The eLearning industry is expected to reach over 450 billion in revenue by 2026. As the demand for online learning grows, so does the need for a Learning Management system (LMS).

An LMS is an online platform used to administer online learning programs at scale. From training new employees to selling courses and providing continuing education, LMSs are a must-have tool for companies and universities. Your organization can use an LMS to deliver training on-demand, with online courses that people can complete at their own pace. Or, with classes that happen in real-time, where both the instructor and students are present (either virtually or in person).

Now, let’s dive deep into how and why a Learning Management System is the best solution for training audiences online.

Why Does Your Organization Need an LMS?

Learning Management Systems are the equivalent of a CRM for learning. Think of an LMS as an online platform designed to create courses and package existing content into engaging training. Then, you can use the same platform to see how your audience interacts with training. For example, monitoring learning-related metrics, such as quiz scores, course attendance, and more.

If you’re selling courses online, you can do so directly on an LMS like Academy Of Mine or by integrating with an existing eCommerce store. Learning management systems also integrate with other 3rd-party applications like HubSpot, Google Analytics, and more.

Whether you’re training internal teams and students, or you’re providing certifications online, using an LMS can streamline the process.

Let’s talk about 5 reasons your organization needs an LMS…

Increase Training Effectiveness

Let’s say you’re training an audience online. The first step to judging an online training program’s effectiveness is by seeing if your learners are completing courses and passing the training. Using an LMS, you can monitor quiz scores, individual assignment submissions, classroom progress, how much time users are spending with materials, etc. Then, once you see that the majority of your employees, customers, and/or students are completing courses, you can compare this to on-the-job performance.

A learning management system is also the perfect tool for continuing education, which means that users are regularly taking courses to maintain certifications and skills. This is powerful because you don’t want your teams to get lazy and lose knowledge they once knew.

If you’re using a cloud-based platform, then you can get access to the LMS simply by paying an annual fee. The benefit to this is your company can manage learning programs like a pro, and without having to develop software!

Train Customers and Organizations at Scale

Most LMS platforms allow you to import a large number of users at a time, using an Excel sheet. So if you have to enroll a lot of learners into training at once, you can do this quickly. Using a feature called Portals, you can then separate your customers taking courses from you, by company or customer group. For example, let’s say your company provides professional development to 10 different hospitals, each of your clients could be enrolled in a unique white-labeled version of training (separate from each other).

Using an LMS, you can quickly onboard organizations and train multiple audiences at the same time.

Reduce Training Expenses

There are certain unavoidable expenses associated with in-person training, such as the cost of on-site instructors, physical training materials, and company-subsidized travel expenses (like rental space). LMSs help you reduce training expenses by replacing in-person activities with online learning.

Using an LMS, your company can educate teams with online courses that are accessible 24/7, and completed in the learner's own time. This is called self-paced learning, and helping learners complete training in their own time is an effective part of LMSs. With modern technology, on-demand courses can be interactive and engaging too.

If your organization prefers to teach a subject online with instructors and learners present (and face to face), they can still do so using a virtual classroom. With an LMS, you can connect with video-conference apps like Zoom, to host virtual classes, in which users join classes on their computer and webcam.

Integrate Your LMS with Existing Business Applications

One of the best parts about delivering online education & training with an LMS is connecting with software applications like HubSpot and Google Analytics. For example, let’s say you’re using the LMS for new-hire training. Using LMS integrations, you can connect your LMS with your HRIS system. Another popular LMS integration is Single Sign-on, which helps employees log in using their company credentials.

Let’s say you are using an LMS to train customers, and your eCommerce website is separate from the LMS. In this case, if you wanted to use Google Analytics to report on your website’s traffic, you could integrate with your LMS to run reports in one place! The most popular LMS integration is webinar tools like Zoom, MS Teams, GoToTraining, etc. Academy Of Mine integrates with a lot of software.

