Learning Management Software

If your company exists in the software or technology space, people need convenient ways to learn about your products and services. Whether they're your customers, your employees, or your partners, each and every one of your them will need some form of user education. Although many people today are already very good with technology, there are still many people who aren't. 

Even the people with brains hardwired for understanding software are probably still going to need a little boost to help them learn about your product and its interface, specifically. 

It's important to provide users with easy access to the training they'll need to use your technology product or service successfully. This is where learning management software (LMS) comes in handy.

Sometimes also called a learning management system, an LMS is one of the best tools at your disposal for creating and maintaining a user learning academy. T

here are a few different types of learning management system applications, but all of them can benefit your company and your users in one way or another. 

When you use an LMS to offer exceptional user training, it creates a better experience for the customer, which often translates to lower churn, better product adoption and higher revenue for your business.

With the right LMS, you can design a user learning academy that people find informative and engaging. Typical training courses, whether online or in-person, often suffer from monotonous presentations and unengaging materials. It's difficult to keep users motivated and involved with these traditional training methods. 

When users have access to a streamlined training academy supported by an LMS, they can quickly and easily identify the information they need and have it presented to them in an engaging and digestible format. You can also use an LMS to offer product information via a variety of mediums such as audio or video presentations.

Understanding LMS Software

Before we go too far into the specific ways you can use an LMS, let's back up a bit to really understand what learning management software is all about. 

An LMS is a learning management system that you can use to design an online academy where users of all kinds can learn how to use your products and services. A learning academy can be a valuable resource for new customers who are learning about your products or services for the first time, as well as for long-time customers who have questions or need to solve an unexpected problem quickly.

There are four main ways you can use learning management software: 

Customer Education

Using an LMS to provide customers with high-quality learning resources is one of the keys to retaining their business. A solid customer education strategy can improve customer experience and product engagement, often leading to lower churn and higher levels of customer advocacy. When your customers are product experts, they are more likely to appreciate the value your product or service has to offer and recommend it to others. One of the best ways to create a better customer experience is to give your customers access to customer education courses through an LMS training portal.

Partner Training

You can also use an LMS to educate your partners about your products. Your partners probably include resellers, consultants or other services. It's important that these business partners understand your product well so they can help effectively sell it. The more knowledge about your products or services your partners have access to, the better equipped they will be to do their jobs.

Employee Learning

As your partners, it's important to thoroughly educate your employees about your products or services so they can do their jobs as effectively as possible. When your employees are product experts, they can sell the products better and also help customers more efficiently. No matter how popular your online customer academy becomes, there will always be a few customers who prefer to be helped by a live agent. These agents are going to need to know the product inside and out to provide helpful service.

Gig Workforce Training

The gig economy is a massive ecosystem that millions of people rely on for their primary source of income. If you have gig workers working for your company, you'll need an efficient way of onboarding them. It's not easy to maintain a consistent system of training gig workers because the gig workforce is so fractured. That's why it can be very helpful to use an LMS to create a streamlined online training program for your gig workers.

Know the Corporate LMS Companies

When you hear the phrase "learning management," it's easy to assume we're talking about student education. An LMS can indeed be used for this purpose, but that's a different topic.

The kind of education we're talking about right now is the product education your company provides for various users. Corporate LMS companies build learning management software to be used for business-related education, such as onboarding new clients or training new employees.

Learning management software companies make software that's tailored for all different kinds of educational purposes. When an LMS is used in the corporate world, it's usually for the purpose of customer education, employee education, or for educating other kinds of users like gig workers or partners. 

Businesses often use learning management systems to build product education academies filled with resources about their products or services. 

These learning academies are built for the specific purpose of teaching users how to be successful with the product or service and get the most possible value out of it.

When you're designing a product education program for your users, it's important to keep your end goals in mind. Corporate education programs and student education programs have very different goals. 

As a business, your goals are to provide a better customer experience, decrease churn and drive growth and revenue, not improve test scores or graduation rates. 

Even though both goals could be accomplished with an LMS, they require very differently designed academies. You should keep your business goals clearly in mind and focus on providing a learning experience that's relevant to those goals. 

Learning Management System Comparison

Now that you know the difference between using an LMS for student learning and using an LMS for corporate learning, you can make a more accurate learning management system comparison. 

It's important to consider the right factors that differentiate the best LMS for corporate training from the ones that are better suited for other applications like student learning.

Here are some of the LMS features that you should look for:

• Customizable Design: You likely have multiple kinds of users accessing your learning academy, such as customers, employees, partners, or gig workers. It's important to be able to customize the feel of the learning experience for the audience and the topic at hand. Not to mention, customizability means you can match the look of your training courses to your brand's aesthetic.
• CRM Integration: Integrating your LMS and CRM data makes it easy to align sales, marketing and training initiatives and helps you gather better customer insights.
• Analytics: One of the best parts about using an online learning academy in a corporate setting is that you can use it to gather insights about your users. The best LMS for corporate training can help you track metrics that give you a better picture of where your users are succeeding and where they need more help.
• Learning Paths: Tailored learning paths for your customers or employees make it easy to move seamlessly from one relevant course to the next. This can remove friction for learners by making it much easier to find the courses they need.

Learning Management System Examples

MaRS is a great example of an organization that found an LMS that was a perfect fit for its goals. MaRS implemented Northpass after trying a few other learning platforms and finding that they didn't provide the functionality that was needed. Northpass's highly customizable platform gave MaRS the flexibility to experiment with new learning formats and find a style that works. 

The best way to find the right LMS for your needs is to identify a need (like MaRS's need for flexibility) and identify the key features that will help you meet that need (like Northpass's customizability). You can look to other successful learning management system examples like this one to help guide your search for the perfect LMS.