Are you maximizing your LMS’s capabilities? Many organizations use a LMS system for tracking, hosting and managing internal employees’ professional development and training. Some use theirs for regulatory compliance documentation, depending on the industry. The LMS can be used for so much more.
The additional features of an LMS are serious hidden gems. Many include various apps and badges that allow your organization to use the LMS beyond simply managing and tracking online learning. Most cloud-based LMSs have additional features such as training modules and apps, including gamification, instructor-led classrooms, external training, MOOC builders, certification program builders, and many other features. These apps and additional features are great for giving customers a variety of experiences within your organization and their benefits are real. These additional experiences build on the brand of your organization. The customer experience (internal and external) is expanded because the customer uses the LMS more, has a positive experience with it, and consequently relies on it more.
Does your LMS have an app or additional feature to assist those who need to self-manage professional development for a certification or industry requirements? Typically, individual certification, as does many professional license and industry-specific training requires a set number of professional development hours during a standardized renewal cycle. Oftentimes, that information comes from a variety of sources and educational experiences and is not easy to track. Individuals often find themselves having to hunt for and review records to recall the various training experiences they had.
What can your LMS do to help renewing credential and industry license holders organize all their training information? Take a hard look at the additional features of your cloud-based LMS to find the external training apps. That app can be activated and formatted so anyone who takes an online learning course will have their course information automatically logged-in to unique online transcript within the LMS. Additionally, upon successful completion of an instructor-led offering course information will be logged-in to a unique online transcript within the LMS.
How can customers (internal and external) self-manage external training activities from other providers? The activation of the external training app can solve this issue. Using a cloud-based LMS gives access to the private external transcript portion of the LMS without expiration, pending a user name and password. Individuals can access the external training and transcript app of the LMS and log all their external trainings from various providers. The result is that more people are driven to enter the LMS at their convenience and log their training information independently. This is a wonderful benefit, especially during recertification time for those that have a credential or a license! Including an easy-to-find support email address puts help at their fingertips.
The external training app and transcript feature is especially handy for customers who either have to self-manage professional development to keep current with a credential recertification cycle or need to manage required professional development or training hours per their industry or human resources requirements. Offering a way to self-manage training inside the LMS empowers individuals to take charge of their learning and keep track of the training hours accumulated while offering them privacy in the LMS. This is a great way to offer customers the ability to keep learning from all providers in one place. The big question is, what is the benefit of hosting all this information?
By offering customers from outside your organization (but who have taken your courses) a way to access your LMS on-demand, you keep your services at the forefront of their minds. They’ll know your organization’s benefits better than those of any competitor. This builds brand loyalty. Therefore, if you are a consulting organization or training entity that offers the additional benefit of using your LMS to log all training and professional development experiences—not just the ones done by your organization—your audience will become repeat customers and your organization will be the first to come up in conversation, because you offer more benefits than just online learning.
Go into your LMS and explore its apps and additional, less-obvious features. Identify which are beneficial to your organization. Demonstrate the benefits of these to your audience. Grow your audience using these apps and additional features of your LMS. Learn about everything your LMS can offer. Unlock your LMS’s superpowers!
Kathleen Federici is the director of professional development for the International Parking Institute.
