Nowadays, organizations don't hesitate to spend their time and money on online training. In fact, a LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report^[1] revealed that more than 55% of L&D departments were planning to spend more time and money on online learning in the coming years.

As more and more companies transition to remote & hybrid work models, they all actively hunt for reliable tools and learning platforms to help them create, host, manage, deliver, and assess their online training content seamlessly.

This is where an LMS comes into the picture.

More than 80% of organizations^[2] use a learning management system (LMS) these days.

It's estimated that by 2030, the global learning management market will reach a value of $76.18 billion^[3].

If you're unsure about what an LMS is, and whether your company needs it in the first place, you've come to the right place.

This post will help you understand everything you need to know about an LMS (learning management system) in the simplest way possible.

What is an LMS (Learning Management System)?

A learning management system is an online platform used for creating, hosting, managing, and delivering online courses or training programs.

The Learning Management System was first introduced in the late 1990s. The software and functionalities back then were pretty basic. It only had a set of defined course modules and a few assignment submission features.

Slowly in the early 2000s, the corporate world started getting accustomed to using LMS and other authoring tools to meet their learning and development needs. And, with time, people started using LMS for a variety of other reasons as well.

The modern learning management systems that are used nowadays are more advanced and come with multiple useful features that make learning more engaging, interactive, and fun.

Who uses an LMS?

LMS platforms are used across multiple industries for a variety of use cases. The global LMS market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 19.1%^[4].

But, here are two of the most important types of LMS users.

Administrators

Administrators take care of multiple tasks. They are mostly responsible for the management of the course content (which includes course planning and creation, assigning learner groups, tracking the progress and outcomes of the courses, etc).

Learners

Learners are the ones who are on the receiving end of the learning initiatives. They'd be provided access to their assigned courses and evaluations and would also be able to track their course completion rate.

Courses can be assigned individually, or according to a learner's role in a company's organisational structure.

How Does a Learning Management System Work?

A learning management system is a large repository of different types of learning resources. It's used to access, store, and track information within a single platform. Anyone with a secure login credential will be able to access the learning resources inside the LMS.

If the LMS is self-hosted, users should either download the software to their hard drive or access it through their company's server.

Here's what you'll be able to do with the help of a learning management system:

Create online courses
Organize the courses into proper categories and modules
Deliver the courses to learners
Track the learning progress
Manage users

LMS Use Cases

Post the pandemic, many organizations have come to realize the importance of a learning management system. It's widely being used for a variety of learning activities such as:

Employee Onboarding

Onboarding new employees is definitely not an easy task. An LMS helps organizations create specified learning paths to guide each of their employees through their onboarding process.

Employee Upskilling & Retention

If onboarding the right talent is vital for the growth of your organization, training them on the best skills and retaining them is even more important. With the help of an LMS, companies can tailor their own training materials to ensure their employees acquire the right job skills.

Compliance Training

With the help of an LMS and compliance training software like iTacit, companies can create mandatory training and certification programs, track user progress and manage recurring certifications.

Sales Enablement

Hunting down ideal customer profiles and closing deals isn't an easy task. However, salespeople do this all around the year. That’s why companies train their salespeople.

These training also help speed up onboarding, so that new hires are well equipped with the best sales techniques and training materials out there.

Customer Training

This form of training is quite common amongst software and tech companies. The idea is to provide more value to customers by helping them understand the products they've purchased thoroughly. They play an active role in reducing customer churn.

Partner Training

A learning management system can also be used to train an organization's partners, channels, and resellers. It will be hugely beneficial in enhancing the organization's partnership programs.

What is LMS (Learning Management System): Vmaker banner — Create Engaging Video with Vmaker

Different Types of LMS

Here's a list of the different types of deployment options for a learning management system:

Open-source LMS

These are platforms where users can easily modify the look and feel of their learning platform by altering the source code.

The major setback with this type of LMS is that, in order to use the system efficiently, users will need decent programming knowledge.

Enterprise LMS

These are commercial learning management systems that are very user-friendly. They come with multiple support services and useful features that help organizations create, manage and deploy courses effortlessly.

SaaS

These are modern software that provides all the necessary learning management features with relevant upgrades to suit the needs of various users across multiple industries. These types of software are generally cloud-based and provide support services.

