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What are the non-negotiable learning platform features to look out for? In this blog, we list our top nine LMS must-haves.
With so much competition in the learning technology industry, how do you decide which LMS is right for you and your team? In our opinion, it starts with establishing your LMS must-haves and non-negotiables.
It’s no secret that effective Learning Management Systems can lead to business success, employee retention, and customer service satisfaction. You just have to look at some of Thrive’s customer case studies to see the true value of a good learning platform in action, from learner engagement through to customer growth.
Of course, actually making the all-important learning platform decision can be overwhelming - especially if you’re new to the technology. There’s a seemingly unending well of features, solutions and capabilities (some of them helpful, and some of them leaning towards gimmicky.) How do you know which ones you need?
While this is obviously a very specific decision that depends on your own needs as a learning function, we’ve compiled nine features that we feel are tried and true must-haves for any learning platform.
Read on to find out the top nine LMS must-haves.
‍
Besides the actual learning part - which is why we’re all here - what’s one of the biggest benefits of having a learning platform? If you ask us, it’s the ability to tangibly prove the impact your learning and development efforts have had on your team and business.
And the best way to do this is to opt for an LMS with sophisticated data and analytics functionality built in. This way, you can track in real time where your people are in their learning journey - celebrating those who have completed their training, and offering a helping hand to those who haven’t.
Arguably more importantly, you can record stats that prove the success of your efforts and take them to your key stakeholders.
Just take a look at Thrive customer and leading lingerie brand Ann Summers. Their Learning and Development partner, Becky West, knew that stores with high engagement rates on the learning platform also demonstrated high levels of performance. But without concrete data to prove this wasn’t simply correlation, but causation, Becky and her team knew they needed to dig deeper.
With the help of the team at Thrive Impact (a group of Data and Analytics specialists with collective decades of expertise) and Thrive’s ability to record learner data, they rolled out a learning experiment across their stores.
Their aim? To assess - and ultimately prove - the true value of their learning. The results of the test couldn’t be ignored: Stores who received a blended learning approach comprising workshops, webinars and learning pathways sold more than those who only received the learning pathways.
By doing this experiment, Ann Summers was able to measure a 10% increase in revenue, with the test group making ÂŁ3,617 (over 36%) of that revenue - proving undeniably the positive impacts of their approach.
To see the success of your learning and development strategy play out in a tangible way, like the team at Ann Summers, your LMS needs to have the data and analytics to support it.
‍
No two people are the same. That’s what makes your team so special; that they’re all different. The same goes for learning - everybody takes information differently depending on their own abilities and previous knowledge. (This is distinct from the Learning Styles theory, which we’ve previously debunked.)
No matter who your learners are, multimodal learning benefits them. You’ve probably already heard of this term, which describes the process of delivering learning in multiple formats and media types (e.g. PDF’s, videos, interactive quizzes, and audio) with the aim of engaging the audience more effectively. By doing this, you not only engage your learners but also acknowledge that everyone has different needs and requirements.
It’s essential that your LMS is set up to facilitate variety. Thrive customer FatFace utilised Thrive’s multimodal capabilities to ramp up engagement and adoption amongst their learners, and saw impressive results: 20,000 content views, 98% adoption rate, and 81% engagement rate - all of which they chalk up to the content variety available within the platform.
‍
Just like the people who make them up, every industry is different with its own unique needs and challenges. Fairly obviously, the industry you’re in will have a big impact on the LMS you ultimately choose.
It can be tempting to go with the most popular or well-known LMS - but it’s essential to do your research and decide which one is right for you, specifically. For example, if your organisation sits within the retail industry, you’ll most likely want to opt for an LMS with a sleek and intuitive mobile app. With this, your team can access learning from anywhere instead of being bound to one physical location. Thrive customer Homebase took full advantage of the Thrive App’s capabilities for their front-line teams, and saw a 35% increase in customer satisfaction.
Taking the financial sector as a different example, if you’re in this industry you’ll know first-hand that compliance is key. Your LMS should be set up with flawless compliance management functionality to help you keep on top of everyone’s mandatory training.
These are just a few examples. Whatever industry or sector you happen to be in, do the research to determine which vendor is right for you and your unique needs.
‍
While tried-and-trusted methods can be a great way of guaranteeing results, it’s also important that your LMS doesn’t stick rigidly to one, prescriptive way of doing things. Instead, you should be on the hunt for a platform that is going to grow, evolve and experiment with you.