Sell Professional Courses Online

If selling courses online was a NASCAR race, learning management systems would be like the pit crew. Without an LMS, you can still sell courses online with an eCommerce provider, but managing the learning programs would be a nightmare.

With an LMS like Academy Of Mine, you can create landing pages and sell your courses online without a separate website. Alternatively, most LMSs integrate with eCommerce providers such as Shopify and WooCommerce. If you’re selling training to various organizations, you can create private training portals for customers to enroll in branded and personalized programs.

10 Ways to Train with an LMS

Just like a high-speed train helps with affordable commutes, LMSs help with efficient online training management. Learning Management Systems are effective for organizations of all sizes that want to streamline learning management.

No, seriously. LMSs don’t play favorites to specific training use cases or business sectors! Now, let’s talk about all the many types of training an LMS can be used for.

Extended Enterprise Training

If you’re training customers and external organizations, the right LMS needs can save your company loads of time. For example, with a flexible Learning Management platform, you can onboard customers into training efficiently. What’s better is, you can give your larger customers their own unique and white-labeled training instance (that outside users don’t have access to). At Academy Of Mine, we call these B2B Portals, which can be branded with visuals, custom courses, and personalized content.

An LMS with Portals, otherwise known as groups or instances, allows you to train multiple audiences using only one learning management system. LMS Portals are kept separate from each other and only accessible by those who are permitted. Most large clients purchasing corporate training will want to monitor training progress, and they can do this with learner reports in their Portal.

Employee Training

If your company doesn’t have skilled employees that get work done efficiently, your business will fail. From car dealerships to real-estate firms, insurance companies, and more, keeping your employees trained and compliant with state regulations is necessary.

The most common use case for an LMS is employee training. This could mean delivering compliance training to all departments, or department-specific training to only certain people, like HR or marketing teams. What’s important to remember is that using an LMS to train employees is a game-changer.

Regardless of the training type, a learning management system can help your company keep employees sharp in their profession and aware of company culture. The best part is, your company can manage training records from one easy-to-use online training platform that integrates with other areas of your business.

Selling Courses and eLearning Online

Most Learning Management Systems integrate with eCommerce Providers such as Shopify, to help you sell courses. Using a platform like Academy Of Mine, you can even build beautiful landing pages to sell courses without requiring a 3rd-party store.

If you’re searching for an LMS that allows you to sell courses directly on the platform, look for a provider that integrates with established payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal.

Training Teams Remotely

Without an LMS your customers will struggle with juggling back and forth between multiple platforms during eLearning. Learning Management Systems are designed to combat this and simplify remote learning and training.

Without an LMS, your customers may struggle to juggle back and forth between multiple platforms during online learning. For example, if you’re hosting virtual classes using Zoom, how are you delivering the class URL and then reporting attendance later? Learning Management Systems are designed to combat these unnecessary ‘disconnects’ in the learning experience, by integrating everything in one.

Another common LMS integration is with a CRM. For example, let’s say you are training a sales team and want to improve their performance. First, connect your CRM with the LMS to see sales reports in one place. Then, hone in on what skills your sales team is lacking, and train them on these skills remotely (using self-paced courses). If you wanted to engage sales teams further, you could host virtual sales training via Microsoft Teams or your preferred video-conferencing app. Then you can upload the video recording from training back into the LMS, then combine it with a quiz or written assignment!

Enable Sales Teams

Salespeople need to train daily to be effective while prospecting and closing deals!

As companies grow, products and services change and best practices evolve quickly. Use an LMS to host different training using Zoom and Microsoft Teams, or other video-conferencing platforms. If your company is implementing a new long-term training initiative, create and deliver it in the form of a self-paced course that your sales teams can access on demand.

You can also keep your team sharp by implementing regular product training or skills training. This style of recurring training is referred to as continuing education. Heck, you can even gamify learning and award certificates at the end of the course to help make learning more fun!

Maintain Compliance

The different types of compliance training are endless:

• HR Law.
• Diversity Training.
• Workplace Safety (OSHA).
• Anti-Harassment Training, and much more.

