEST CHANNEL & PARTNER LMS If an organization educates and certifies their external sales channel, they will experience increased sales, new streams of revenue and increased customer satisfaction.  Every time.  All LMS vendors on this list actively promote channel learning on their website with product offerings, case studies, webinars, and client testimonials. The nominated solutions have varying degrees of sophistication in core channel functionality including domain segmentation, e-commerce, social learning, globalization, broad content support, mobile readiness and ease of use. Channel & partner LMSs have strong integration and shared workflow capabilities with dealer management, incentive management, ecommerce, order fulfillment, CRM and ERPs.  The vendors in this list (and every list range) from self-service free trial LMSs to heavy-duty solution providers.  NetExam YM Learning LogicBay   Honorable Mentions BlueVolt ViewCentral Docebo Expertus eLogic Learning Saba Software SchoolKeep TalentLMS   BEST CUSTOMER LMS Most LMS vendors will say they are good for customers, but true customer LMSs are unique.   Customer LMSs could be called "Learning Marketing Systems" because there is a deep level capability that typically resides in marketing - not training departments. Customer LMSs have to be super easy to use for customers and resemble Facebook more than a database. Integration with CRM software like Salesforce.com or a Dynamics allows any customer activity such as purchase, renewal, attending a webinar, downloading a paper to trigger the push of intelligent recommendations of learning events.  Trained customers buy more over time and are more satisfied and customer LMSs make it happen.  Here are the top customer LMSs in the world: KMI Learning Latitude Learning Learndot   Honorable Mentions Accord LMS Expertus eLogic Learning Skilljar Litmos NetExam Totara YM Learning   BEST EMPLOYEE COMPLIANCE LMS You can’t get away from where LMSs started.  Employee and contractor compliance is a big problem for many organizations.  Federal and state and local jurisdictions enact training, safety and harassment regulations and then audit for compliance.  Non-compliance results in penalties and fines.  The more jurisdictions an organization does business within, the bigger the compliance management challenges they have. Industries such as pharmaceutical, biomedical, manufacturers, transportation, energy, financial, retail and many others are all required to deliver mandatory compliance training and be ready to prove it to auditors at any time.  Compliance LMSs are admin focused and have skills, competencies, audit trails, electronic signatures, strong ILT management, facility and resource management, broad content support and powerhouse reporting.  Our choices for the world’s best compliance LMS are:  Cornerstone IMC AG RISC   Honorable Mentions Absorb LMS Gyrus eLogic Learning NetDimensions Saba SumTotal WBT Systems   BEST TALENT LMS The talent LMSs used to be the tier one LMSs before they got acquired by the big HR software companies.  Talent LMSs are integrated into broader HR and talent suites of products including recruiting, succession, goals, performance, time,  payroll and provide a higher level of value - to progressive organizations - than stand alone employee compliance LMSs.  Talent LMSs support all flavors of employee use cases including career development, leadership development and on-boarding where the most productive workflows will tap into performance management, succession and other areas of talent management.  Data is shared from the talent and learning modules that effect content recommendations, skill and competency acquisition, succession planning and performance reviews. With increased complexity of workflow comes more administrative burden, time to implement and cost but also a higher return on investment. The world’s best talent LMS solution are: Saba Cornerstone SumTotal   Honorable Mentions CD2 Learning Infor Knoitall LearnShare Together JAZZ (a Skylab Italia Solution) SuccessFactors SurePeople   BEST ACADEMIC LMS The academic LMS market is very distinct from the others.  K-12, vocational school and higher education institutions still need a special system to manage students, classes, teachers and the interactions between them.  What is interesting is the technique and functionality required to train students by providing instructors the tools to assemble content, video record their sessions, introduce assignments, readings, homework, formal online learning, massive open online courses and social learning has been morphing into corporate, association and continuing education LMSs types.  At the same time, the development of ecommerce capabilities to attract non-captured student learners globally and sell content has been the big recent innovation in academic LMSs learned from the other types of LMSs.  Our choices for the best academic LMS are: Canvas Blackboard Moodle   Honorable Mentions accessplanit Desire2Learn EthosCE JoomlaLMS Paradiso SchoolKeep Sakai   BEST CONTINUING EDUCATION LMS Continuing education LMSs are targeting training companies of all types.  Countless for profit training companies create, deliver and manage accredited content for certain industries and regions in a CE LMS.  