Cloud LMS for employee training is an LMS (learning management system) that’s hosted on the cloud and is used for employee training. The benefit of a cloud-based LMS (like Tovuti) is that you can access the content anywhere, on any device, as long as you have an internet connection (and sometimes offline as well).
You can access a cloud LMS in this way because it’s essentially hosted on the internet, rather than a particular application that you must download, which would mean the application would only be accessible from devices that have downloaded it.
To back up a step, learning management systems are online platforms that facilitate online learning. They allow administrators to make courses using a variety of text, graphics, videos, and other features that keep the content engaging for learners. These platforms are typically the most robust and streamlined ways to deliver eLearning to your employees.
Throughout this article, the differences between cloud LMSs and self-hosted LMSs will be illustrated, as well as the benefits of a cloud LMS, including why it’s the better option for most businesses.
Why should you invest in a cloud LMS for your business?
This question really has two parts.
Investing in your employees’ learning and development is important for retaining your employees. In fact, 94% of employees say they’d stay at companies that do. By investing in your employees, thus having them stay with your company longer, you’re also creating a higher-skilled workforce, which will result in higher productivity and therefore, should result in higher profits.
You can make those results even better if you invest in an LMS for your employees’ training. This is because eLearning also saves your company money (IBM reported in 2000 that it saved them $200 million the year before), while also making you money (IBM also reported making $30 back for every $1 it invested in eLearning).
Although LMSs aren’t the only way to deliver eLearning, they are the most streamlined way, with everything you could need to be hosted on one platform.
Although a cloud learning management system is more limited in its customizations and features than a self-hosted one, it’s also easier to maintain. For example, you won’t have to manually update it. Those will likely happen automatically. It also involves less knowledge of computer programs and customizations to develop courses, dashboards, etc. than a self-hosted one.
Basically, with a self-hosted LMS, you’re only limited by your own abilities in terms of what your LMS can do. But, in doing that, you give up the ability for it to be managed by the LMS platform itself, and to access it from any device.
Meanwhile, although cloud LMSs are less customizable, they’re still able to support plenty of features that can be used to create brilliant courses and training experiences for employees. But the convenience of being able to access the LMS from any device, and not manage it yourself makes it an effective tool for your company, rather than another job that needs to be maintained.
Cloud LMSs are more limited in their features than self-hosted LMSs, which are essentially fully customizable if you’re able to code. However, there are some typical features that you’ll find in various forms on many cloud-based LMSs. We’ve included some of those features in the table below.
|
Feature |
Does Tovuti Have It? |
Description |
| Course Customization, Management, and Delivery | Yes | This feature is really the most important of any LMS – the ability to create, manage, and deliver custom courses to your employees so they can engage in employee training. With this feature, you can create and edit your courses, as well as ensure your employees can access the content and oversee their progress. |
| Gamification | Yes | These features are elements of games that you add to activities that aren’t games, like online training courses, for instance. Adding these elements to eLearning can encourage your employees to more actively engage in the course content. |
| Integrations | Yes | If you have any platforms or applications you want to be able to use with your LMS or be able to share information with your LMS, you need to make sure they’re integrated with your LMS. |
| Analytics and Reporting | Yes | This feature allows you to track your employees’ progress through courses, including how many they’ve completed, how far along they are in them, how well they’re doing, etc. You can also access analytics on your courses, especially if you’re selling them and want to see how much money you’ve made from them, how well they’re doing, if people are able to understand the concepts, etc. |
| Mobile Responsive | Yes | When creating or purchasing any internet-based platform, you want to make sure its capabilities and aesthetic is maintained on a cellphone, as well. |
| SCORM Compliance | Yes | SCORM essentially refers to how files are stored on your LMS. It is the standard for cloud LMSs, so any that you are looking at should be SCORM-compliant. You can learn more about SCORM in our article SCORM: eLearning Standard Explained. |
There are various benefits to cloud-based LMS solutions that make them the perfect choice for businesses to use for employees. Some may be clear from the features listed above. Five will be added below:
You retain 25%-67% more information using eLearning than traditional learning. Obviously, you want your employees to retain as much as they can from their training so they can properly apply what their learning to their jobs.