We have many different types of clients that use our LMS for compliance training, InteServ Solutions being one of those.

When your company is requiring all of its employees or an audience to take compliance training, it’s best to offer it conveniently. Compliance training can be given and managed with ease using an LMS that has a certificate builder and a user-friendly interface.

Customer and Partner Training

Using a learning management platform to train your employees is common. On the other hand, eLearning platforms like LMSs are also great for engaging customers and partners with online training. Try including free product training with purchases, to help customers get more out of the relationship. Imagine your business generates revenue with a membership plan — try including 30-minute interactive courses with member plans.

LMS platforms are effectively used to train external audiences, and they help your company create training that’s convenient to take. The flip side to that benefit is your company can manage all ongoing training programs under one roof.

Streamline Employee Onboarding

We have a client that grew from 110 to 240 employees in one year, by using our LMS to automate new-hire training. Think of an LMS as a resource area for new hires to familiarize themselves with your company’s values and policies. Of course, you can also use an LMS for employee training, I9 paperwork, and so forth.

Employees that are with your company for a while, can use the LMS to maintain certificates and take continuing education. Most importantly, your company has access to all employee training records in one neat & organized system.

Support Education

Long before working remotely was considered normal, students in high school and college used platforms like Blackboard and Canvas to manage their education. Using an LMS, you can deliver educational content to students, interact with them individually or in a group setting, and track their progress in a classroom!

When it comes to testing students in courses, learning management systems offer a wide range of options:

• Create multiple-choice or short-answer quizzes.
• Create interactive videos.
• Utilize written assignments where students write in their answers or send a video response.
• Create group activities for classrooms to work together.

Safety Training

Even though safety training falls under compliance, it’s quite different. For example, heavy machinery safety training is going to be for a different audience than white-collar workers taking anti-harassment courses. Still, just like compliance training, safety training can be effectively administered using a learning management system

Forklift Academy is one of our clients that provides safety training at scale, forklift training to be specific.

The 3 Different Types of LMS

Just like comparing an Apple computer to a Windows computer, each LMS offers a similar solution but is built differently. Some providers offer an LMS that is designed more for academia and higher education, whereas others work better for organizational compliance training.

Since you already know what an LMS is, and how it can be used, let’s take a deeper look at the different types available.

Self-Hosted LMS

A Self-Hosted LMS is a web application that you install on your computer, then you have to host and maintain it yourself. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to build the platform yourself. You can get freelancers to help you build the platform, using Open-source technology.

When you self-host, you have control of all data and full access to the LMS’s back-end. However — for companies with less than 50-100 employees — self-hosting is far more expensive than investing in a cloud-based solution from a company like Academy Of Mine. Why? Because you need an IT team to be able to fix bugs, maintain the LMS server, and update code (as needed).

SaaS LMS (Cloud-Based)

SaaS, otherwise known as software as a service, is a common business model that LMS providers like Academy Of Mine follow to sell a cloud-based platform. SaaS LMSs are based on the web and made available to you by a third party. The focal point of SaaS is you’re purchasing the software from a provider, instead of building it yourself.

Using a SaaS LMS, you will still have to create content to offer to your audience (if it’s not already created), but you won't have to build your own proprietary platform. One benefit to going cloud-based is your customers accessing courses on the platform can access the system without having to download software or install hardware. Another benefit: platform administrators managing courses, can do their reporting online.

We can’t truly speak for other providers, but partnering with a SaaS LMS company like Academy Of Mine means that software customizations, maintenance, or unpredicted bugs are taken care of for you! Customer support is something we prioritize at AOM. With a SaaS LMS, you also don’t need an IT team to host to maintain the platform.

Other benefits of using a SaaS LMS:

• Established software that’s been optimized and tested.
• No need to install anything on your hard drive.
• Forget about writing code and building an LMS yourself.
• Maintenance and technical support handled for you.
• Less room for error and failure than in a self-hosted LMS.

