A multi-tenant Learning Management System (LMS) is ideally suited for learning management use cases that require their own diverse requirements such as extended enterprise training, partner training, customer training, and contractor training.
Do any of these requirements sound familiar?
- Multiple teams within the organisation that have distinct learning activities and business rules
- Training for internal and external users such as contractors for compliance requirements
- Training to clients as a ‘value add’ or to sell your training
- Pre-employment and on-boarding activities
- Ability to scale easily and quickly and deploy to different user groups
From an LMS perspective these examples require the following solution:
- Different business rules, for example approval for training internal employees that’s not needed for external contractors
- Branding may be required for different parts of the organisation
- Various learning activities may be targeted to different groups of learners
- Training is managed by different departments within the organisation
- Managers and clients require reporting for their own teams reports as well as the organisation
- Managers and clients only have access to the data of their team or employees
- External organisations are outside the companies IT infrastructure
In Birch Learning Platform a ‘Community’ is the top level for grouping users. You can create a Community with different branding, content, learning paths, and business rules. Birch allows for unlimited Communities within the one subscription licence.
Let’s explore how Communities work in Birch with three typical scenarios:
Internal employees
This is traditionally what your LMS has been implemented for. Clients require employees to have their own learning paths based on job roles, a skill/capability framework. Self registration that allows learners to register into courses with or without approval. It may also allow employees to request external training and add their own personal achievements such as licenses or other qualifications. To achieve this in Birch, some features could be:
- A community with corporate branding
- Secure single sign from corporate intranet
- Dashboards display goals created for each job role’s learning path
- Goals have rules to release each learning element as previous ones are completed
- Goals with a variety of learning experiences – for example videos, on the job assessment, reading documents, eLearning content etc.
- New Refresher Goal appears after a certain amount of time after completion of initial learning
- Manager Dashboard reflects team performance against organisations performance
- Event calendar with upcoming learning opportunities for learners to register into
- Manager approval on new learning registrations
- Learners add own external achievements
External contractors
The external contractor scenario is common in a number of organisations. For an external contractor to commence work, they have to complete a compliance induction such as Workplace Health and Safety training for the organisation or site.
Some features you would use in Birch for this scenario are:
- A new community separated from the employees and branded differently
- Dashboard that reflects external contractor goals versus internal employee goals
- The inclusion of a self-account creation form with a defined URL and defined rules
- A feature to make the account automatically inactive after a certain period of time
An external contractor can create their own account online, log in and complete their induction and print off a completion certificate to hand to the site representative upon commencement. Optionally, you could have them upload their various licenses.
Setup would be prior to commencement, saving work time and improving the efficiency of the on-boarding process.
Your clients
You may have some great eLearning resources you have developed, so why not make these available for your clients? This could be a ‘value-add’ for your clients, or you may even wish to turn this into another revenue stream.
For example where you have product knowledge eLearning modules for your sales team, why not make them available for your clients? Not only would you be providing online content to upskill their staff, you would also be providing them with a portal that allows them to report and track those learning activities. In addition you are building stronger client relationships.
A new community for clients created in Birch could have the following rules:
- Branding based on your client’s website
- Dashboard that reflects your client’s context
- Accept secure online payments
- Reporting for clients on their employees
Looking for more information?
Talk to us about how Birch Learning Platform more can help solve your learning problems.