An innovative LMS should not be afraid of doing things differently, trying things out and seeing what works best for you: the customer. As an example, just look towards the current talk of the town, Artificial Intelligence. It’s understandable to be hesitant about this technology, but it’s here to stay - so find a learning platform that understands its quirks and nuances, stays up-to-date with the news, and embraces innovation instead of digging their heels into the past.
AI is obviously not the only example of innovation. What you should be looking for more than anything is an attitude: Is your vendor excited about trying new things and innovating, or are they steadfastly sticking to “the way things have always been done”? Compare and contrast different learning platform providers to ultimately decide who’s looking forward, and who’s looking back. And once in the Discovery phase, make sure to ask potential vendors about their roadmap and any innovations or developments they have upcoming.
‍
Ideally, your learning platform will go beyond training - although that is obviously the priority - and bring communication into the mix to help spread messages from all across the business. Not only does this unite teams from different departments and help break down silos, but it also serves as a supplement to your learning.
We can look to Thrive customer Princes as an example. The leading food and drink manufacturer used Thrive’s communication functionality to organise a bi-weekly broadcast called Food for Thought. During this company-wide event, people from all over the business are brought together virtually to discuss the various projects, business initiatives and ideas that are helping to keep Princes at the forefront of their industry.
Or Westmorland Family, who launched Thrive just about a year ago but are already in the top five most engaged companies in the platform. Their strategy of hooking their employees in with comms before following up with learning materials has been massively successful in getting their L&D strategy off the ground, and ensuring that everyone in the company is invested.
‍
Related to communication features, social learning is another essential element of any good LMS. We’re so sure about social learning’s effectiveness that we recently published an entire blog emphasising the importance of having an LMS that facilitates it.
In order for your learners to engage, truly engage, with the interface you’re presenting them, it needs to feel just like something they’d use in their day-to-day life.
This extends beyond just social-media-esque functionality (e.g. user profiles, likes, comments and shares) to the way in which your learners interact with - and learn from - one another. Choosing an LMS that enables user generated content is a great way to empower people to teach, not just learn, and instil a culture of continuous learning into your organisation.
You might be surprised to learn how this culture actively leads to customer success.
Thrive customer AA launched Thrive in the knowledge that they wanted to take full advantage of its social learning features, encouraging a sense of community and knowledge-sharing amongst their trainee driving instructors. They were successful. Their use of Thrive’s collaboration features amped up engagement and saw incredible results - with 2,222 training resources being hosted on the platform, and a total of 501,592 content views and counting.
As a result, their trainees are more knowledgeable, and this has ultimately led to 75% customer growth. The link between learner engagement and customer success has been clearly drawn, truly cementing the need for social learning.
‍
Your people are at the centre of your organisation, and therefore should be at the centre of your learning efforts. Place their progression of knowledge and skills at the forefront, and find a learning platform that helps you do just that.
A skills and goals feature is the best way to help you track your learners’ paths to success. With this feature, users can choose the areas of development that matter most to them and actively set out to excel and progress in those areas. As an administrator, you can see how they’re doing and provide custom learning journeys to help them achieve their goals.
A Thrive customer who recently really embraced this is gaming and entertainment company Inspired. Invested in their people’s development, they introduced a Skill of the Month initiative to encourage upward mobility for everyone. In the words of Rachel Hughes, Customer Support Manager at Inspired:
“We have a lot of people within the team who tend to progress to managerial roles ... so talking them through how to have more difficult conversations and building their confidence has been the best bit for us.”
‍
Compliance training is an essential step in safeguarding your organisation. But it goes even further than that. Compliance training helps your people:
It’s part of almost every company’s onboarding procedure for new employees, so it goes without saying that your LMS should be set up to facilitate it.
This is where compliance training and analytics reporting come together to work harmoniously in tandem: with compliance tracking, you can see who has completed their training and who hasn’t. You’re then able to communicate with those who need an extra reminder, or celebrate those who have completed the training already.
At the end of their training, learners are awarded certificates to demonstrate their knowledge.
‍
What’s the use of an LMS that can’t integrate seamlessly with your existing tech stack?
Choose an LMS that facilitates multiple integrations, so that whatever your workflow currently looks like, your learning slots flawlessly into it. Think of integrations in terms of their functions; what purpose do they serve for your team? For example, time automation or user experience.
‍
Those were our top nine must-have features for your LMS. We hope we’ve helped you narrow down your search, and find the best platform for you and your people.
If you’re looking for a learning platform with all these features and more, book a Thrive demo to see it in action.
