10 Reasons the Corporate LMS is Failing Tech Companies (And What to Use Instead)

As a fast-growing tech company in a fiercely-competitive global marketplace, you need your employees and partners to quickly become experts on your constantly-evolving products and services to sell and support them effectively.

Additionally, you need your customers to quickly understand how to use your solutions to extract maximum value from them as soon as possible.

To accomplish these goals, you must have an e-learning tool that is flexible enough to rapidly and securely deliver up-to-date learning materials, training programs, coaching, blended learning, and certifications engagingly, accessible by anyone, from any device, anywhere in the world.

While most organizations have turned to Learning Management Systems (LMS) for their learning initiatives, they eventually realize that a traditional corporate LMS is not a practical solution for their bottom line. Many LMS implementations fail. A recent LMS trend poll by Brandon Hall found that over 58% of the companies surveyed said they were looking to replace their LMS with a corporate learning tool to meet their business needs and objectives better.

If you’re considering implementing an LMS into your organization, be aware of the following ten limitations:

1. Outdated User Interface

Initially, most organizations find that their LMS of choice checks all of the boxes from an administrative standpoint. After all, any LMS should be able to do basic things like deliver online courses, administer and score quizzes, and generate reports on learner progress.

Unfortunately, many organizations don’t consider the user experience when navigating and using the LMS. Even if it appears to have all the basic functionality you need, most Corporate Learning Management Systems are highly outdated, slow, and difficult to use.

Encouraging the adoption of these outdated tools is particularly difficult in an age where everyone expects software to be simple, fast, and intuitive.

2. Lack of Flexibility and Personalization

A traditional corporate LMS is merely a dull, static collection of PowerPoints, courses, and exams. Employees often see it as little more than a “necessary evil” for compliance. Rarely do organizations find their corporate learning tool to be an exciting, engaging way to grow the skills and knowledge of their employees, partners, and customers.

When choosing a corporate learning tool for your organization, make sure it has the following capabilities:

The Flexibility to Deploy New Courses of Various Lengths Instantly to All Users

In a fast-paced business environment, you must provide up-to-date information and corporate training in bite-sized courses as quickly as possible. This requires your learning platform to be highly flexible, fast, and easy to use, allowing various course lengths and types.

Personalized Learning Paths Based on Persona

A cluttered, one-size-fits-all solution won’t cut it. You must provide the right content, to the right people, at the right time.

To maximize user adoption and retention of information, you must be able to send learners down pre-defined “learning paths” according to their individual needs. This requires that you be able to organize your content based on roles, topics, categories, skills, products, etc.

Recommended Learning Based on Past Activity

Finding the right content in a traditional corporate LMS can be confusing and time-consuming. Your learning technology should provide intuitive navigation that clearly shows users additional content related to courses they are taking, recommended courses based on their previous activity, and personalized content tailored to their specific needs.

These personalized suggestions provide clear “next steps” for users, reducing confusion and maximizing usage and ROI.

3. Lack of User Engagement

While the goal is to provide a platform that engages users and encourages them to pursue continual learning, the traditional corporate LMS is often so complex and uninteresting that users can’t wait to be done with it to move on with their day.

While many corporate LMS have started integrating video learning, most are still heavily dependent on text, which is far too slow and tedious in a modern business environment.

An ideal solution should provide the following:

Live Video Classes with Two-Way Interaction

Watching a pre-recorded video lesson is sufficient in many situations. Still, to maximize engagement and participation, your corporate learning tool should provide the ability to conduct live, online video classes where instructors can present information and learners can engage and ask clarifying questions whenever they get stuck or are confused by the course material.

2. One-on-One Video Feedback

When training sales reps, in particular, they must demonstrate that they have fully understood the course material and gained the necessary skills beyond simply filling out a multiple-choice quiz.

Your corporate learning tool should allow leaders to assess their team members and provide one-on-one video coaching so they can continue to create top performers. This kind of quick, one-on-one feedback ensures you can get reps up to speed and in front of real customers closing sales in less time.

Gamification: Leaderboards, Badges, and Recognition of Progress

It’s not just crucial for administrators to be able to track users’ progress. It’s also essential to provide dashboards to users to see how far they’ve come and how close they are to completing a course and receiving their next certification.

In addition, you can spark a little competitive spirit among your employees by providing leaderboards so they can compare their progress with that of their colleagues.

Points, badges, and trophies further incentivize continual learning by recognizing users for their hard work and progress.

These innovative features are almost always lacking in a traditional corporate LMS.

The Ability for Administrators to Update Content Based on User Feedback

A “set it and forget it” approach is another reason a traditional corporate LMS fails to engage users and provide the skills and knowledge leaders hope to instill in their employees, partners, and customers.

A traditional LMS simply doesn’t provide a way for users to leave comments, ratings, and feedback organizations need to improve the content and make it as engaging as possible.

4. Insufficient Training Reporting

A traditional corporate LMS is extremely limited in providing the metrics and reporting leaders need to move their organizations forward.

While a corporate LMS may provide simple reports on test scores and display the number of users who completed a course, they cannot typically create in-depth, customized reports on things such as:

• What impact training is having on specific business objectives
• How much time a user spends on any given course
• What content was accessed by users (and which content is unnecessary)
• Which sales collateral reps are sending to prospects to win more deals
• Where in a course, users are getting stuck or confused
• How many attempts it took for a user to pass a quiz or exam
• What skill gaps do users have, and where is additional training needed
• Data visualization to help administrators identify patterns and trends

To provide stakeholders with the meaningful insights they need to make informed decisions, your corporate learning tool must be able to provide this level of advanced, customized reporting.