Whether they’re traditional training companies with instructors, brick and mortar facilities or whether they are new school training companies focused purely on ecommerce and online content. The products in this group look like Amazon or Best Buy and they have deep B2B and B2C e-commerce capability and a strategic ability to dynamically group users for target marketing and promotions. Traditional training management, CRM integration, virtual classrooms (integrated or native), ecommerce, sales tax management, complex CEU management, accreditation body integration are just some of the advanced feature sets available and required to be on this list. There are quite a few organizations that we think are really good in this category. Administrate YM Learning eLogic Learning   Honorable Mentions Peach New Media LearnUpon WBT Systems Firmwater SkyPrep NetExam CommPartners SmarterU Yardstick   ASSOCIATION LMS The association LMS space is extremely unique with explosive growth and innovation.  With the cloud LMSs, any association of any size or wealth can now have an association LMS.  The selling of accredited content to members and managing all their other learning activities is called non-dues revenue and it is big business.  Many association vendors entered the LMS space by being event planners for associations’ annual trade shows.  Association tradeshows are loaded with education sessions that needed to be managed and recorded and these vendors started growing LMSs to fit that exact need. Many corporate LMS providers have tried to capitalize on associations, but their employee focused nomenclature and mission makes much of their capabilities unneeded and an equal amount missing.  Association LMSs have tight integration with association management systems, B2B and B2C ecommerce, globalization, audience segmentation, mobile responsiveness, usable social learning, virtual classrooms, webcasting tools, podcasts, event management and are designed with ease of use in mind for all types of users.  This list was the most difficult to rank because there is so many great companies and we ended up with a four-way tie for 2nd place. The best association LMS vendors in the world are: 1.  WBT Systems 2.  Blue Sky Broadcast, CommPartners, WebCourseworks, YM Learning   Honorable Mentions Classroom 24/7 Digitec Interactive EthosCE Peach New Media  tessello TOPYX   BEST LMS THOUGHT LEADERS Part of the Talented Learning research process is to follow all LMS vendors on social media.  We monitor and read all their posts, content, interviews, research papers and case studies they promote.  We attend their webinars.   As LMS learning technology bloggers ourselves, we appreciate the work and dedication it takes to crank out good content. Some vendors are silent, some just promote their own products but a select few are trying to define the industry and move it forward for all. They give buyers tools and knowledge to buy better and smarter - even if it means they might buy another system. And so, here are who we think are the top 10 LMS thought leaders across the world…  Expertus Saba Totara   Honorable Mentions SpongeUK Administrate BizLibrary Growth Engineering Mindflash Peach New Media WebCourseworks Docebo Brightwave tessello   BEST LMS DEMONSTRATOR Being an LMS demonstrator is tough.  They are the hero when they win and the zero when they lose.  They are expected to deliver an impactful demonstration every time and do it better than the other 10 organizations the buyer is evaluating.  LMS demonstrators are in hot demand in the industry.  We can place a good demonstrator yesterday.  Demonstrators not only have to understand learning, the LMS and business objectives, but demo in a humorous, engaging way that is tailored to the audience.  Here are the best we’ve met:  Linda Bowers, WBT Systems Gary Underhill, YM Learning Joe Majors, Saba Software   Honorable Mentions Caleb Johnson, Expertus Caoimhín Gillespie, LearnUpon Kelley Shirazi Lunceford, Bluevolt Ezra Wolfe, EthosCE Meg Stevenson, tessello Sean McCarthy, SumTotal Tamer Ali, YM Learning   LMS SALES STAR Last but not least… A LMS sales job is increasingly difficult especially with the recent explosion in competition.  There are so many self-inflicted mistakes salespeople make time and again in the sales process.  In our role as analysts and LMS buyer consultants, we get to meet a ton of LMS sales people from around the world and see them sell in action. The best LMS salespeople listen more than they sell, solve problems, are super responsive, excellent writers, better presenters and can navigate a long winding sales cycle.  We don’t know if the following salespeople are the best in the world, but they are the best we have encountered. Ben Wagner, SchoolKeep Erin Pravane, Peach New Media Joe Yates, eLogic Learning   Honorable Mentions Tom Bronikowski , Expertus Travis Hudelson, Saba Kelley Shirazi Lunceford, BlueVolt Dan Medakovic, Blatant Absorb LMS Tim McDonnell, SumTotal Systems Jocelyn Fielding, Blue Sky Broadcast Meg Stevenson, tessello Caleb Johnson, Expertus Jim Lynch, Accord LMS   Access the 2015 LMS Awards Ceremony Recorded Webinar? Do you want to learn more about these vendors, LMS categories and market trends?  Tune into our webinar recording of our recent 2015 Talented Learning LMS Vendor Awards Ceremony by filling out the form below. First Name* Last Name* Email Address* Congratulations to all named winners -you deserve the recognition! The LMS market is thriving, morphing, evolving and expanding into all areas of selling content.  This is great news for everyone including buyers, sellers and anyone involved in creating content. Thanks for reading! The post 2015 Talented Learning LMS Vendor Award Recipients appeared first on Talented Learning.

