by Ken Burnett
Organizations now more than ever value highly skilled employees. Cross-training, employee development, job-sharing, and changing roles due to downsizing are commonplace in today's economy. In order to manage the learning function, organizations must have a flexible system for employees to manage their development, and for organizations to report and monitor their progress. Because of the criticality of the changing needs of the workforce, a robust Learning Management System (LMS) is vital to any organization's success
As your organization makes a decision on an LMS, the options vary as much as they do at a car lot or computer store. You need to be aware of the critical differences before you make the purchase on a LMS.
As with most software programs, the differences that influence your ability to use the product invariably focus on:
- Flexibility
- Ease of use and content delivery
- Price
Passageways LMS was designed by a generous input from a corporate trainer (yours truly, Ken Burnett) with over 20 years experience in delivering training and providing recordkeeping for a financial organization, who will talking about the LMS at a Webinar hosted by Passageways.
Flexibility
The Passageways LMS provides the Training Department flexibility and ease of use as they set up courses/sessions and administer the learning functions. Many other LMS offer course set up functions, but the Passageways LMS provides you the option of adding audience by groups you define, then excluding specific members of that audience based on need. You can also set prerequisites for the training that will direct courses only to those employees who meet the requirements.
The system is flexible enough to use that I have assigned over 1300 compliance courses to 30 unique groups in less than an hour. I can setup a course that has 16 different classroom sessions each with unique times, dates and locations in 30 minutes. Many LMS systems have similar features, but it is Passageways unique design of filtering the learning directly to the person who needs it that will improve your ability to deliver training.
Ease of Use and Content Delivery
The manager functionality in the LMS is designed to fit today's working environment. The Passageways LMS provides managers the opportunity to sign their employees up for courses, view the associate's transcripts, and note which courses the employee is requesting. Most of the other LMS have only two levels of access, one for the administrator, and one for the user.
I'm sure many of you have been to a restaurant trying to decide between items, when the entree looks good in one meal, and the vegetable in another, and you wish you could take the best of everything. Well, with Passageways LMS you can author in not just one program, but many types of software. At the Bank of American Fork we use several different types of authoring software delivering courses to our employees (Lectora, Adobe Captivate, and Rapid Intake among others). Not only that, but you can choose best in class courses from many different vendors. In our LMS, we currently have courses from six different vendors all running through the Passageways LMS. This type of flexibility allows you to find or author the exact content you need for your course.
In many of the other LMS systems out on the market the learner/administrator/manager has to make multiple clicks to perform a function, but Passageways LMS is designed to minimize the number of clicks to get you the information you need quickly and efficiently. Many of the other LMS systems on the marketplace bury critical information in layers of menus. The Passageways LMS system has a minimal menu structure. It has to be efficient, because I use it too!
Price
With all the functionality offered by the Passageways LMS, you'd think it would be the most expensive in the marketplace. Well actually Passageways LMS is priced very competitively and good value when money is tight. You can't approach the Passageways LMS functionality for twice the price. I'll be happy to discuss these in the webinars with you as well.
The Passageways LMS is the best product on the market if you are a bank or a credit union. Admittedly, the reason I can say that is that my organization uses it to manage our training function, and knows the difference this makes over our prior experiences. If the system can't meet the needs of my organization, I am accountable. I am continually getting feedback from my users and other organizations that I coordinate with Passageways to keep the system up to date and ahead of other competitive products. I hope you'll take a look at the system to see how it will help your organization. Don't forget to sign up for a session where I will be available to talk more about all these aspects of LMS. Hope to see you!
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/816021291
About Ken Burnett
Passageways Evangelist for Learning Management System
Ken Burnett has over 20 years experience in the Training and Workplace Learning Environment. His focus is on helping organizations and individuals change behavior to achieve business results. He is currently the Training Director for Bank of American Fork. As the Training Director for the Bank, Ken focuses on customer service, sales, systems, compliance, products and services, and policy and procedure training. Prior to joining the Bank, Ken worked at Fidelity Investments in various training functions in Salt Lake and Boston.
Ken's perfect day would be to take Mark Twain to a Boston Red Sox.