If you put me on the rack and asked me whether most large corporates need a Learning Management System (LMS) then I’d have to say yes. If you are a large enterprise that needs to organise and track formal learning activity then it’s practically a given.
The problem for most LMSs in corporate environments is that actually they are usually at least three clicks away from when they are most needed by the user, and even then, a learner isn’t usually that interested in the fact they’ve accessed the LMS. It’s part of the journey, but not necessarily the chosen destination. What they are really after is the right learning, at the right time, with the right context with the right impact to make a difference. Most of the time they want to be looking at the learning content, in whatever form, that comes. Not the LMS.
Alternatively, if they are interested in development planning – they want to be analysing development paths, getting insight into their unique attributes, their potential and creating the roadmap that will deliver their aspirations. Again, they are interested in the destination not the mechanism.
And for corporate learning technology managers this is a problem, because without making the outcome the most visible part of the development journey, rather than the system that co-ordinates it, there will always be an extra barrier to LMSs delivering their maximum value.
One way around this is to use portals and deep linking to, in effect, make the LMS invisible. These are inherently more user focussed. The LMS is still there, but doing its job in the background, rather than obviously in the foreground.
Afterall, with the exception of the LMS vendor and the team who put it in, who really wants to see an LMS anyway....?