Installed LMS

These types of LMS are locally hosted on the dedicated server of the organization that purchases the learning platform. Since it's hosted locally, all the aspects of the LMS can be customized easily.

How Do You Choose The Best Learning Management System?

Choosing the best learning management system can be quite difficult. It's completely normal for anyone to feel overwhelmed with the number of options available online.

Analyze the pros and cons of each product and select the right solution that perfectly fits your business requirements. Don't just go for the most popular option out there as that might not always be the right fit.

Make sure you follow these 3 simple steps before making a purchase:

1. Prioritize your needs

It's very important to be clear about your list of basic requirements. Based on these, you should be able to jot down the list of requirements that are important based on priority.

For example, if you're an organization with multiple branches and departments that needs training, you should go for an LMS platform that allows you to create individual learning resources for each of those departments using the same account.

2. Read customer ratings & reviews

Check the reviews and ratings from reliable review platforms like Capterra and G2. These review platforms will tell you what previous users liked and disliked about the software.

You can also check out the testimonials and case studies on the vendor's website.

3. Proof of Concept

Before you decide to purchase the software, you can test its functionalities and see if it's a good fit for you.

Features To Look Out For

These days, LMS solutions aren't just used for building and delivering courses. It's used for a variety of other reasons as well.

To give you a clear idea, here's a list of the important features that you should be looking out for before choosing your learning management system.

Important LMS features to look out for:

Custom branding features
Customization of the LMS interface
Hybrid-casual gamification options
Third-party integrations & data exchange as per e-learning standards such as Tin Can (xAPI) and SCORM
Features to host webinars and podcasts
Screen recorder integrations or plug-ins to record the classes and share them with the users
Built-in authoring tool with a code-free editor to develop and edit courses directly on the platform

Advantages & Disadvantages of LMS

Advantages

Increases employee satisfaction
Promotes employee retention
Reduces L&D costs
Provides a better ROI on training programs
Plays an active role in employee knowledge retention
Makes it easier to build & maintain a team

Disadvantages

An LMS isn't built to manage and deliver large video files
It isn't built to be used as a video capture solution
It doesn't allow you to edit your course videos on the same platform

LMS vs Video CMS

While a learning management system has its own set of benefits, it has one major drawback. Most learning management systems aren't built to handle large video files. We all know that video files are significantly heavier than text documents and take up a lot of space.

An average LMS, much like an average CMS (content management system) isn't the ideal choice for handling a video library of large video files.

On the other hand, a video CMS is designed with videos in mind. Most modern video CMS solutions provide great storage capacity, so much so that even massive multi-gigabyte files can easily be uploaded and streamed in the video library.

By choosing a video CMS, you needn't worry about manually splitting lengthy videos into smaller bits to share them with your co-workers. You can easily share even an 8-hour technical seminar without a second thought!

How Vmaker Train Provides You With A Complete Learning Solution

Vmaker Train is a combination of the three best learning solutions (An Animation video maker + a screen recorder + a video CMS).

Let's explore each tool separately so that you get a clear idea about how it helps you create the most interactive training content online.

Animaker, a DIY animation tool helps you create animated course videos for your LMS. It has 1000+ pre-made customizable video templates, a built-in speech-to-text translation software, and a stock library of more than 100 million stock photos and music tracks to help you create animation course videos in just a matter of a few minutes.

Vmaker, a screen + webcam recorder allows you to create the best screencasts, tutorials and instructional video guides. Since it records both screen and webcam, it can be used to repurpose old presentations into new courseware and create short FAQ videos answering the most frequently asked questions. It comes with an online AI video editor as well to make it easier to edit the course videos within the same platform.

Show, a video CMS + video marketing software is a next-gen video marketing software built to host, share, track, and optimize videos effortlessly. It provides valuable insights on viewer engagement and enables custom branding by allowing you to add your company's logos to your videos. As it enables you to track viewer engagement, you can track the engagement levels on your course videos effortlessly.

When these 3 tools are combined together, you would be able to create, host, track, and deliver video courses that keep employees engaged till the very end without having to do much.

Contents

What is an LMS (Learning Management System) & How To Choose The Best One?

What is an LMS (Learning Management System)?