5. Incompatible with Mobile Devices

According to Google, 80% of the global workforce (2.4 billion people) comprises desk-less workers. While these workers may not work in an office from a desktop computer, most work and receive communication from their employers using a mobile device.

Many traditional corporate learning tools require employees to access training from a computer in the company’s office and only on the company’s local network.

In an on-the-go, globally connected world, employees, partners, and customers need the ability to quickly access bite-sized knowledge from their mobile devices, as they are used to being able to do with virtually every other service in their daily life.

In addition, organizations need to be able to provide remote access to this information without worrying about data breaches and security vulnerabilities.

Unfortunately, the traditional corporate LMS is simply incapable of meeting the needs of organizations in a modern business environment.

6. No Ability to Download Content for Offline Viewing

Even among corporate learning tools that do provide remote access to users from mobile devices, few allow users to download content for offline viewing.

Unfortunately, most wireless providers impose strict data caps, which means that users traveling or without internet access cannot access content and continue their learning on the go.

This is why companies like Google, Netflix, and Amazon allow users of their mobile apps to download files, documents, and videos for offline viewing. Make sure that the corporate learning tool you choose can provide similar functionality.

7. Poor Integration with Existing Tools and File Types

Traditional Corporate Learning Management Systems rarely provide organizations with the flexibility and integration capabilities to develop and launch courses quickly and easily.

What often raises the overall cost of ownership of a corporate LMS is when compatibility issues arise, and organizations are forced to invest in new tools because their existing devices aren’t supported. Additional costs occur due to time spent addressing challenges integrating existing tools and migrating data between agencies.

To prevent these problems, look for a corporate learning tool that fully and seamlessly fits into your existing workflow and integrates with your current devices, data, and file types.

The right corporate learning tool should support any content you already have and allow you to upload content in any format, such as PDF, video files, Google Docs, HTML packages, SCORM packages, and more.

In addition, you should be able to author your course material directly within the platform and bring in outside content from whatever third-party course authoring tool you currently use.

8. Lack of Documentation and Support

Another area where organizations encounter unexpected problems with a traditional corporate LMS is documentation and support after the sale. The worst time to discover that your LMS provider cannot provide the answers and assistance you need is when you have an urgent problem.

While some corporate LMS vendors are highly responsive and offer free, 24/7 support from knowledgeable and friendly staff, many vendors only provide sparse FAQs and little assistance if you encounter problems. Even fewer can help if you need any customized solution for your organization’s unique business needs and requirements.

Not only should you consider this before investing in a corporate LMS, but you should also factor extra costs into your budget if the vendor you choose charges a fee for support services.

9. Lack of Updates

Many traditional corporate LMS providers are still selling outdated, inferior products due to their inability or unwillingness to keep up with the latest technological advancements.

Before investing in a corporate learning tool, do your due diligence and find out how often the company updates its tool with the latest technology, how quickly they fix software bugs, and how responsive they are to feature customer requests.

Release notes and online reviews are often the best way to determine how satisfied customers are with the company’s ability to keep up with the latest technology and how frequently they update their products and offer new features.

10. Lack of Security

Another major downside of choosing a traditional corporate LMS platform is that their lack of software updates exposes their product to attackers utilizing the latest technology to exploit security vulnerabilities.

With high-profile data breaches of confidential information in the news headlines regularly, it’s essential that you choose a vendor that you trust and feel comfortable handing over your sensitive information and internal documents to.

When choosing a corporate learning tool, make sure your vendor provides peace of mind with the following security features:

• Single Sign-On (SSO): Your vendor should provide SSO, which gives your users the ability to access multiple applications with one login and password securely, managed independently, allowing you to mitigate some of the most common security threats.

• Individual and Group Level Access to Content: You should be able to assign individual and group-level access to your content so that only designated people can access confidential information. This feature prevents personal information from leaving the platform or landing in the wrong hands.

For the Best LMS for Your Company, Consider Your Training Needs

Most tech companies that sell complex solutions have four general use cases they must consider when choosing a learning and development solution:

1. Employee training, onboarding, and continual learning
2. Preparing and coaching sales reps to win more deals
3. Training partners to sell and support your products
4. Showing customers how to use and extract maximum value from your products

Rather than find a different solution in the LMS market for each use case, consider a powerful, flexible, all-in-one Learning Experience Platform like Raven360.

Raven360 is an enterprise-grade, scalable platform that helps fast-growing companies with high-complexity products painlessly train employees, customers, and partners.

Raven360’s secure LMS solution allows you to onboard faster, train better, coach harder, and close more deals with these powerful features:

• Flexible training methods: set up Instructor-led Training, Virtual Instructor-led Training, and On-demand Learning Environments
• Self-paced Labs: create sandbox instances of your software that users can test, tweak and explore without breaking
• Your content, accessible 24/7: let your customers use and engage with your product at their pace, anytime and anywhere
• Generate extra revenue: sell subscription-based training through a simple e-commerce platform
• Speed up your reps’ training: get them in front of real customers and close sales in less time
• See what collateral is driving sales: make it easy for reps to know which prospects need to receive which content
• Create top performers everywhere: quickly assess your team members and fine-tune their pitches using video