Getting the Most Out of Corporate Training Software
How Online Training Software has Changed
Online training software has been a key asset to corporate learning management systems. Employee training and management development has reaped massive benefits from using training management software. Time and money are the umbrella categories that cover the myriad of resources saved by incorporating learning and development software into a company’s training management system.
With that said, online training software has come a long way since its invention. What once took a combination of several programs, tools, and employees to manage, has now been simplified. Elearning software training no longer requires content creation or lesson monitoring outside of the platform. From the inclusion of course authoring software and a training tracking system to the development of automated actions, learning software is making companies grow faster than ever before. The caveat is that not all corporate training companies take advantage of implementing or eliminating features and functions in their software in accordance to the progression of technology and the user experience. Simply put, for what learning systems are capable of now, a majority of them have fallen behind.
What Elearning Software Exists, and Which Ones Excel in the Learning Space
There’s employee training tracking software, there’s online courses software, and there’s even free elearning software! Whatever descriptors you put before a learning software, they are all used to make efficient the same function: employee training. However, with all the different types of software, the question arises, which one is the most efficient?
Employee training tracking software specialized in data and delivery, but not necessarily content building. Online courses software enabled better organization of materials, but content still wasn’t easy to create. Training authoring software boosted the creation process, but lacked efficiency in delivery and tracking. Many learning systems had to adhere to The Sharable Content Object Reference Model, meaning that content had to be created and formatted in a certain way outside of the LMS platform in order to communicate with it. This became a tiring, time consuming process. Because of the complexity of SCORM, learning materials were often recycled without proper updating. Quality learning content was slipping through the cracks. Companies were distributing poor learning materials in hopes that every new employee would just get the gist of the material. Employees weren’t taking training materials seriously and therefore weren’t retaining the information. Furthermore, theses systems decided when an employee was finished with learning content by restricting the employees with a time limit. The learning experience became less about actual learning and more about quick completion for the sake of showing the bosses higher up that it had been completed. Learning software before fed the negative connotation around corporate training by shunning the learners and only caring about the admins.
Companies that need corporate training are often ones who expect to grow rapidly. These companies need to be able to implement a training system quickly and train employees effectively. With software before, these two things weren’t cohesive; the quality of learning would be sacrificed in order to get more employees performing in their roles. The flaw in this is that, employees felt thrown in, uninformed, and overwhelmed by the amount of learning responsibility and lack of help. In turn, company turnover rates heightened. On the flip side, companies with great employee training systems were taking months and months to onboard employees to a place in which they felt they could perform well on their own. Not anymore. Training can consist of the best of both worlds.
Corporate training materials can now be created, delivered, assessed, and stored on the same software platform, and the best corporate training companies are taking advantage of it. The software platform enables managers to execute efficient learning. It takes less people to manage and more people can be trained effectively. Great elearning software keeps the user experience at the core of corporate training. Companies using all-inclusive learning software spend less time actually having to manage the software and more time managing learners. With a modern learning system there aren’t any add-ons required for training tracking. Software-as-a-service, or SaaS, eliminates the need for a development or IT team to maintain and improve the platform. SaaS learning software companies house their own team of developers and client experience experts to help with the implementation and improvement of the platform. The cost of using a SaaS is significantly less than the hiring and salary cost of housing a software maintenance and development team. Thanks to the cloud, there’s often little to no difference between elearning software for Mac and elearning for PC. Learning software systems that excel are the ones that can combine all of these factors with ease of usability.
By having the capabilities to excel in creation, delivery, tracking and storage, the elearning software pool becomes a puddle; there just aren’t many employee training software programs that work efficiently in all of these fields. When creating a request for proposal or perusing through an elearning software comparison, make sure you’re not only getting everything you want in a software for your employee training management system, but also that the software provides functionality to its fullest potential. Online training software reviews can provide context around certain software with client testimonies, free trials, and product photos and videos.
You can make your own list of features and functions that you want and need in a training platform, but it’s necessary to have some foresight and strategy behind this list. For instance, what functionality do you need now compared to what functionality you’ll need when your company is twice its size. By thinking about growth while perusing through learning platforms, you’ll find that scale alone is a significant deciding factor.
If you don’t know where to start with buying training software, Lessonly offers a free elearning software buyer’s guide. This resource alone will help you get started in your search by laying out what you need and what you don’t as well as helping in evaluating the cost of implementing a learning software. Investing in learning software for your employees might seem like an inefficient way to grow your company, but it’s often the most logical step for rapidly expanding businesses.
The bottom line is this: Think about your learners. Effective training means effective learning. If your learners aren’t retaining the information that the system distributes to them, is it really worth the investment? Theoretically, elearning has always helped expedite the onboarding and ongoing training processes, but realistically, it can prove to be more difficult in informational learning.
