What is our primary use case?
I'm a consultant. I work across organizations, and I don't work in the education sphere. I work more in the corporate sphere. Its number one use case is compliance, and the second one is capability to build out learning pathways for various organizations based on what they require and make staff more skilled and capable.
I work with 15 different businesses that are using Litmos, and they've all got slightly different problems to solve by using this solution. For some, the business focus is more on compliance improvement. So, they are using it to streamline compliance, make compliance consistent across an organization, or implement an induction pathway for their organization to make it consistent across the organization. So, they are getting the same branding, the same look and feel, and the same language. I've worked with one organization on that.
A learning management system can solve many more business problems, such as offering training when a person needs it, instead of always scheduling it. Having an e-learning database is great. It really depends on your needs. Another solution that companies may be looking at is being able to integrate Litmos with another system. A lot of times, if your learning management system is within another system, it's not necessarily as developed as Litmos because it's a learning management system platform of its own.
E-commerce is another area. It's a feature of the system. I have a few organizations wanting to sell courses. Selling your courses to a platform like this is also good.
In terms of deployment, it's just the SaaS version. To the best of my understanding, they only offer a SaaS version.
How has it helped my organization?
In Australia, we have rigid compliance requirements across different segments of the workforce. Litmos has features and capabilities to ensure that staff are compliant with any requirements that we have. On top of that, in Australia and New Zealand, Litmos offers a suite of compliance courses that are legislatively backed. If any legislation changes, those courses are updated by Litmos in line with the legislative requirements.
What is most valuable?
It's a very user-friendly product from the front end. From a learner perspective, you know what courses you need to do. They're on your dashboard if they're being pushed to you, or you can take courses if your organization has created courses in the content library. If you've purchased the massive content library that Litmos sells, you can have access to a content library and just take them. You should be able to go to the content library and take those courses quite easily.
From a learning management system admin perspective, it has a user-friendly interface, but the functionality is deep. So, you can automate people in and out of courses. It lowers the general admin of an LMS admin so that I can focus more on value-adding things for the organization I'm working with.
In terms of feature set, in this day and age, I expect every learning management system to have an open or accessible API, and Litmos definitely offers that. Being able to integrate Litmos with other payroll systems or HRIS systems is definitely a big feature.
It supports badges, gamification, and automation. From a large organization perspective, Litmos offers the functionality of being able to modify the user interface. For example, if I've got different departments that want different user interfaces, we can do that through the brand functionality. We can modify user interfaces to meet the cohort or the group of people that we are aiming at.
It has an inbuilt content author that in terms of its functionality is high and continually being developed. Litmos development path or roadmap is the other thing I really value. They roll out new features quarterly, which is quite consistent. It means that if a feature is going to get updated, it often gets updated quarterly. The content author, as an example, has been around for probably 12 to 18 months, but it already has had three or four new elements added to it. The platform is continuing to improve.
What needs improvement?
Their reporting side of things could be better. The reporting dashboard or user interface reporting dashboard is not as intuitive as it potentially could be, but the problem with that is that every organization is going to want something slightly different. So, it's hard, but it is an area where it could improve. To do that, they would need to make some humongous improvements around being able to build your own dashboard within the system, which is pretty huge.
One feature that a few of my clients have been requesting is CPD. We should be able to capture CPD points for users within the system to be able to report on those.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using Litmos for 10+ Years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's very reliable. In the 7 to 10 years that I've been using it, there are only three outages that I can remember with distinction.
Its performance is good. They're constantly monitoring the system to ensure that it's performing.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's very scalable. It's easy to scale. It's suitable for small, medium, and large companies.
How are customer service and support?
I'm in regular contact with their technical support. In general, the technical support is good, and probably the best thing about the technical support is that they are always trying to be helpful. Something that the technical support could potentially improve on is just clearer communication. A lot of the technical support is offered via a support platform, which is good., but sometimes, communication just in words is difficult. An improvement in written communication would be a small suggestion.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I've worked with a few different products over the years. I've used LearnPress, which is a WordPress-based LMS. I've used Docebo and I've used WorldLearn. I've also tested numerous other learning materials and different platforms. The number one difference that I see when comparing Litmos against other non-open source products, such as Docebo, is in terms of administration. I found the administration side of Litmos a lot simpler. It's simple but deep. It still has a lot of the same features, but it's just a little bit easier to navigate. In comparison with the open-source products, I've found the readiness of support a lot more helpful.
How was the initial setup?
It depends on a business' preparedness. If a business is prepared, it's very simple. If a business is complex or not prepared, it may take a little bit longer to implement.
The number of people required also depends on the business. It can range from one person to a team of people, depending on the business requirements. If it's a small business, it can be deployed by one person.
The time of deployment also varies. If it's a straightforward and simple deployment where you want to roll out a content library to your users where they can take it off the shelf, you can have it done in a couple of hours. If you're setting it up for an organization with more complex requirements around compliance or learning pathways or there are some complexities in the system, with very unique branding and modifications, the rollout is going to take longer.
In terms of maintenance, it's a SaaS product. So, there is no maintenance. All updates are pushed from Litmos. In today's world, with SaaS products, everybody has had to learn to move with the way the companies that are offering the products are going. Sometimes we make modifications on our end and we need to be able to change fairly quickly when the product changes. So, SaaS products have brought a different problematic scenario into updates to systems.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I don't know what the pricing model is at this point in time. I'm a consultant. The organizations that have purchased Litmos engage me to help them implement it, or Litmos engage me to be their external learning management system administrator. So, I don't see the rates, but based on the general comments that I've heard, it seems cost-effective and competitive with its competitors.
What other advice do I have?
My advice would be:
- Know what you want to achieve.
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Make sure your data is clean. If you don't know what that means, you really need to find out.
- Know who your groups of people are.
- Know whether you want to integrate with other systems.
- Know whether your course data and course content are ready to be moved to Litmos.
I'd rate Litmos a 9 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.