Our mission at Talented Learning is to independently research the learning technology marketplace and help organizations choose and use the right solutions for their unique business needs. We recently uncovered a new trend that’s reshaping the way we’re think about online training for revenue, Custom Learning Experiences.
Recently, I teamed up with ExtensionEngine’s Principal Learning Strategist, Edward Daciuk, for a webinar to explore why custom solutions are gaining traction among revenue generating online training providers and what differentiates them.
The joint webinar, Custom Learning Experiences: When No LMS Will Do, presents insights and conclusions from our ongoing research into the learning management systems (LMS) market as well as examples of solutions ExtensionEngine has executed for top tier clients.
During the webinar, we explored eight trends in the 2017 LMS market that explain why it’s important to take a hard look at whether the LMS you have in mind can deliver the goods, whether you should consider building a platform from scratch, or whether you should do something in between.
For-Profit Limitations in the 2017 LMS Market
Creating revenue from online training goes well beyond what is required to deliver courses to an employee student base. Content buyers, whether they are individuals or organizations, must perceive a course as being engaging, satisfying, and valuable to justify their investment. Anything less will hurt their brand and future sales.
Many traditional LMSs are not designed to deliver this type of memorable learning experience to voluntary consumer learners. This creates a serious logistic and fiscal problem for training providers who are primarily seeking means of servicing their online training program to generate revenue.
Here are a few of the trends we discussed in the webinar and how they impact for-profit training providers:
| 2017 LMS Market Trends | Limitations for Revenue Generating Online Training |
| Trend #1: The corporate LMS will never die. There will always be a need to bring learners and content together in a measureable way. |
Many corporate LMSs were built for compliance and talent; design, commerce and user-experience are secondary |
| Trend #2: 700 LMS vendors create a large and diverse marketplace. | Few of the over 700 LMS vendors on the market provide a full-service solution focused on selling content. Selling content doesn’t happen by accident. |
| Trend #3: There is no licensing model “standard”, and many LMS providers base pricing on the number of users. | Traditional LMS license models often do not align with revenue generating business model of commercial learning. |
These three trends are just the start. Visit the webinar to explore all the trends driving the 2017 LMS market and enabling a new generation of learner-focused learning experiences.
An Emerging Solution: Custom Learning Experiences
For-profit training providers often find that traditional or in-house LMSs may be able to technically sell content, but are not designed to stand out and maximize revenue in a competitive market. Additionally, with 700+ LMS choices, most don’t have time to research them all to find the best to support a particular commercial training model. As a solution, many training providers are now turning to “custom learning experiences” for market differentiation.
A custom learning experience, as Edward puts it in the webinar, is “an evolution to a learner-centered world that leverages advances in learning science and tools to make learning faster, more effective, more enjoyable, and more applicable to a larger set of learning areas.” To create them, strategy, platform, instructional design, content development and marketing is needed—most often provided by partner specialists.
Conclusion
Training providers have it tough. It’s not good enough to have content for sale in a highly competitive market. It takes a much more comprehensive strategy and environment to differentiate and maximize revenue. During the webinar, we highlighted what commercial training providers need to know about the limitations, opportunities, market trends and custom learning experiences and showcased several high-end projects that demonstrate how a forward-thinking training organizations can stretch the capabilities of an existing LMS with custom learning experiences and solutions.
We invite you to take a look!
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Fergus Wood, Head of Digital Learning at FitchLearning, talks about why they chose a Custom Learning Experience over an LMS. Learn how they drive revenue from high-end online learning in this recorded webinar.
