Every year, tech companies spend thousands of dollars on learning solutions. In fact, by 2026, e-learning market revenue is predicted to cross $375 billion (USD), solidifying the ever-growing use of learning management systems (LMS) across all industries.
For SaaS companies, the right LMS solution can be the key to enabling your teams to reach their maximum productivity and potential.
What is an LMS?
A learning management system (LMS) is a platform designed for creating, delivering, and managing educational content for learners. These platforms are used widely across many industries beyond education, including business and corporate environments.
For SaaS companies, LMS solutions play a diverse role in helping to train up-and-coming developers, better connect SaaS teams, and build a comprehensive shared knowledge base.
Today’s LMS market is ripe with solutions to choose between, making it vital for SaaS companies to consider what they require from an LMS platform. Selecting an LMS provider with specialized knowledge in SaaS can greatly simplify internal training and communication processes.
An LMS tailored to a SaaS company’s needs serves as a central hub for information sharing, benefiting the company’s internal workforce and customer base. The right LMS solution ensures all SaaS team members possess the knowledge and skills to boost organizational productivity and success.
The benefits of an LMS for SaaS companies
Any SaaS company striving to improve communication and team-wide knowledge must consider an LMS’s many advantages. Rather than handling all learning technology and resources in-house, SaaS companies can rely on a third-party platform to provide crucial tools for workplace learning.
Let’s examine seven of the top benefits LMS solutions pose to SaaS companies:
- Employee Learning and Development: Learning and Development (L&D) departments have their hands complete in SaaS organizations. From onboarding new hires and providing baseline training to honing developers’ skills and ensuring clear paths for collaboration, L&D professionals have much to gain from the added support of an LMS. LMS platforms can streamline the onboarding process for new employees and enable ongoing employee training, ensuring all team members stay up-to-date with product updates and industry trends.
- Customer Training: Customers of SaaS companies often require some instruction on how to use the products and services they purchase. SaaS companies can leverage an LMS to create training modules for their customers to demonstrate how to use their software effectively. An LMS solution can also provide the resources and tools necessary to create a self-service helpdesk that customers can access on-demand to troubleshoot issues and learn at their own pace.
- Tracking and Analytics: A SaaS company’s learning strategy can fall flat without the proper tools for tracking and analyzing performance metrics. LMS platforms provide powerful tools for gathering learning data, tracking key performance metrics, and analyzing information for valuable insights that can improve future learning content. With the right LMS solution, a SaaS company can more accurately monitor their learning programs and adjust its strategies accordingly.
- Compliance and Security: The geographic location of a SaaS company and its customers can profoundly impact the complexity of compliance. In most regions, SaaS companies have some degree of regulatory requirements to adhere to. For SaaS companies operating in highly regulated industries, like finance or healthcare, these regulatory requirements become all the more stringent. LMS solutions aid SaaS companies in training employees on the latest regulatory developments and ensure data is handled compliantly with local regulations.
- Personalization: LMS solutions enable companies to tailor training content to individual learners, ensuring the material is relevant and engaging to each person. This is especially beneficial for SaaS companies, as an LMS allows for the personalization needed to hone the skills of different developers and tech professionals. Moreover, the personalization capabilities of an LMS can ensure each learner can focus their attention on their specific professional interests and strengthen the skills that matter most.
- Content Management: Improved content management is a core advantage of any worthwhile LMS solution. As a SaaS company grows, more and more learning content is created to onboard, train, and upskills team members. An LMS creates a central hub where this content can be stored and accessed as needed by team members across the organization. Additionally, LMS solutions make updating and maintaining learning content easy as a SaaS company and its products evolve.
- Cost Savings: With a streamlined approach to workplace learning, SaaS companies can easily spend on used resources. An LMS solution provides your team with a virtual environment to quickly discover learning content and connect with experts, using learning resources on their own time and as needed. In turn, less of your company’s money and time is spent coordinating learning events, resulting in significant L&D cost savings.
What should SaaS companies look for in an LMS solution?
Finding your ideal LMS solution as a SaaS company depends on several essential factors. One of the top considerations for any SaaS company is scalability.
The LMS solution you select must be capable of growing and evolving alongside your company. As your SaaS business expands and your user base increases, your LMS needs the ability to accommodate more users, including both employees and customers. Ideally, your LMS solution should deliver personalized, up-to-date learning content to all users with minimal to no performance issues.
Aside from scalability, SaaS companies must prioritize three categories of features in an LMS solution:
Personalized & accessible content management
Any LMS you select for a SaaS company should offer an intuitive, user-friendly interface.
For administrators, an easy-to-use interface makes it simpler to create and distribute personalized content to learners. The best LMS solutions will even allow administrators to automate content distribution to help connect learners with the most relevant resources and experts for their needs.
From the learners’ standpoint — including employees and customers — a streamlined LMS solution offering personalized content can reduce overall friction and increase engagement.
Data analytics & performance measurement
Robust data tracking, analytics, and reporting features are an LMS must for SaaS companies.
Look for an LMS that enables administrators to track learner progress across various performance metrics, such as course completion rates or skill progression. These insights are valuable for not just measuring the effectiveness of your programs but also for identifying key pain points in the learning process and specific areas in need of improvement for each employee.
The LMS you choose for your SaaS company should also simplify collecting and assessing user feedback. Your LMS solution should automatically prompt all users to provide feedback at key points within learning programs, such as following the completion of a first project or assessment.
A great LMS will also provide a central dashboard from which you can easily access all of this data, information, and feedback. The right LMS enables you to make data-driven decisions with ease.
Future-proof content delivery
The learning technology industry is evolving rapidly — and so are your learners.
To future-proof your learning programs, an LMS solution must facilitate diverse learning environments, such as live webinars, self-paced guides, and in-person events. This ability to accommodate different learning styles allows your company to adjust learning programs as new learning methods emerge.
Moreover, your LMS provider can ensure your learning platform receives all the latest updates and software improvements, enabling you to adopt innovative technologies and tools quickly.
Find out why SaaS companies love PlusPlus
At PlusPlus, we work with top SaaS companies to boost participation and increase ROI significantly.
With an average 35% increase in revenue per employee, PlusPlus has the features and support your SaaS company needs to excel. We provide you with a comprehensive suite of tools for content management and workplace collaboration that engage your employees like never before.
Reach out to our team to discover why SaaS companies like Neflix, Shopify, and Airbnb love working with PlusPlus today.