Open-source LMS

Open-source LMSs are installed on your computer. The advantage of using an Open-source LMS is that you can start with source code and then customize the platform to match your training needs and brand image. But we only recommend only considering this type of LMS if you have a dedicated software development team, to install, customize, and maintain the platform.

Moodle and Schoology are good examples of Open-source LMSs, popular among universities and institutions. An Open-source LMS doesn’t have to be self-hosted. Your alternative is partnering with somebody trustworthy and technically savvy to host the LMS on their server.

LMS for Schools

Looking at LMSs based on the business model and distribution type is one thing. Considering the type of courses you’re offering, and your target audience, is another! At the time of writing this post, we Googled “LMS” and got 325,000,000 search results. Even though there are thousands of LMSs on the market, not all of them are created equal. Some eLearning platforms are better for academia, and others are better for professional development.

Canva and Moodle are popular LMSs for universities and k-12 schools.

Education Learning Management Systems tend to focus on a core set of features like reporting, course creation, SCORM compatibility, and virtual classrooms. The software that education LMSs integrate with tends to be more applicable to schools than businesses. For example, an LMS for schools will connect with your SIS (Student information system), but an LMS for professional development would not.

Corporate LMS

Corporate LMSs are built for businesses that train customers, partners, and employees. Some eLearning platforms are more focused on serving individual entrepreneurs — selling courses online — rather than scaling businesses.

Different types of training corporate LMSs are used to manage:

• Compliance training.
• Safety training.
• Employee development.
• Extended enterprise training (training other businesses).
• HR and onboarding.
• Professional Development and Continuing Education, and more.

Corporate LMSs are almost always white-labeled and allow you to create branded and personalized training for your customers. Additionally, businesses usually have larger budgets than schools, so corporate LMS systems tend to be pricier.

Learning Management Systems designed for corporate training also include eCommerce. This is important so that your company can sell professional courses online, and streamline the purchasing and enrolling process for customers.

Industries that benefit from a Learning Management System

Some Learning Management Systems are specialized for employee training and onboarding, whereas others are better for customer training. This is important to consider, but what’s more important is finding an LMS that supports your industry and training type.

At Academy Of Mine, we have many clients selling continuing education to real estate firms — these types of clients tend to need certifications in their system. On top of that, depending on the state there are certain state regulations for offering continuing education. So, your LMS has to include the features that enable you to meet state requirements.

Here are some different industries that can benefit from an LMS:

Healthcare

Healthcare professionals have to take continuing medical education courses (CME) on a regular basis. CME helps people in the medical field maintain their abilities and learn new skills. Delivering this type of training using an LMS is smart because it allows medical staff to learn new things and maintain certifications in their own time. Especially for busy doctors and nurses, simplifying training and certificate maintenance is important.

Real Estate

LMSs are the perfect solution for simplifying real estate training and renewing real estate licenses; that’s what our client 1st Choice Real Estate does. Alternatively, eLearning platforms are also helpful if your business trains other RE organizations and partners. Every state has different compliance requirements and regulations for realtors and real estate professionals; having a powerful software tool to keep track of all the data from training is essential. LMSs can easily integrate with third-party tools so that all your favorite business tools work together.

Insurance

Insurance is a $1.28 trillion industry. Creating custom training for your insurance clients is an easy way to stand out from the competition. We have insurance clients at AOM that use our software to train their teams on product knowledge, soft skills, and more. At the same time, some of our customers in insurance also train other organizations in the industry.

Whether you’re focused on training employees or external agencies, using a Learning Management System is a great tool for scaling.

Compliance

In the past decade, compliance training has become big. In states like California, companies with as few as 5 employees are required to provide regular sexual harassment prevention training to everyone. Even though maintaining compliance is important — many times regulated by the state government — it’s not something employees are waking up every day excited about. That’s why It’s important to create courses that help employees maintain compliance with ease. For example, giving employees access to an online training portal, to help with certificate maintenance and license renewal.

