Do we need a Learning Management System (LMS) to deliver and track on-demand compliance courses?

​Many of our law firm and corporate clients have been hard at work creating on-demand compliance courses to train people at their client organizations. Our government clients have been busy creating compliance courses to train their own personnel.
 
And they all have similar questions: 

• Once the courses are developed, how will we make them available to our audience?
• Do we need an LMS to deliver these courses? 
• Or is there a better way to roll out this training and track completions without having to purchase an LMS?   

The short answers:  
No, you don’t need an LMS. And yes, there is a better way.
 
To be clear, Learning Management Systems (LMSs) have their place. An LMS can be an excellent resource for a wide variety of learning management activities, both online and offline. It can be used to schedule learning resources, set up learning paths, track attendance at live courses, track continuous learning credits, and so on.    
 
BUT if your objective is to simply deliver on-demand courses to your target audience (whether inside or outside your organization) and track course completions (to ensure compliance), an LMS is not necessary. And not worth the added cost and complexity. You may end up paying for a lot of functionality you don’t need.
 
We have found that most organizations creating on-demand courses have five key objectives:

1. Enable easy web-based access to the courses
2. Automate the sending of reminder emails
3. Automatically track individual progress on the courses to ensure compliance (as appropriate)
4. Generate downloadable certificates of completion
5. Generate automated reports so you’ll have an always-current record of the status of course completions. 

 
If this is all the functionality you need, you don’t need an LMS.
 
You need an easy-to-use web-based, mobile accessible, SCORM-compliant delivery, tracking, and reporting system. We know, that’s a mouthful.  So, we’ll just call it an “un-LMS.”
 
We’ve developed such a system at the request of our clients.  It has all the functionality you need ... and nothing you don't. 

We call it The un-LMS™. 

Learn more: The un-LMS by SkillBurst Interactive