Navigating elearning industry trends is akin to crossing the Atlantic Ocean without a map: You might know where you want to go, but you’re not quite sure how to get there. It’s an uncharted, uncertain, chaotic and sometimes contradicting industry that can leave your L&D with more questions than answers.
LAND HO! As complicated as it may be, elearning movers and shakers always have your company and your learners in mind, often rolling the dice to predict the industry, hoping to shape the market and help your learners grow into their roles.
Predicting elearning trends is a difficult task because the industry is constantly evolving. That being said, it’s safe to say what the trends are in the current climate. Although the trends are current, in a year or two, they’ll either become irrelevant or they’ll be the building blocks to an enhanced learning management system (LMS).
The top five uncharted LMS trends 2016 getting the most airplay are: investing in elearning technology, integrating your CRM and LMS, using an online training platform to train your channel partners, using social and informal learning and utilizing an LMS with an advanced gamification features that offers real world prizes.
1. Investing in Elearning Technology
A 2016 Brandon Hall Group study found half of the companies surveyed are exploring new learning technologies as the top Learning & Development priority over the next 12 months due in large part to low satisfaction ratings. Out of the companies looking to invest in their LMS, social and collaborative tools rank as the highest priority at 43%. Other top learning priorities include:
Revamping your training path is stressful, but there are real world benefits to investing in your training program. Brandon Hall Group found the companies that are investing in learning technology are seeing their bottom line boom.
Many organizations report 10% or more in improvements to their key performance indicators (KPIs) after implementing new learning technology: 40% of companies saw an increase in revenue, 53% saw an increase in productivity and engagement, 26% saw a decrease in cost and 16% of companies saw a decrease in turnover rate.
2. Integrating Your CRM and LMS
Even though the integration is in its infancy, and not much data is available on how powerful the combination is, having your customer relationship management (CRM) system and your LMS exchange data in a way that’s meaningful to your sales growth has massive advantages. Salesforce is a beautiful CRM, but it can be difficult to configure to achieve the results many admins expect. That’s why it’s crucial for LMS users to take advantage of the CRM’s complete portfolio of features by enabling the two to work in harmony.
Manually keeping up with all of the data generated from both your LMS and CRM is very time consuming. Integrating the systems substantially reduces the time it takes to manage all of the generated data. You’ll also find a reduction in human errors, and unnecessary double data entry that can occur from manually entering CRM data into your LMS, or vice-versa. Coupling the two systems gives you the ability to seamlessly transfer data back and forth between the two systems, giving learning and development (L&D) the ability to drive revenue by effectively managing and tracking training results.
Integrating your LMS and CRM will help drive sales, increase ROI and fuel business performance while simplifying the training process for all of your learners. The benefits to your learners and your organization include: boosted engagement, savings on training efficiency and sales and product enablement. Tying your LMS to your CRM gives you a never before seen look into the effectiveness of your training strategy.
3. Deploying Elearning to Train Channel Partners
As your business grows, so does your channel partner network and in today’s marketplace, channel partner training has never been more important. If your channel partners are not equipped with the right information, then they may be failing to properly sell your product, or worse, they could be inadvertently damaging your reputation.
Using a powerful cloud based LMS to train your channel partners will enable them to maintain your brand’s integrity. Some of the best practices for training your channel partners are:
- Develop a stronger onboarding process to start the relationship off on the right foot
- Allow your experts to train your channel partners
- Tailor your training content to your channel partners
- Have an LMS that integrates with the business tools you use each day
- Offer real rewards for successful online training
- Prepare for (and avoid) channel conflicts
- Monitor and act on sales and training results
Training channel partners is often overlooked and this correlates with the commonly-cited rule claiming that 80% of your channel revenue comes from 20% of your partners. While the rule has its flaws, who follow the 80-20 rule often do not recognize that there is more to your channel partner relationship than sales – your reputation among your target market is at risk as well.
4. Importance of Social and Informal Learning
As important as training your channel partners is, training your workforce is much more important. The sad case is that research shows one in three companies either do not have an official onboarding process, or their onboarding process does not include structured training. Using an LMS with structured training based on a modern learning approach will help your learners be more engaged and, as a direct result, increase knowledge retention.
Modern Learning is based on the 70:20:10 learning model, first developed in the mid-1980’s by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) and since adapted to a guiding force in the learning technology market. This approach suggests that learners best retain information whenever:
- 70% is experiential, informal, on the job training
- 20% is coaching, mentoring or social
- 10% is more traditional, structured courses and formal learning
Formal learning gives your learners the information they need to be successful in your organization, but this style of learning is heavily impacted by the Hermann Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, which establishes that after event-based training, knowledge retention can drop from 100% to 58% just 19 minutes after your learner steps out the door.
Implementing modern learning with a mix of formal, social and informal learning will help your team crush your competitors while retaining more of the information that’s crucial to their job performance.
Altering or replacing your training plan is stressful, but the benefits of modern learning outweigh the pains. Organizations applying the 70:20:10 framework are consistently reporting more benefits than those who do not. They are at least:
This research shows that adding social and informal learning to formal training path will benefit both your organization and your learners.
5. Benefits of an LMS with Gamification Features
Adding gamification to your training gives your learners a platform for healthy competition. Everyone wants to be the best – it’s in our nature to win – so an advanced gamification LMS taps into this innate desire to be at the top of a leaderboard.
Gamifying your LMS means adding points, coins, and badges for completing questions, or courses, and having a leaderboard where learners can jockey for rank based on the points they’ve earned. An LMS with advanced gamification features not only lets your learners compete for first place, it also provides a means to reward them with gift cards, coveted parking spaces, a comical horse head mask, or a vacation for two to Grand Teton National Park.
These real world rewards greatly increases your learners’ motivation to do their best on their courses. This means a small investment in a few rewards will have a great impact on all of your learners. And all of them will be battling it out for that horse head mask.
We hope you utilize these top five LMS trends 2016 to improve the e-learning processes and activities in your organization.
Best LMS for Current Trends
There are more than 600 learning management systems available to the corporate world, so it is an understandable challenge to narrow down your options searching for the LMS that suits your organization’s needs.
Docebo’s LMS is paving the way for learning management systems. With its latest update, Docebo enhanced its LMS to work on all mobile platforms and by introducing Coach and Share, Docebo became the world’s only LMS ready to support the 70:20:10 learning model. Docebo also integrates with Salesforce so your organization can enjoy the convenience of working seamlessly between your LMS and CRM. Courses in Docebo can be assigned to anyone, including channel partners, employees or customers. With the addition of the Central Learning Object Repository, Docebo now lets you build and deliver courses in less time. The new Rewards Marketplace lets your learners battle for top of the leaderboard and for real-world prizes, which tend to be more motivational than a virtual badge.
In 2016, Docebo was also ranked top LMS in 2016 by PC Magazine, and recognized as a top LMS for the 4th consecutive quarter by GetApp, a Gartner company.
Try an LMS that has the drive and innovation to conquer the uncharted territories of the learning technology market. Try Docebo free for 14 days by activating a trial in just a few clicks. You can start Docebo Free Trial here.
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