There are a few things you can do to encourage this information retention.
For example, adding elements of gamification to encourage higher engagement and more interaction with the content. Like adding a quiz at the end of a module to ensure your employees have understood the concepts.
You can also add elements like videos and graphics to bolster the text in your courses because you retain information better when you’ve learned it in multiple ways.
Plus, you can have virtual meetings and classes to help clarify any information that any of your employees may be struggling with, or facilitate discussions. (You can use other means of communication, like forums, to facilitate discussion, too.)
A cloud LMS solution is a robust platform that can host all your training resources in one place. All courses you make or purchase, forums for discussion, virtual classrooms, video conferencing technology – whatever you need to train your employees.
These resources can be accessed from anywhere, as long as you’ve got a device with you, and probably an internet connection.
This will help your employees’ training be much more organized and streamlined, and convenient. Everyone should know where to look for any training material.
Cloud LMS solutions aren’t just convenient because they’re accessible from any device, but also because they can be done at any time. That sort of flexibility is important to nine out of ten employees because this means they can do their training whenever they have the time, instead of having to take time out of their busy schedules to do it. Rather than being pulled from their productive work for a morning, or a day, they can fit their training in when they have a few minutes here and there.
Microlearning in particular is set up for this. It’s learning in small, bite-sized chunks, which basically just means that it’s shorter learning sessions. Modules, videos, and articles can all be examples of microlearning.
With a cloud learning management system, you’ll be able to track what’s happening with your employees and your courses. For instance, you’ll be able to see how many courses your employees have done, how far along they are, how well they’ve done, etc. This can help you understand:
Cloud-based LMSs are scaleable depending on the size of your business. So, basically, you can tailor it so it works for your business whether it’s a small business or a large enterprise.
This is a great way to go because it also means you can scale your LMS up as your business grows. And it doesn’t limit your options based on whether or not you have a large or small business. Instead, you can fit your cloud LMS to what you need.
And, no matter the size of your business, you’ll have the same access to the features that create such effective training courses for your employees.
Although we’ve mentioned above some typical features of cloud-based LMS systems, now we want to include some aspects of these systems that we find essential for effective employee training, which we’ve done in the table below.
Note: We aren’t going to include any features that were included in our table of typical features. However, those are still essential.
|
Component |
Does Tovuti Have It? |
Description |
| Virtual Meetings and/or Classrooms |
Yes | This allows instructors to speak directly with learners (and vice versa) to engage in synchronous learning and enhance the learning being done in their courses, and clarify any questions or issues the employees are having with the content. |
| Notifications and Scheduling | Yes | If you have important dates in mind for your employee (like when you need certain courses to be done, dates when a virtual meeting or class will be held, etc.) you can schedule them, and then set notifications to remind your employees when those dates are coming up. Tovuti includes pop-up notifications, auto notifications, and email notifications options. |
| Compliance | Yes | Depending on the industry you’re in, you may have different compliance requirements. This is something you’ll want to look into before purchasing your cloud LMS. |
| Accessibility | Yes | It’s important that all your employees are able to access training, including those who may have different or limited abilities to others (for instance, they’re blind, deaf, etc.). Because of this, it’s important your cloud LMS has the necessary accessibility requirements. |
| Security | Yes | You can have some confidential information included in your cloud LMS, including employee information, methods and equipment, or company information. You want that information to be protected, which is why it’s important your LMS has great security. |
| Strong Customer Support | Yes | If something goes wrong, you want to make sure you can contact the cloud LMS company to get it solved. This is especially important with a cloud LMS, because you’re counting on the platform’s company to manage it for you. |
We’ve included some cloud-based LMSs in the table below.