  At Talented Learning, an independent learning tech market research and consulting firm, we recently compiled an obnoxious 85 question survey detailing over 450 points of LMS business, market and functional data.  We collected statistically significant hard data about the global LMS market providing us unparalleled and unique insight into what LMS buyers are buying today. Most other analysts’ surveys and resulting data are the output of sending out a blast email request to 100,000 HR professions and drawing conclusions from the few hundred responses from those who have too much time on their hands and dated LMS expertise. We took the much tougher path and went to the LMS vendors one by one to get the best, most accurate and timely data.  Seventy LMS vendors of all types have graciously filled it out so far.  Vendors are out on the front lines winning and losing every day.  They always know what is selling and what is not.  When vendors lose two or three sales opportunities because of the same lacking feature, it magically shows up on their product roadmap.  The functionality that exists in the collective LMS community illustrates what buyers are buying. Our survey was designed to allow us to measure and report on the popularity and scope of every LMS feature we have identified in our intensive LMS research. With the survey data we can now look at any feature or feature set and filter by LMS vendor type, vendor, business use of LMS, industry, hosting model, licensing model, region, language and many others.  To say that analyzing this survey data has further brought out the mad, mad scientist in me is an understatement. The 2015 Mobile LMS Today, let’s discuss what we learned about the 2015 mobile LMS capabilities and buyer preferences. Somewhat of a surprise on the high side, 90.8% of LMS vendors say that mobile delivery is a "critical" requirement for their LMS buyers.  How to accomplish mobile delivery has been the big question we wanted to answer though.  Over the last few years, I’ve read and written chronicles of conjecture about what mobile strategy is winning in the LMS industry — mobile responsiveness or mobile apps.  According to the data, the answer is both with the most progressive LMS vendors being fully mobile responsive for all users and also providing mobile apps that provide incremental capabilities.   Mobile Responsive Design A mobile responsive LMS "senses" the user device and automatically optimizes the text, graphics and menus to display perfectly without zooming, scrolling or downloads on any modern browser.   With a mobile responsive strategy a vendor can develop one LMS that clients can use on all devices including smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops. This approach is simple for vendors, buyers and knocks most technical challenges  out of the equation.  Learners have 100% of the functionality accessing the LMS from a mobile device, but not a smidge more.  Here are some key stats from the survey: My assessment:  Full mobile responsive design is the first goal of most vendors.  New vendors entering the LMS market start with 100% mobile responsive for every type of LMS users.  Older vendors that were born before the mobile age are retrofitting first the learner then the admin interfaces to be responsive.  The most progressive vendors are fully mobile responsive for all users while providing apps that provide incremental capabilities not available in the core LMS.   Mobile LMS Apps At first, most LMS mobile apps replicate varying portions of the vendor’s core LMS functionality in a mobile friendly interface.  Vendors typically start with learner, then manager and finally administrator functionality.  Over time, the mobile functionality expands into the innovative and cool mobile only features. Touch, swiping, offline content, location awareness, phone, camera and texting can be incorporated into various aspects of the learning process and automatically recorded in the core LMS.  On the downside, apps need to be downloaded and periodically updated by every individual who wants to use them adding a substantial technical challenge and support cost for buying organizations to deploy.  Vendors also have incremental costs to develop and maintain a "second" LMS. Here are some key statistics about the types of mobile apps available:   My Assessment:  Mobile apps are not as popular as responsive design in the industry.  A full 20% more vendors employ a responsive design vs. app for end users.  