To scale a team or organization effectively, you need tools that scale alongside you. You’re only as agile as your best infrastructure. If you have rigid or outdated systems, you can’t expect to move as quickly as competitors with the latest and greatest tech.
Education software is no different. To grow your program and do it well, it’s important to have a learning management system (LMS) that’s forward-looking. Gone are the days when training was confined to a conference room or VHS tape. Modern teachings deserve to be repeated—at scale—and a SaaS LMS platform gives you the tools to do so.
But what is a SaaS LMS, and how can it help your business? In this article, you’ll learn the benefits of a SaaS platform, how it differs from other LMS tools, and what questions to ask before purchasing one for your organization.
What Is a SaaS Learning Management System?
A software-as-a-service (SaaS) LMS is a cloud-based learning platform that allows instructional designers and other education leaders to create learning content in a dedicated location, then deliver that content digitally to users.
As with other service-based software, a SaaS LMS is accessed via web browser, ensuring your content can be viewed by anyone with an internet connection. This makes them a go-to tool for delivering education at scale—whether that’s customer education and enablement, employee education and trainings, a partner education program, or a blended learning audience.
SaaS vs. Hosted LMS: What’s the Difference?
Why use service-based solutions when you can host your own content locally? The answer comes down to your education team and its needs.
A hosted LMS takes any education you produce and stores it on your company’s servers. As you might expect from a locally managed solution, a hosted LMS offers unparalleled control and security—provided you have dedicated IT personnel or engineers to maintain it. The longer you use a hosted LMS, the more tech debt you accrue, making the tool difficult to scale.
A SaaS LMS is built with scale in mind. The tool, its servers, and software updates are all managed by LMS vendors, giving your team flexibility to focus on using the tool rather than simply maintaining it. Of course, you’ll want to pick your vendor carefully. When working with a third party, you want confidence in their ability to treat your needs—and data—with care.
Benefits of a SaaS LMS
Not sure if a SaaS LMS is right for your business? Let’s explore some of the benefits in greater detail.
Personalized learning
As you grow your business, your audience is bound to become increasingly diverse. Of course, no two learning experiences are quite the same. To succeed as an education team, you want to meet each reader, listener, or viewer where they’re at. It’s a daunting task—especially if you have various learner personas, each with unique needs.
A SaaS LMS streamlines this process, allowing educators to create personalized learning paths in clicks. For example, you could clone an existing course and swap out modular content blocks to better fit a specific persona. Or, you could bundle a series of courses into a certification, then market that certification to a specific audience segment.
Smooth user experience
Cohesion is a concept that’s critically underlooked when designing learning paths. Sure, two employees may learn differently, but the process of learning shouldn’t feel different from one to another. Each learner in your audience deserves a user experience that is intuitive and easy to appreciate.
With a SaaS LMS, personalization doesn’t have to come at the cost of cohesion. These tools have been stress-tested through hours of design research and usability testing. Many LMSs support responsive layouts, ensuring that learners can have similar experiences regardless of whether they’re on a desktop, tablet, or phone.
Built for accessibility
Your training content is only valuable if it’s being consumed. Reaching the intended audience is half the battle—according to Survey Monkey, 86% of employees consider job training important, but 70% don't know if their employer provides online learning. Even when companies do reach their audience, only 58% of employees find in-house training effective.
SaaS LMS platforms house all your education in one ecosystem, making it easier to share your content with employees, partners, or clients. These tools also adhere to accessible eLearning best practices, supporting everything from responsive layouts and mobile learning to transcripts and screen readers.
Scalable and sustainable
One of the biggest drawbacks of a hosted or custom-built LMS is that the onus is on you to maintain it. The more training content you create, the more tech debt you accumulate, and the greater the strain on your company’s servers. Any enhancements to the learner experience require dedicated engineers and UX designers—assets you might not have.
A SaaS LMS takes that burden off of your team and puts it on your LMS vendor. Cloud-based platforms like Intellum are built not by you, but for you—letting you focus on creating, managing, and improving the educational experience for your audience. These tools are designed to be powerful, yet easy. And if you do get stuck, your vendor likely has a support team at the ready.