|
Cloud LMS |
Description |
| Tovuti | This brilliant LMS offers incredible customer support, a plethora of features to create courses perfectly tailored to your needs, eCommerce opportunities, and more. Tovuti is the cloud LMS solution for a number of businesses, including Summit Mortgage Corporation and SafetyNet. |
| TalentLMS | This LMS boasts an easy setup on its website, with over 70,000 businesses using it, including eBay and Duolingo. |
| Docebo | This LMS is AI-based, with over 2,000 businesses using it, including Walmart and Heineken. |
| SAP Litmos | This LMS boasts over 30 million users on its website, including YouTube and Lindt. |
Although there are various cloud LMS platforms, including some listed above, when it comes to what the best choice for a cloud LMS platform is, the only choice is Tovuti. Tovuti offers:
… and much more.
You’ll notice that every feature that we’ve listed in our previous two tables is a feature that Tovuti offers. But it offers many more features, as well. To just throw a few out there, we also have
With all these features, you’ll be able to customize the training experience for your employees to what you want it to be. There are so many that the courses you want to create will come together with your creativity as your only limitation.
With Tovuti, you can get the best of both worlds with synchronous and asynchronous learning, or online and traditional learning. With our virtual meeting and virtual classroom features, you can combine the face-to-face contact of traditional learning, with the independent learning of online courses.
Depending on the industry and business you’re in, this can be an extremely beneficial combination.
For example, if you’re training many different employees from different locations to create an integrated healthcare system, you’ll want to be able to spend some time actually with your learners so you can make sure they’re understanding the intricacies of the content, as it’s going to affect people’s health. However, you can still largely depend on them completing online courses, and just include check-ins (in the form of virtual meetings or classes) as necessary.
We mentioned integrations above, and why it’s an important (and standard) feature for cloud LMSs to have.
But with Tovuti’s connection to Zapier, you can integrate with over 2000 apps to help you connect to the platforms you need. Tovuti applications supported by Zapier include
However, that’s not all that Tovuti offers. It also has an open API so you can create something more customized, even on a cloud-based LMS.
With Tovuti, as soon as you purchase the platform (and the right subscription) you can have access to a number of courses without having to make your own. This is because we have a course library that offers a variety of pre-built courses. If any are relevant to your business, you can buy them and use them for your own employees.
And on the same hand, once you begin creating courses, you can sell them, as well, with our eCommerce features. This way you can make a little extra money from the hard work you’ve done developing those courses.
Of course, if you are going to sell courses, make sure they don’t contain any confidential information about your business, employees, etc.
We’ve mentioned this in one of our previous tables, but if another company is managing your LMS platform, then you want to make sure they offer great customer support. And Tovuti does! When you first purchase the platform, you can have four one-hour coaching sessions (only within the first 30 days) to help you set up and use your LMS. And before you even purchase, you can watch a demo on how to use it.
Plus, once you have the platform set up, if you have any issues you can contact us, we’ll create a ticket for you and get back to you and solve your problem as quickly as possible.
As mentioned previously, SCORM is the standard for cloud LMSs. SCORM stands for Shareable Content Object Reference Model. It’s essentially a framework for sharing files with your platform. The SCORM cloud is a place where you can test whether the content you’re making works properly with a SCORM-compliant LMS.
The best cloud LMS depends on your industry, business, and what exactly you’re going to use your LMS for. There are a lot of great options on the market, at various price points.
Tovuti, though, is an undeniably great option, for the five reasons previously mentioned
And for many more reasons, as well. If you wish to better understand how Tovuti works, you can watch a demo.
Online learning is a great way to train employees, especially if you work in a busy, constantly evolving industry, have several locations or have work-from-home workers. Although there are some benefits of a self-hosted LMS, if you plan on investing in eLearning for your employees, you should go for a cloud LMS (unless maybe you have computer programmers on staff or plan on hiring some) that can:
And of cloud LMSs, we recommend you try Tovuti. Watch our demo to see how it works, or contact us and let’s talk about what Tovuti can do for your business.