Learning management systems also keep track of employees’ performance and platform usage, so your company has proof of compliance (in case you get audited). We have many clients using AOM for compliance training.

Manufacturing and Industries Using Heavy Machinery

For industries using heavy machinery and working in warehouses, safety training is important! Continuous training is a great strategy for preventing serious physical accidents in industries like construction, manufacturing, automotive, etc.

When purchasing a learning management system for this industry, just make sure your software is user-friendly and easy to use for anyone.

Public Safety Training Institute is a client of ours that delivers safety training to firefighters, using Academy Of Mine. If your safety courses are for customers purchasing training online, not employees, make sure your platform supports eCommerce. Additionally, if your audience is going to be taking recurring training, you may want to find an LMS that supports subscription payments.

Sales

Your sales department relies on training to stay motivated and skilled. Sales, more than any other department, needs to stay on top of their game or your business will stop generating revenue. By using a cloud-based LMS, your company can train reps and leaders online with self-paced courses, which are available anytime any place.

The accessibility of a learning management system helps sales teams access product or company knowledge when they’re out of the office. Using on-demand courses that teams, customers, and partners can access remotely, your sales teams can stay engaged and perform at work. With an LMS, your company can also host virtual sales training using apps like video-conferencing apps like Zoom and MS Teams.

IT

In today’s digital world, there is a huge demand for cutting-edge software and mobile apps, and this is only increasing daily.

So how can your IT business use an LMS to stand out?

Here’s one example: IT companies can use an LMS to train potential customers on how to use their software before even making a purchase. Many companies do this by offering a trial version of their software for x amount of days, and they include free automated support so that customers can get familiar with a product before committing. Some companies may also find it useful to offer courses to current customers, teaching them how to use their software in more advanced ways.

Our client, RLDATIX, uses Academy Of Mine to teach healthcare organizations how to provide excellent care to their patients.

Extended Enterprise Training

Extended enterprise training is the act of your company training other companies. There are a few features in specific that make an LMS particularly useful for this type of B2B training:

One of them is customer portals, which allows you to onboard companies and enroll users at scale. Using customer portals, you can train various companies in different industries, all while keeping customers and all training curriculum completely separate.

If your LMS is White-labeled, customers can brand and personalize their training portal. Lastly, by utilizing built-in reporting tools in an LMS, or integrating with your favorite third-party plugin your business can automate and streamline the majority of employee/customer/user reporting.

Essential Features Of An LMS

LMSs can solve a variety of needs — from internal training to educating customers and partners or selling certification-based courses to a market, and more! Keep in mind that your LMS is only going to be as effective as its features. For example, if you’re selling courses online, then you need eCommerce support.

Let’s not waste any time, and get right into the features your LMS needs.

Intuitive Interface for both Admins and Users

A great LMS should have little to no learning curve. That way, instructors can manage eLearning and students can begin training shortly after onboarding. Remember, the purpose of an LMS is to streamline training and learning programs. Just because an LMS has the features required, does not imply that the software is easy-to-use as a student or administrator.

User-friendly software ensures that your customers will be able to log in to the system and complete the curriculum with ease. If your LMS is not intuitive, then you may be forced to resolve unnecessary support calls, from learners being confused about how to do something in the learning platform. The easiest way to test an LMS’s interface is by getting a software Demo or Trial. At Academy Of Mine, we offer 30-day trials, if you’re a good fit for the platform after doing a Demo!

eCommerce

When your LMS is eCommerce-friendly then the courses you create on the platform can be sold to others online. Whether you sell courses created on the LMS by integrating with a third-party eCommerce tool or you’re able to sell directly on the platform, your LMS should streamline the process.

You should make sure your LMS integrates with your preferred payment gateway (I.E., Stripe and Paypal). If you don’t already have an eCommerce platform like Shopify or WooCommerce, then consider working with an LMS company like Academy Of Mine, where you can sell courses directly on the platform.