‍
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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What are the non-negotiable learning platform features to look out for? In this blog, we list our top nine LMS must-haves.
With so much competition in the learning technology industry, how do you decide which LMS is right for you and your team? In our opinion, it starts with establishing your LMS must-haves and non-negotiables.
It’s no secret that effective Learning Management Systems can lead to business success, employee retention, and customer service satisfaction. You just have to look at some of Thrive’s customer case studies to see the true value of a good learning platform in action, from learner engagement through to customer growth.
Of course, actually making the all-important learning platform decision can be overwhelming - especially if you’re new to the technology. There’s a seemingly unending well of features, solutions and capabilities (some of them helpful, and some of them leaning towards gimmicky.) How do you know which ones you need?
While this is obviously a very specific decision that depends on your own needs as a learning function, we’ve compiled nine features that we feel are tried and true must-haves for any learning platform.
Read on to find out the top nine LMS must-haves.
‍
Besides the actual learning part - which is why we’re all here - what’s one of the biggest benefits of having a learning platform? If you ask us, it’s the ability to tangibly prove the impact your learning and development efforts have had on your team and business.
And the best way to do this is to opt for an LMS with sophisticated data and analytics functionality built in. This way, you can track in real time where your people are in their learning journey - celebrating those who have completed their training, and offering a helping hand to those who haven’t.
Arguably more importantly, you can record stats that prove the success of your efforts and take them to your key stakeholders.
Just take a look at Thrive customer and leading lingerie brand Ann Summers. Their Learning and Development partner, Becky West, knew that stores with high engagement rates on the learning platform also demonstrated high levels of performance. But without concrete data to prove this wasn’t simply correlation, but causation, Becky and her team knew they needed to dig deeper.
With the help of the team at Thrive Impact (a group of Data and Analytics specialists with collective decades of expertise) and Thrive’s ability to record learner data, they rolled out a learning experiment across their stores.
Their aim? To assess - and ultimately prove - the true value of their learning. The results of the test couldn’t be ignored: Stores who received a blended learning approach comprising workshops, webinars and learning pathways sold more than those who only received the learning pathways.
By doing this experiment, Ann Summers was able to measure a 10% increase in revenue, with the test group making ÂŁ3,617 (over 36%) of that revenue - proving undeniably the positive impacts of their approach.
To see the success of your learning and development strategy play out in a tangible way, like the team at Ann Summers, your LMS needs to have the data and analytics to support it.
‍
No two people are the same. That’s what makes your team so special; that they’re all different. The same goes for learning - everybody takes information differently depending on their own abilities and previous knowledge. (This is distinct from the Learning Styles theory, which we’ve previously debunked.)
No matter who your learners are, multimodal learning benefits them. You’ve probably already heard of this term, which describes the process of delivering learning in multiple formats and media types (e.g. PDF’s, videos, interactive quizzes, and audio) with the aim of engaging the audience more effectively. By doing this, you not only engage your learners but also acknowledge that everyone has different needs and requirements.
It’s essential that your LMS is set up to facilitate variety. Thrive customer FatFace utilised Thrive’s multimodal capabilities to ramp up engagement and adoption amongst their learners, and saw impressive results: 20,000 content views, 98% adoption rate, and 81% engagement rate - all of which they chalk up to the content variety available within the platform.
‍
Just like the people who make them up, every industry is different with its own unique needs and challenges. Fairly obviously, the industry you’re in will have a big impact on the LMS you ultimately choose.
It can be tempting to go with the most popular or well-known LMS - but it’s essential to do your research and decide which one is right for you, specifically. For example, if your organisation sits within the retail industry, you’ll most likely want to opt for an LMS with a sleek and intuitive mobile app. With this, your team can access learning from anywhere instead of being bound to one physical location. Thrive customer Homebase took full advantage of the Thrive App’s capabilities for their front-line teams, and saw a 35% increase in customer satisfaction.
Taking the financial sector as a different example, if you’re in this industry you’ll know first-hand that compliance is key. Your LMS should be set up with flawless compliance management functionality to help you keep on top of everyone’s mandatory training.
These are just a few examples. Whatever industry or sector you happen to be in, do the research to determine which vendor is right for you and your unique needs.
‍
While tried-and-trusted methods can be a great way of guaranteeing results, it’s also important that your LMS doesn’t stick rigidly to one, prescriptive way of doing things. Instead, you should be on the hunt for a platform that is going to grow, evolve and experiment with you.
