Here Are 4 Ways to Tell if Your LMS is Letting You Down

For many corporate training teams, the learning management system (LMS) is as ubiquitous as Microsoft Word. When organizing training for an internal employee population, the LMS is a great solution, since most systems are designed to track learners, deploy elearning modules, and administer assessments. However, for any corporate trainer responsible for external learners – such as onboarding new customers to a complex software system or certifying operators on machinery – the LMS ends up failing at a few key tasks.

Here’s how your LMS is letting you down, plus how a courseware distribution platform like Mimeo Digital can solve these headaches.

The LMS Isn’t Optimized for Hybrid Learning

Learning management systems first emerged on the market as elearning swept the corporate training landscape. Training administrators needed a way to host elearning, share it with employees, and track their completion. On top of that, LMS providers added bells and whistles, such as graded assessments and virtual instructor-led training rooms.

While all of this is great for supporting continuous learning journeys, it doesn’t support the needs of trainers with external learners. Unlike employee training, customer or channel partner training usually requires classroom, instructor-led training on a limited-time engagement. This has shifted to include hybrid engagements, such as hosting remote-learner sessions, but it still requires solutions oriented toward classroom training instead of elearning.

The LMS Doesn’t Lock Down Your Content

When it comes to training documents and PDFs, the LMS barely remembers they exist, if at all. For employee populations, documents are usually stored in a shared drive or central file system. However, key parts of any customer training or channel partner engagement are product manuals, process charts, sales one-sheets, and other critical electronic documents. 

Unfortunately, no LMS focuses on document security or even document management. Instead, external trainers are left with a long wish list of features like:

• Adding watermarks to PDFs
• Locking documents into an app to prevent downloads, the way Spotify and Netflix protect their streaming files
• Adding expiration dates to PDFs, audio, video, and other files
• Ability to revoke content if learners drop out of classes

Secure training content document delivery is solved instead by PDF delivery platforms and courseware distribution platforms. 

The LMS Is Cumbersome for Learners

When it comes to training an external population, ease of use for learners is paramount. Unfortunately, most LMS offerings are cumbersome for anyone outside of the organization. They host so much content that it can be hard to find the right material at the right time, and that is after your learner has figured out how to get around firewalls or internet requirements to log in. 

The LMS Doesn’t Scale With Your Business

From your CFO’s point of view, the biggest way the LMS fails external training organizations is that it costs a lot of money, whether you have 10 training engagements that month or 100. Not only does the LMS come with a high price tag, but it also takes months to implement and usually requires a full-time administrator. On top of that, if you are training customers, channel partners, or other third parties, you likely have to compete with the internal employee training teams for LMS resources.

Replace Your LMS with a CDP

For a long time, the LMS was the only solution out there for training teams of any kind. When learners were content to receive printed content at an in-person classroom training session, then external training teams didn’t need to find other solutions. However, customers expect more digital options these days. On top of that, classroom training more often includes a remote option. External training teams need a solution for distributing training content online. 

The good news is the market has evolved. Mimeo Digital, the first courseware distribution platform (CDP), takes away all the bells and whistles of the LMS to focus on one thing only: secure training document distribution. With a CDP, your content is easy for external learners to access, simple for you to control with security measures, and scalable based on your business needs. Plus, Mimeo Digital offers 24/7 learner support so that you don’t have to spend any time walking a learner through how to reset their password. 

Find out more with our complimentary white paper, Courseware Distribution Platforms: The New Solution Disrupting the Training Services Technology Ecosystem.