Detailed reporting
If you’ve ever had the ROI of education called into question, you wouldn’t be the first. It can be an uphill battle to simply advocate for your program, let alone enhance or expand it.
With a SaaS LMS, you have all the data you need to make a compelling business case. Many platforms come equipped with versatile reporting and data analytics. View key education metrics like engagement and completion rates, and see where your training content is succeeding most. Don’t just tell, but show your stakeholders how cost-effective your program can be.
Tip: Need help convincing leadership about the merits of education? Read our tips on how to make the business case for an LMS.
Questions to Ask Before Purchasing a SaaS LMS
When choosing to buy a SaaS LMS, it’s important to understand what to look for in a learning management system. There are many powerful education platforms out there, and narrowing down the shortlist depends on your business and its goals.
Here are five questions to ask that can help you zero in on the right solution:
1. What is our education team looking to achieve?
Start with a high-level prompt:
- What are your goals?
- How does your team support the broader needs of the business?
- What role (if any) does education currently play?
- What types of training materials do you currently produce, and why?
By answering these questions, you set the parameters that will help you in your SaaS LMS search.
Say your team handles employee training, with the goal of increasing job satisfaction and productivity. Right away, you know you want an LMS that lets you create and deliver high-quality training courses. You may also want a SaaS LMS with detailed reporting, so you can track critical employee training statistics and prove the value of your efforts.
This is just a starting point. We’ll dig deeper in just a bit.
2. What is our ideal learner profile?
An ideal customer profile (ICP) is a common term—and a crucial one for any business looking to market and sell with precision. Your ideal learner profile may not be as widely known, but it’s just as important to ensure long-term success.
Who is your team’s target audience? The answer may align with your ICP; it may not. (If your company sells coffee beans but your education focuses on training managers, your ICP and ILP are different.)
Consider interviewing a few members of your target audience to understand their needs. You can ask questions such as:
The better you understand this ideal learner, the better you understand their ideal learning experience—and, by extension, your ideal learning management system.
3. What are our must-have LMS requirements?
After you’ve thought about the business and your ideal learner, see how those needs map back to your LMS requirements. Take time with your team and other key stakeholders to align on the following items:
As you discuss, make note of any must-have requirements. (If you’re unfamiliar with LMS feature sets, read up on popular LMS requirements first.)
Tip: Thinking of purchasing a single-audience LMS? You may want to reconsider. In a 2022 report, we found that companies that use an LMS built for multiple audiences are twice as likely to report improved customer and employee retention.
4. Will we need to integrate with other platforms?
If you design learning content for a living, you may be comfortable consolidating tools and working solely within your LMS. Other stakeholders, however, likely rely on a host of other tools—from data platforms like Tableau to marketing essentials like Salesforce and Mailchimp.
Take inventory of all the tools you and other stakeholders use. Which ones are important to integrate with an LMS? Do you already have a content authoring tool, or would you prefer an LMS that comes with built-in creative tools? Come up with a shortlist of essentials, and strike any LMSs that don’t offer the integrations you need to succeed.
5. What value do we get for the cost?
When you consider all of the above—business needs, learner needs, integrations, and other LMS requirements—you’re ultimately asking a single question:
Which SaaS LMS is going to give my team the best return on our budget?
If an LMS can’t meet your team or audience where you’re at, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. There’s a sea of solutions out there. Don’t waste time on a product or vendor that isn’t speaking to you and your needs.
Make no mistake: There is the right tool out there for you—one that’ll serve your clients, partners, and employees and drastically improve their learning experience. For extra motivation, consider the following findings from our 2022 Transforming Organization Education Initiatives report:
Tip: Having trouble gauging the value of an LMS? Download our free LMS RFP template, and get 180+ questions to help you identify the right solution for your needs.
Try Intellum: The Only SaaS LMS You Need
Intellum is a leading education platform that offers so much more than just training. Create online learning using our in-app authoring tools, then share it however your audience learns best—from courses and webinars to social learning and gamification. Track success using our insights dashboard, and make continued improvements to the learning experience.
Request a demo, and learn how Intellum can help you educate, engage, and empower your audience to succeed.
