Why flexibility in elearning platforms is vital in the new reality
For more than 15 years, open source has been present in the information technology market, solutions such as
Totara Learn
have had a progressive impact on the education and corporate sectors. It was not until the arrival of the pandemic that most companies had to “race” to have an elearning system to help them manage their training processes. When it comes to selecting an e-learning platform, aspects such as autonomy or flexibility for customization are becoming increasingly critical, where “open source” has become a major player, competing strongly with very solid proprietary solutions on the market.
A webinar was recently held, sponsored by Actua Solutions and organized by Digital HR. This served to discover the reasons why large companies have decided to work with open source solutions in order to meet high corporate demands. Miquel Gómez (Global Training Manager of Glovo), Margarita González del Hierro (Head Of Training of Genially) and Juan José Prieto (Director of Training and Development of Direct Sales of Grupo Planeta) participated in the online presentation. Here are some of the aspects revealed in the webinar that detail why flexibility in elearning platforms is vital in this new reality:
Maximum profitability
The concept of “open source” has opened a new field of vision in the technological world. One of them is that of economic profitability: investing a significant amount of money in expensive systems leads to subtracting investment in other departments of the platform development area, such as content management and development, gamification strategies, training marketing, coaching, etc..
2. Autonomy for the client
The reality is that customers are increasingly moving towards maximum autonomy in managing their platform. But not only that, but the autonomy to decide if you want to host the technology in your infrastructure, how to integrate with different databases, which provider to work with without it being a problem. Total autonomy and freedom of development is a key aspect when responding to the new needs of organizations.
3. Adaptability to different corporate hierarchies
There is a wide variety of types of corporate organization charts. Unlike the classic hierarchical scheme, there are variants, such as the matrix scheme, in which the workflow is based on two different aspects: functions and projects. Horizontal, rather than vertical, organization is what prevails in a company, Grupo Planeta, whose corporate nature required the following a highly versatile platform such as Totara Learn to adapt to your position hierarchies, and thus optimally train the employees of your direct sales channel. “Working on a matrix basis is very difficult,” Juan José Prieto, Grupo Planeta’s Director of Training and Development of Direct Sales, told us in the webinar. “The work we did together between Actua Solutions, our systems department and our training department was hand in hand. The important thing was flexibility, and that the solution ends up adapting to your reality.”. After a year of implementing its blended learning proposal with the operational platform, Grupo Planeta has generated a total of 1,000 enrollments and 55,000 hours of training.
4. Organic integration between ecosystems
The integration of training ecosystems is key in these times. Integrating the LMS with other systems such as CRMS, Zoom, gamification or Analytics is an important axis when it comes to optimizing the performance and transversality of a technological proposal.
5. Customization of functionalities
A proprietary platform usually realizes the products by presenting an integrated set of fixed functionalities. The problem lies in presenting a question: what if I need to develop a specific functionality? At that point that capability will not be available unless the technology owner provides the code directly to the developer. There are many unknowns and many limitations, which find a direct solution in an “open source” language solution.
6. Optimal graphic adaptation of the LMS
One of the conflicts in static solutions lies in their lack of versatility in visual terms. Genially found maximum customization when working with a platform like Moodle together with Actua Solutions. “There was a lot of effort to make everything look the way we want it to“Margarita González, Head Manager of the Cordoba-based company, explains. “The project included an important part of aesthetic customization.“This was evident in the redesign of every little graphic detail of Genially Academy, its end-customer oriented training platform.
7. Customized reporting
Reporting, or the generation of reports, is a very important point when a company has to share data with partners or collaborating companies. Aware that this idea could not be achieved with their previous proprietary training platform, Glovo managed to meet their reporting requirements,
by implementing Totara Learn together with Actua Solutions.
. “In the previous platform we worked with, we had problems in reporting, especially regarding audiences. We account not only for the customer as such, but also for the partner and the delivery person.“Miquel Gómez, Glovo’s Global Training Manager, confesses. “The previous platform did not allow us to assign specific courses to those people who provided service to the customers we have“. Also his work with Actua Solutions allowed the company to obtain the desired branding on the training platform.