An innovative LMS should not be afraid of doing things differently, trying things out and seeing what works best for you: the customer. As an example, just look towards the current talk of the town, Artificial Intelligence. It’s understandable to be hesitant about this technology, but it’s here to stay - so find a learning platform that understands its quirks and nuances, stays up-to-date with the news, and embraces innovation instead of digging their heels into the past.
AI is obviously not the only example of innovation. What you should be looking for more than anything is an attitude: Is your vendor excited about trying new things and innovating, or are they steadfastly sticking to “the way things have always been done”? Compare and contrast different learning platform providers to ultimately decide who’s looking forward, and who’s looking back. And once in the Discovery phase, make sure to ask potential vendors about their roadmap and any innovations or developments they have upcoming.
‍
Ideally, your learning platform will go beyond training - although that is obviously the priority - and bring communication into the mix to help spread messages from all across the business. Not only does this unite teams from different departments and help break down silos, but it also serves as a supplement to your learning.
We can look to Thrive customer Princes as an example. The leading food and drink manufacturer used Thrive’s communication functionality to organise a bi-weekly broadcast called Food for Thought. During this company-wide event, people from all over the business are brought together virtually to discuss the various projects, business initiatives and ideas that are helping to keep Princes at the forefront of their industry.
Or Westmorland Family, who launched Thrive just about a year ago but are already in the top five most engaged companies in the platform. Their strategy of hooking their employees in with comms before following up with learning materials has been massively successful in getting their L&D strategy off the ground, and ensuring that everyone in the company is invested.
‍
Related to communication features, social learning is another essential element of any good LMS. We’re so sure about social learning’s effectiveness that we recently published an entire blog emphasising the importance of having an LMS that facilitates it.
In order for your learners to engage, truly engage, with the interface you’re presenting them, it needs to feel just like something they’d use in their day-to-day life.
This extends beyond just social-media-esque functionality (e.g. user profiles, likes, comments and shares) to the way in which your learners interact with - and learn from - one another. Choosing an LMS that enables user generated content is a great way to empower people to teach, not just learn, and instil a culture of continuous learning into your organisation.
You might be surprised to learn how this culture actively leads to customer success.
Thrive customer AA launched Thrive in the knowledge that they wanted to take full advantage of its social learning features, encouraging a sense of community and knowledge-sharing amongst their trainee driving instructors. They were successful. Their use of Thrive’s collaboration features amped up engagement and saw incredible results - with 2,222 training resources being hosted on the platform, and a total of 501,592 content views and counting.
As a result, their trainees are more knowledgeable, and this has ultimately led to 75% customer growth. The link between learner engagement and customer success has been clearly drawn, truly cementing the need for social learning.
‍
Your people are at the centre of your organisation, and therefore should be at the centre of your learning efforts. Place their progression of knowledge and skills at the forefront, and find a learning platform that helps you do just that.
A skills and goals feature is the best way to help you track your learners’ paths to success. With this feature, users can choose the areas of development that matter most to them and actively set out to excel and progress in those areas. As an administrator, you can see how they’re doing and provide custom learning journeys to help them achieve their goals.
A Thrive customer who recently really embraced this is gaming and entertainment company Inspired. Invested in their people’s development, they introduced a Skill of the Month initiative to encourage upward mobility for everyone. In the words of Rachel Hughes, Customer Support Manager at Inspired:
“We have a lot of people within the team who tend to progress to managerial roles ... so talking them through how to have more difficult conversations and building their confidence has been the best bit for us.”
‍
Compliance training is an essential step in safeguarding your organisation. But it goes even further than that. Compliance training helps your people:
It’s part of almost every company’s onboarding procedure for new employees, so it goes without saying that your LMS should be set up to facilitate it.
This is where compliance training and analytics reporting come together to work harmoniously in tandem: with compliance tracking, you can see who has completed their training and who hasn’t. You’re then able to communicate with those who need an extra reminder, or celebrate those who have completed the training already.
At the end of their training, learners are awarded certificates to demonstrate their knowledge.
‍
What’s the use of an LMS that can’t integrate seamlessly with your existing tech stack?
Choose an LMS that facilitates multiple integrations, so that whatever your workflow currently looks like, your learning slots flawlessly into it. Think of integrations in terms of their functions; what purpose do they serve for your team? For example, time automation or user experience.
‍
Those were our top nine must-have features for your LMS. We hope we’ve helped you narrow down your search, and find the best platform for you and your people.
If you’re looking for a learning platform with all these features and more, book a Thrive demo to see it in action.
‍
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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