Behind every great education initiative or training program, there’s a versatile learning management system (LMS). With the right LMS software, you can design a learning process that engages your audience and inspires them to take action—whether that’s complying with a procedure or adopting a new product.
But what is an LMS, and why do so many education teams use them? In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of a learning management system, and equip you with tips and statistics to help you make the business case for an LMS at your organization.
What is a Learning Management System (LMS)?
A learning management system is a software application that streamlines and centralizes your educational content efforts. Whether you’re hosting client webinars, creating course materials for channel partners, or investing in employee learning and development, an LMS gives you the tools to create high-quality education faster, and at scale.
What are the Benefits of an LMS?
How exactly does an LMS improve your education efforts? Here are the biggest benefits of a learning management system:
Centralized Learning
Most LMS companies design their platforms as one-stop content shops. All of your education resources—from learning and development materials to compliance courses—live in a single place. Many of these platforms are also cloud-based, meaning your data is stored in a central location, synced regularly, and available to any educator or designer with the right credentials.
Accessible and Flexible
Building eLearning takes time—and education teams only have so many resources. If you’ve ever felt pressure to do more with less or pivot priorities on a dime, you wouldn’t be the first.
An LMS gives you the flexibility to design the exact content you need, when you need it. Most platforms help you create content from scratch and publish it in seconds, allowing your team to operate with minimal web dev, IT, or engineering resources. And since many LMS tools support modular content blocks, you can easily repurpose older courses and update them for new audiences or education initiatives.
Tracking and Reporting
If you’re investing in education, you’re expected to prove success. Who is engaging with what content? What training materials are proving effective? And, arguably most important, what business outcomes is your eLearning driving?
An LMS makes reporting easy, with detailed data-analysis tools embedded right within the experience. Track crucial education metrics, such as course completion rates, drop-off rates, and customer satisfaction (CSAT). Get the data you need to prove ROI and continue building out your education function.
Greater Customer Satisfaction
In our 2024 Customer Education Benchmarks & Trends Report, we partnered with Forrester to survey 300 U.S.-based education leaders and uncover the latest developments in customer learning. The data speaks for itself: According to respondents, investing in customer education has led to a 26.2% boost in customer satisfaction.
That’s not the only benefit. When companies provide training for their products, they experience a 38.3% increase in adoption of those products and a 30.7% boost in engagement. And the key to providing those effective learning materials is with a powerful LMS platform.
Scales With Your Business
Creating eLearning can be a thankless process. Without the right infrastructure, you might design a course one day, only to find it obsolete within a few short weeks or months. These problems only become more complex as your learning function grows.
With an LMS, you can scale your content efforts as you mature. Design modular content, then repurpose those materials as your learner personas evolve. Host, distribute, and track performance, all in one place. By letting the LMS do the heavy lifting, you cut down on the amount of time spent on admin tasks, saving time for more strategic endeavors.
Cost-Effective
Thanks to their versatile feature sets and flexible pricing, LMS platforms tend to save you both time and money. Consider another stat from our 2024 report—that 49% of respondents plan to invest in a dedicated customer education and training platform—and it’s clear that other companies recognize the value-add too.
How to Make the Business Case for an LMS
Even if you understand what to look for in a learning management system, how do you convince leadership to buy into your vision and greenlight that LMS?
LMS adoption may take time. Many education teams start by leveraging a content management system (CMS) they already use, such as WordPress or HubSpot. Or, they develop a proprietary education hub with in-house resources. Neither route will likely give you the full capabilities of a dedicated LMS—and that’s okay. Rather, think of your initial effort as a proof of concept.
Create a preliminary online training course or certification, and test it with a small pilot group. Ask them the following questions about their experience:
- Did you find this content helpful?
- What would make this content more effective?
- Are there other types of education you would like us to explore?
The more of an appetite you see from your audience, the more potential there is for education to improve the experience of your clients, channel partners, and employees.
As your education program matures, convey the larger opportunity to your leadership team. Weave in the benefits and statistics from this article. Most critically, explain that seizing this opportunity is only possible with scale.
A learning management system will enable you to achieve that scale. With the right platform, you can streamline the more tedious aspects of education—from development to distribution and reporting—so your team can stop burning time on admin work and content upkeep. That way, you can focus on actually improving the learner experience.
How Freshbooks Found the Ideal LMS in Intellum
FreshBooks provides accountants and small businesses with easy-to-use invoicing and accounting software.
To empower their channel partners to use their software effectively, FreshBooks repurposed a customer marketing and advocacy platform to build an online training certification for accounting professionals. Laura Crean, ACA, Partner Program & Education Manager at FreshBooks, shared that the software was limited in functionality and wasn't flexible enough to account for a wide variety of unique learning experiences. This makes sense, given its intended use wasn’t for education! It didn’t help that the in-app reporting wasn’t great, either.
By the end of 2021, the company launched its education arm, but Crean knew that the user experience could be much better. In 2023, FreshBooks adopted Intellum as its go-to learning destination. Sure enough, the team saw a difference. Using Evolve, Intellum’s content authoring tool, FreshBooks was able to design novel learning experiences with ease. And with Intellum's speedy customer service, Crean never felt stuck when using the software.
One of Crean’s biggest pain points before Intellum? Getting content certified. FreshBooks had been looking to get its certification approved by NASBA, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, to no avail. The company’s previous software simply wasn’t equipped with the assessment options needed to get their training to pass board approval.
With Intellum, that wasn’t an issue. According to Crean, NASBA already knew our software well. Once FreshBooks adopted our LMS and migrated their content to Intellum, NASBA approved their certification in just two weeks. Problem solved.
Level Up Your Education at Scale With Intellum
As you establish your education program, it’s common to cobble together and repurpose other tools. But as your program grows in maturity, you need to leverage a platform that’s built to support learning. Intellum allows you to build high-quality, modular courses with ease. Deliver webinars, virtual trainings, and other live events in one consistent place. Track success with our detailed reporting dashboard, and prove the value of your education efforts—all with Intellum.
Book a demo, and explore the Intellum LMS for yourself.
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