Choosing the Best Business Training Software for Your Organization

Knowledge is power, right? Even better is when your team, customers, and partners have all the information they need about your organization. That’s where business training software (i.e., learning management software or LMS) comes into play for large and small businesses alike.

What is business training software?

Business training solutions house, facilitate and streamline all the content you want to share with employees, customers, and partners—learners. It should be a user-friendly training platform where your target learners can easily access onboarding materials, eLearning courses, compliance training, and everything else in your corporate training content library.

Different types of training needs to consider

Before selecting business training software, conduct research on your learning and development goals as well as your learners. This will help ensure your LMS meets your needs and save valuable time and money in the process.

Audience

Determine who will be using your online training platform. How tech-savvy are they? Are they customers, your sales force, strategic partners, new hires, or the people who create new products? Will they access training via mobile devices or desktops?

Content

How many training courses should you offer to meet your audience’s needs? Will your team be creating custom training or do they want to use content creation templates? How will you ensure positive learning experiences? What content format will you want to use? Audio, video, PDF?

Behind-the-scenes

Who besides the learners will be using the training platform? What other software does the LMS need to communicate or integrate with? What would you like the LMS to automate? Which functionalities are needs versus nice-to-haves?

Learning Styles

How will you address all the various learning styles of your users—visual, auditory, and multisensory? Will your LMS need to accommodate blended learning that includes both in-person and online learning options?

What to look for in business or employee training software

Once you know what your training platform needs to accomplish, it’s time to research the market. Some estimates report over 1000 different LMS options, so let’s help you narrow the list. One aspect to consider is the degree of support you will get from the vendor. If you feel like a valued customer right from the start, that’s a great sign.

Authoring tools

The best business or employee training software will t support built-in course authoring. This gives your course creation team the advantage of creating content directly in the training platform, so they won’t have to upload separate files. Alternatively, if your software allows for easy integration with third-party authoring tools such as Articulate, this may be an acceptable model for getting started, especially if you’re not ready to create your own content just yet.

Learning paths

The ability to create organized packages of courses, known as learning paths, can simplify the learner’s training experience and accelerate results by grouping courses based on topic or outcome, such as achieving a certification. With learning paths, you can tailor content to different roles within the organization or different types of customer needs.

SCORM compatibility

SCORM is the most common file type for training materials. It can accommodate slides, video, audio, and photos. Training platforms that accept this technical standard will help you ensure eLearning interoperability and streamline content creation workflows.

API Integrations

API integrations between your training platform and other software you use, such as for CRM or marketing automation, are important for streamlining the transfer of information between them. If you’ve ever had to download information from one software platform, convert it to Excel, reformat it, and upload it to another software platform, you know how valuable this feature is.

Look and feel customization

Your marketing team will be pleased with this feature, especially if the training platform host makes it easy to customize details like brand colors, logos, and layouts. It’s important to ensure a seamless experience for your learners when navigating between your website and your learning platform.

Quizzes and assessments

All the beautiful, on-brand training courses in the world are meaningless if your learners don’t understand the information you intend to teach. Gauge absorption and comprehension by quizzing learners along the way. Make it an easy, automated process by choosing a learning platform that has intuitive training tools to create built-in quizzes at the end of each section or course.

Metrics and data

Training management includes tracking your learners’ progress, online course enrollment rates, and other data that helps your team constantly deliver valuable user experiences. The best learning software will help you tie back training metrics to business-level metrics, so you can make a financial case for e-learning at your company.

Drive learner engagement

In-app messaging can help your learners get more out of your training content by linking to related content, motivating them to learn more, and giving them ways to go deeper into certain areas of interest. Nudges via email to complete courses and pick up where they left off also encourage learner engagement.

Ease of use

An intuitive interface for everyone who interacts with the LMS lets them focus on what they’re trying to achieve rather than all the steps it takes to get there.

How do I choose the best software for training for business users or employees?

Choosing an LMS for your business or employee training programs requires research and planning. Include your learners and other key stakeholders in the process from the very beginning, understand your pricing needs, and focus on the functionality that will achieve your goals for the software.

Is there a business training LMS specifically designed for customer education?

Different training platforms may tailor their features to a specific target audience. Investing in a customer education LMS serves a different purpose than employee training software, so be sure to understand your target before choosing a software. Capabilities like external access to your training content through single sign-on (SSO), the creation of learning paths, and reporting tied back to business outcomes are some of the things you’ll want to look for when investing in a learning platform designed for customer education. Skilljar is designed specifically for customer education, but some customers also use it for training employees and partners. Skilljar has a customizable learning management system for you.

Choosing the right LMS provider means finding a vendor you can trust who offers the features you need that make sense for your company. Skilljar is a customizable cloud-based LMS software that can be used to create and manage learning programs.

Get a demo to learn why Skilljar is the LMS solution that can help you meet your diverse training needs.