What exactly does it mean to integrate your tech stack with your learning platform?

If these phrases sound like a foreign language to you, don’t worry; we’ll break down everything you need to know in this guide.

Maybe you’re in the market for an LMS or digital learning platform, and have done some cursory research into integrations. But what is integration, and what’s the benefit of launching an LMS that facilitates it? Sit tight, because we’re going to tell you how integrations are the key to a smooth implementation, customer success, and more.

What is integration?

If you’re none the wiser after that introduction, let us break down exactly what we mean when we talk about integration.

Integration simply refers to the process of combining different software applications into one, unified system. In this case, we’re talking about integrating all or some of your existing tools (like for example Monday, Microsoft Teams, or Udemy) into your learning platform for a seamless experience.

Think of it like this: Would you rather have your tools and tech scattered everywhere like disparate nomads, or brought together in one unified, central place? Integrating your tech stack with your learning platform helps you to achieve the latter... but that’s only the beginning.

Why integrate?

Along with the sense of unity we’ve just mentioned, there are myriad other reasons to integrate your tech stack with your learning platform. Now that we’ve established what integration is, why is it worth finding a learning platform that can facilitate it?

We’ve identified four key areas that it benefits.

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An easy implementation

Starting at the beginning, integration can help you make the implementation stage - a typically quite stressful part of the process - go a lot more smoothly.

Take it from Thrive customer Leigh Academies Trust. They’re a perfect example of a customer who took advantage of Thrive’s smooth migration and integration functionality to transfer a massive amount of data from their old platform and tools to their new LMS with ease.

Ensuring that your new LMS can integrate with the tools you currently use means that all your user data, documents and learning content is transferred quickly and easily – with no hiccups. It automates the process of updating user data, course enrollments, and performance metrics. With this piece of the puzzle in place, you can relax and focus on the learning itself.
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Seamless learning experiences

A sentiment many of our customers return to again and again is the idea of removing the friction from learning. Almost all of L&D’s function is centred around the purpose of helping people learn as easily and enjoyably as possible, and integrations can help you do just that.

If you already have some digital learning tools in your stack such as LinkedIn Learning and Udemy that your people enjoy using, there’s no reason to get rid of them for the sake of a new learning platform; just find one that facilitates them.

In doing this, you’re removing some of the potential barriers to learning caused by switching platforms and learning a new system – although of course, if you get a learning platform that’s extremely easy to use (like Thrive!) there shouldn’t be too many barriers in place anyway.

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Collaboration and workflow

Another essential element of a happy, engaged workforce is collaboration – and this is another area from which it’s good to remove any potential friction. It might surprise you to learn that in terms of employee engagement, 40% of employees actually prefer “fixes to difficult processes” before learning initiatives.

This tells us something – and in our opinion, the takeaway from this isn’t that employees don’t want to learn, but rather that they can’t focus on learning if they are facing difficulties with their everyday tasks. This is where integration comes in extremely handy.

Integrating your workflow and productivity tools like Teams, Monday and Slack will help you continue with a productive, smooth workflow instead of disrupting it. For example, Thrive’s Slack integration lets you share content in a flash and reach users where work happens – enabling easy collaboration between your people, and freeing up more time to learn.

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Customer service

A big part of a successful customer service strategy is having a smooth, seamless process in place, so that your team can help your customers as efficiently and easily as possible.

That’s why we recommend finding a platform that can integrate with customer service tools like Zendesk. This blends the experiences of helping customers and learning together, so that your people can access the knowledge they need to enable excellent service every time.

And it doesn’t just stop with efficiency; it crosses over into consistent customer satisfaction.

Unsurprisingly, teams who are consistently trained within their LMS result in happy customers. Take Thrive customer Homebase as an example: They saw workplace learning translate to customer satisfaction in a very real, tangible way. Analysing the data and analytics within the platform, they were able to see that stores trained to “Expert” level in Thrive had a 35% higher customer satisfaction rating than those who weren’t.

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So, why integrate?

So after all that, why integrate?

Because it allows you to seamlessly launch exciting, innovative learning technology within your organisation without disrupting any of your current processes – unless, of course, you want to.

Still got questions?

If you’d like to talk to a member of the Thrive team about how your current tools can integrate with the all-in-one, AI-powered LMS, book a demo today.

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