If you need to monitor quarterly revenue and sales reports, make sure your LMS includes those features!

Native Software Integrations

You probably have software outside of the Learning Management System, like a Salesforce or HubSpot CRM that you would like to connect with your LMS. Integrations are the bridge between an LMS and external software applications. If you want to integrate your LMS with external tools like an HRIS system or analytics tool, check what’s possible with your LMS provider.

One thing that separates Academy Of Mine from other LMS providers, is we do custom integrations for clients that need a tool custom-connected to the LMS.

Certificates of Completion

Especially if training is accredited, an important part of completing a course online is earning a certification. LMSs can help your company create and deliver certificates to learners online. Your LMS should allow you to upload certificate designs into the platform, create designs and save them as templates, and customize fields on a certificate to meet state requirements.

Common certificate fields may be student names, course titles, and expiration dates — these will automatically be filled in when a user completes a course.

If you’re using a Learning Management System like AOM, you can customize certificate fields and get creative with your brand colors and logos.

Course Creation and Management

Just like at a job, your employees can only be as successful as their manager allows them to be.

An LMS should allow you to create courses using built-in authoring tools, and give you the option to upload materials created with external authoring tools like Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline 360.

Once a course is created in the LMS, you should be able to onboard large groups of users into the system and enroll them in courses. Of course, after creating courses and filling up seats with students, you will need a way to generate progress reports and monitor learner progress — this is simple with LMS reports.

Content Format Supportability

Simply put, there’s a universal group of formats that your LMS should support so that you can easily create and reuse content from other applications and past LMSs. The main format is called SCORM, which is the eLearning standard for creating interactive courses and learning modules. Your LMS should also support formats like Text/HTML, PDF, Video, PPT, and any other common formats used with online learning materials.

Localization & Language Translations

If your LMS is going to be used to train audiences in different parts of the world, then language translation is an important feature. That way, if customers purchase courses that are written in a language they don’t speak, the content can be translated into their main language.

Academy of Mine’s clients can easily change the language of their course materials from English to Spanish or French, with the click of a button.

Security

It’s in your company’s best interest to keep user and company data safe and secure in the Learning Management System. Even if there’s minimal private information stored in the LMS, you would hate for users to lose certificates and course progress if there was ever a data breach or cyber security issue.

Here is a list of the security features your LMS should have:

• Secure and complex password requirements.
• 2-Step verification.
• Frequent Data Backups.
• System audit logs to monitor all activity in the platform.
• Locked content that prevents user downloads.
• SSL and Single Sign-on.
• GDPR compliance.

Learning Paths

Just like a workout plan helps you stay on track with your fitness goals, a learning path helps users enrolled in courses keep up with training. Basic learning paths allow course creators to bundle together multiple courses to be taken in a specific order. Advanced learning paths use AI to auto-suggest other courses a user might be interested in based on their current course history.

Whether an LMS is designed with advanced or basic learning paths, the goal of them is the same — to personalize learning experiences for your audience.

Learner Reports (Reporting Learner Progress and Scores)

Online learning assessments — like quizzes and tests — are important because they help users understand if they’re on track to complete a course. Reviewing how users perform on assignments, helps your company see what areas are lacking in individuals, departments, teams, etc.

LMS engagement tools like surveys and group assignments can help improve the motivation and focus of students in a course. For example, prompting students with a survey — asking what they like or dislike — in between modules in a course. This is a good way to gauge how users are interacting with course materials before anybody has even completed training.

LMS assessment example:

• Different types of quizzes and tests.
• Pass/Fail options for assessments.
• Surveys for student feedback.
• Group activities to promote communication and collaboration.

Online Assessments like Tests and Written Assignments

Assessment tools like quizzes and tests are important because they help users understand if they’re on track to complete a course or not. In addition, assessments highlight areas for users in a course and show them where they can improve.