Due to the additional costs and technical challenges, if mobile apps are not providing incremental features to the core LMS, they are an unnecessary headache. However, the mobile only features are really cool, innovative and have some great application in the training world. Cool Mobile App Features Here are some mobile LMS features that are only available via apps that exist today in the industry: Receive and send text (SMS) notifications, registration approvals, private messages Switch devices without disrupting content, bookmarks or progress tracking Download SCORM and other content to device for offline use — and sync results back to LMS On-the-job training or observation checklists Informal learning tracking (xAPI) Scan and QR codes for content access Mobile codes for facility access or ability to start a vehicle/piece of machinery based on active certification "Presence Sensing" for live seminar/class attendance check in and check out In class polling, evaluations and teacher analytics Mobile drag and drop content creation/assembly/authoring Augmented reality of app use (via phone, Google Glass, tablet) to recognize products or equipment and assist user by launching relevant performance support, social or formal learning   Conclusion Five years ago, LMS vendors like most software companies, struggled with mobile and what to do.  New vendors went right to mobile responsive and older vendors dabbled in apps because retrofitting mobile responsive is difficult and expensive.  In 2015, LMS vendors have it figured out and use varying combinations of responsive and mobile apps.  Mobile responsive is practical.  Mobile apps are innovative.  The best strategy is a fully mobile responsive LMS with apps as a bonus.  That’s where the data says it is going. Thanks for reading!   You Like this Type of Data and Analysis? We got more where this came from.  We are in the final stages of consolidating our research of the last two years with the survey data to release our first, comprehensive LMS industry report in the new year.  In the report we will define: Corporate LMS Overview Employee and Extended Enterprise Industry Trends 20 Feature Sets Definitions Case Studies Galore Over 50 charts and graphics Comparison Matrices License and Pricing Guide Dozens of LMS Vendor Profiles Want us to notify you when we publish the report?  Fill out the form below: First Name* Last Name* Email Address* Company The post Mobile LMS: The Facts appeared first on Talented Learning.

As 2015 draws to a close, it makes sense to look back and reflect on highlights from the past year. It’s especially appropriate for our team at Talented Learning, because the New Year also marks our second anniversary and a chance to reflect on how far we have come and how far we have to go.   Our Content Starts with Conversations We founded Talented Learning to be a fresh, independent, accurate and practical voice in the learning technology industry.  We wanted to determine why there are so many LMS vendors in the world so we could help LMS buyers make better, wiser choices.  At first in 2014, we blogged about what we knew.  Now, we blog about what we learn from conversations. We uniquely research both the supply and demand side of the LMS equation to formulate an analysis of what is actually going on in the market.  So far, we have conducted in-depth reviews of over 100 LMS vendors, and we’ve developed executive communication channels with almost every one of those companies.  We also speak with vendors’ customers, so we can learn about how they are using the LMS, for what purpose and with what gain.  Finally, we consult with LMS buyers to define what they really need and match them with the right vendor for their goals and requirements. As lead analyst at Talented Learning, I personally speak to 2-3 vendors, LMS buyers or practicing professionals every single day.  With each conversation, I learn something new and I use this blog to organize my thoughts and share them openly with the world. So, before highlighting some of our most popular content, I want to say thank you for your interest in Talented Learning. Every time you read or share one of our posts or attend one of our webinars, you’re trusting us with your time and attention. We’ll do our best to continue honoring that trust by providing information and advice that helps you make better business decisions about learning technology. We published over 40 articles this year.  Here is a quick guide to our "greatest hits" of 2015:   #10  Talented Learning LMS Reviews LMS reviews are the backbone of our site.  Collectively, they attract the most attention and traffic.  We think it is because we have a unique approach.  We don’t aim to find holes or gaps based on arbitrary standards.  Rather, we use the opportunity to understand what makes a vendor great, and why.  We learn about who is buying their LMS and what problems their solution solves.  To learn about some interesting advancements, read our reviews of Tesselo, Digital Ignite (now YM Learning), RISC, TalentLMS and Gyrus.   #9  Intro to Continuing Education and the Admin Nightmare In the U.S., delivering and consuming continuing education is a $47 billion dollar business.  