Engagement tools like surveys and discussion boards can help improve the motivation and focus users are showing in a course, as well as help learners have their questions answered and ideas heard by instructors and other users in real-time.

An LMS should offer:

• Different types of quizzes and tests.
• Pass/Fail options for assessments.
• Surveys for student feedback.
• Discussion boards to promote communication and collaboration.

White-label LMS with Visual Branding

Did you know that you can increase revenue by over 20% by maintaining brand consistency across all platforms? Using a White-label LMS, you can attach your logo, brand colors, and brand visuals across your system. Using the Academy Of Mine LMS, you can also customize your email address for user notifications and create custom branded pages to be displayed inside student dashboards.

A great LMS should allow you to visually brand the system:

• Attach a Logo, and brand colors, and customize titles and text areas.
• White-label emails.
• Eliminate vendor ties in client training portals.
• Use a custom domain and more.

SCORM Compliance (Shareable-Content-Object-Reference-Model)

Formats such as SCORM allow your company to create eLearning materials for courses and then reuse them with any LMS. When your LMS is SCORM compliant, you can import your content from one LMS to another with ease. Similar to how .doc is the universal format for written documents on a Windows computer, SCORM is the standard format for interactive eLearning modules. SCORM also provides detailed tracking of student activities and is great for creating engaging and interactive online content.

Instructor-led Training (Virtual Classrooms)

As opposed to self-paced learning, where users can progress through a course in their own time, Instructor-led training (ILT) is an approach to online learning that involves an instructor during class (in real-time). ILT is most commonly implemented through virtual calls that are connected to the LMS with apps like Zoom, GoToWebinar, and Microsoft Teams.

If you would like to learn more about instructor-led training, here’s a post that compares it to self-paced learning.

Gamification

Gamification is the act of turning activities that aren’t traditionally referred to as fun (like training or learning), into enjoyable activities like a game. Employers and schools have been using gamification to improve online learning for a while. If your memory can go as far back as middle school or preschool, you’d remember that many teachers would give out stickers or high-fives when students did well! When a Learning Management system uses a points system like badges and leader boards, user engagement usually increases.

In the Academy Of Mine LMS, you can assign points to different modules in a course. Then, learners can earn points after completing activities or achieving specific grades, to compete with classmates.

User Management

Unless your organization is okay with users enrolled in a course having the same access as admins and instructors, user management is critical.

Your LMS should make it easy for admins to enroll users into courses, and assign users with a set of permissions (defining the access they have in the system). For example, students shouldn’t be able to grade their own assignments, that’s the responsibility of instructors.

Certain actions in an LMS should only be performed by instructors and administrators, and User Management is about being able to customize this. Every LMS is different, but managing users inside of Academy Of Mine is easy with a feature called ‘User Roles’.

B2B Portals (Train Multiple Audiences with 1 LMS)

If you’re training multiple audiences online, then you’re going to need an LMS feature called Portals, sometimes referred to as groups or training branches. Portals are used to onboard different clients into separate, branded training environments, to receive training.

For example, let’s say you’re training restaurant owners in food safety. You have 5 restaurant clients, and each client wants their training to be branded with specific custom content, contextualized to their organization. You can easily do this with LMS Portals.

Portals also restrict one client from accessing another’s training…

Single Sign-On (SSO)

If your employees or customers are already taking online training but you want to invest in an LMS, you want the migration to be seamless. With Single Sign-on, existing users can use their company credentials to log in to the LMS — instead of having to remember new login details.

An LMS should always allow for standard authentication protocols such as OAuth2 and SAML.

The Digest of Learning Management Systems

Learning Management Systems are a powerful tool for streamlining online learning programs. The use case they’re practical for depends on the company providing the software, or the specifications you’re following for developing an LMS in-house. When it comes to what industry an LMS is applicable to, this isn’t really even a question! As long as your software has the necessary features for administering training, it’s going to be an effective solution for learning management.

So, how does using a feature-rich LMS from a provider with excellent support sound? If it’s good, let’s talk!