However, most learning management systems are terrible at managing the complexities of continuing education.  Why the disconnect?  In this first installment of a 3-part series, we dig into the technical and logistic challenges that exist in the medical, financial and healthcare industries when managing continuing education.  If you sell or manage CEUs of any flavor, this post is for you!   #8  LinkedIn Outfoxes Many with Lynda.com Acquisition In our top LMS prediction of 2015, we claimed that this would be the year of extended enterprise learning.  Truthfully, we were not thinking this big by a country mile.  LinkedIn now sells learning content and certifications to 400 million captured users, generating tens of millions in revenue and it is disrupting the markets for workforce development, MOOCs and LMS software. To learn how LinkedIn created the world’s largest extended enterprise learning site by acquiring Lynda.com, read this post.   #7  Top 10 LMS Demonstrators in the World We’ve received a ton of fantastic feedback about this fun post!  I’m sure it’s because we struck a nerve.  Most of us have had to sit through way too many underwhelming LMS demonstrations.  When you experience a good one, you know it.  Vendors can’t sell software without great product demos and demonstrators who can breathe life into software are worth their weight in gold.  In my career I’ve delivered or attended well over 2000 LMS demos.  In this post, I recognize the best demonstrators I have seen and explain why.   #6  Buying an LMS?  101 Acronyms You Should Know In an article I wrote about conducting better LMS demonstrations, I advised LMS vendors to drop insider jargon and acronyms from their vocabulary when speaking with potential customers.  If LMS buyers can’t understand you, it’s tough to win their business.  However, I concluded that it will take too long to teach 600+ LMS vendors the new anti-acronym trick and the easiest path would be to create a living, non-techie dictionary that decodes common acronyms for LMS buyers.  What I didn’t know is that I would find over 100 LMS acronyms without even trying!  How many do you know?   #5  Workday Announces New LMS:  My Thoughts HR/Talent LMS providers devalued the LMS market when they acquired former tier-1 LMS providers and halfheartedly integrated them into their broader suites.  Employee LMSs quickly became regarded as a commodity, not a competitive differentiator, when included in enterprise software sales opportunities.  It was a losing proposition for learning and training professionals as well as the workforce learners they serve.  But this year we saw Workday take the first step to change all that by announcing the 2016 release of a home-grown, NextGen LMS.  Using available public info and some intuition I outline the impact this move is likely to have on the learning technology industry going forward.   #4  Ten Ways to Drive Profit with an Extended Enterprise LMS Extended enterprise learning is the hottest area of LMS innovation this year. Smart companies are leveraging it as a business weapon. They use it to build communities of customers, partners and resellers and provide learning interventions that measurably change behavior within those communities.  That change results in more sales of primary products and/or content and leads to happier, more loyal customers.  In this post, we outline the best ways we have found to gain and sustain competitive advantage by training your non-employees.   #3  2015 Talented Learning LMS Vendor Awards Everybody loves awards!  This post attracted a year’s-worth of traffic in only one month.  We’re not surprised because over 60 LMS vendors are featured for their excellence in 11 product, marketing and sales-related categories. We also include a rationale for each award, an overview of today’s LMS market landscape and a link to the award webcast replay.  If you want to know who is shaping the LMS market in 2015 and why they’re ahead of the pack, this is a must-read.   #2  Dispatch from the Front Lines I’ve seen a lot on the LMS front - more than most.  Educated as an economist and then an instructional technologist, I spent 13 years selling LMS software. Along the way, I became obsessed with studying the LMS sales cycle and understanding how to maximize effectiveness in every step to improve my odds of winning.  My obsession led to 100 new clients, several hundred losses and over $50 million in revenue.  Now, as an LMS selection consultant, I see countless sales efforts -good, bad and horrendous.  In this funny (and slightly corny) post, I report on some LMS sales war stories I’ve recently encountered.   #1  Top 10 LMS Predictions for 2015 Hands-down we’ve received more interest in the LMS predictions we published last January than any other post this year. I still stand by this technology trend forecast so you may find it useful as a benchmark for learning innovation in your organization. Are you looking for an updated forecast as we move into 2016? Glad you asked. We’ll be posting more LMS predictions at the start of the New Year. So stay tuned.   And as always… Thanks for reading!   Coming Soon: The Talented Learning LMS Insights Report Our team is in the final stages of consolidating two years of research and survey data to release our first, comprehensive LMS industry report.  This analysis includes: Corporate LMS Overview Employee and Extended Enterprise Insights Learning Technology Industry Trends 20 Modern LMS Feature Sets Defined Case Studies Galore 50+ Charts and Graphics Comparison Grids Licensing and Pricing Guide Dozens of LMS Vendor Profiles Do you want us to notify you when the report is available? Submit the form below: First Name* Last Name* Email Address* Company   The post Talented Learning: Greatest Hits of 2015 appeared first on Talented Learning.

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.

Following the recent launch of the gomo central app, our all-new native app capability, we ran a webinar to delve deeper into the idea of using apps for learning. We feel that native apps take the possibilities of mobile learning a step further, facilitating offline learning (and tracking) and providing a customized experience of relevant training onto the personalized devices of learners. Check out the full recording from the webinar below… Want to learn more about the gomo central app and get a better idea of how it can integrate with your learning strategy? Drop us a line today. The post Webinar recording - harnessing native apps for learning appeared first on gomo Learning.

The Experience API or xAPI specification is the talk of many an exhibition seminar today, with the idea of being able to truly measure the learning experience getting teams around the world pretty fired up. The xAPI specification was co-created by our sister company Rustici Software as a less rigid e-learning standard than SCORM. It allows e-learning departments to measure more, easier. With the right technical wizardry, it’s possible to use the xAPI specification to track basically anything, across systems and outside of traditional training confines. Here at gomo, however, our attention is focused on helping people create the best and most beautiful learning, which is why gomo comes pre-configured with an xAPI analytics dashboard to give training teams a real-time snapshot of how your learners, and learning, are doing. What makes the xAPI specification great? SCORM is a 2D, black and white look at e-learning SCORM, the accepted standard of e-learning, is great for ensuring an authoring tool and LMS will play nicely together - i.e, the content you create will work seamlessly when you upload it to an LMS. It’s not so great, however, as a method of tracking e-learning, with little data available beyond quiz scores and time lapsed in a course… it’s very course specific. The xAPI specification is the new standard, which brings training measurement into vivid HD colour, presenting all kinds of data to assist training teams understand what learners are and aren’t doing, where they’re based, what devices they’re using and loads more. Track the experience across devices Learning is an experience, so it’s important we can understand the when, why and how of our audience in order to create learning which meets their requirements and suits their needs. It goes without saying that devices are and will continue to be an important vehicle for learning, but SCORM doesn’t help teams understand how learners are picking up training. Knowing how staff consume learning has a huge impact on learning design - why focus on desktop as the primary vehicle for delivery if 60% of learners are using their smartphone, or vice versa. xAPI data from the gomo analytics dashboard xAPI can be configured to track whatever you like, although it will require you to have the expertise either in-house or through a vendor. Because we know that isn’t always possible, the gomo learning suite comes with a preconfigured dashboard of xAPI goodness to give you a wealth of insight that SCORM can’t. gomo tracks the following as standard… who has (or hasn’t) taken the training training dates results completions passes failures device types (desktop / tablet / smartphone) activities report (including individual questions and answers) To try out the xAPI specification and get an idea of the insight you can gain into your learners and learning with xAPI, begin a 21-day free trial of gomo today. The post Authoring and the xAPI specification - what we can gain from advanced tracking appeared first on gomo Learning.