In our TalentLMS review we found an easy to use corporate LMS solution – all the features you should need, but without the cost and complexity of some enterprise-level products.
I hear a lot about TalentLMS, and it seems to have found a strong position in the market, so I was keen to learn more about it.
TalentLMS is from Epignosis – a company that dates back to 2012 and that also provides eFront as its enterprise solution. TalentLMS is a more mid corporate internal training orientated product with some good functionality to sell courses as well. Epignosis (for the record) also offers a Micro and Mobile learning product called TalentCards.
With the mid corporate market slated to grow strongly for LMS, I took a look at TalentLMS with a great deal of interest.
Designed for Ease of Use
The underlying principles of TalentLMS appear to be ease of use in terms of setting up and getting going, but also ease of customisation.
In too many cases with LMS, this is an oxymoron – as customisation capabilities often negate ease of set up, but TalentLMS have clearly put a lot of thought into making both happen convincingly. Helpfully, there is a huge amount of contextual support built into this system, which is good to see.
For mid-corporates, this is a powerful solution with direct integrations built in to SalesForce, WordPress and Shopify that again makes life easy to get going without costly configuration.
Webinar integration is equally well thought through.
Security and Single Sign On
TalentLMS has a neat trick for security as well, allowing custom URLs to be used by the client. They have simplified the SSL activation process by integrating with Let’s Encrypt to offer a free SSL certificate for custom domains. Another headache removed.
Naturally, SSO (Single Sign On) is allowed for and TalentLMS has a published API as well that is robust.
Staying with set-up and configuration, the LMS is reasonably easy to customise using colours, CSS and Javascript and XML…… But if you do not feel able to do this, TalentLMS offers free customer support on their platform, (but not for learners, please note) and of course do check fair use policies etc…
So a no-worries set up that is slick and speedy, including integrations, is quite possible with TalentLMS and that is a great USP.
TalentLMS has all the features one would expect in this segment of the market and one or two really interesting extras as well.
Setting up users is good and with lots of options allowed for on password management as well as federated sign up with Google, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Learners can share back learning activities to Social Media if so desired and allowed for.
Multi-tenancy or in-organisational departmental structures are catered for – TalentLMS refers to this as “Branches”.
For organisations using TalentLMS to sell courses (to channel partners, resellers or franchisees for example) e-commerce is well catered for and there is an invoicing feature as well, which is nice and a very useful feature not usually found in this market segment of LMS.
Licences can be managed and there is a “user has no e-mail address” feature/solution provided. I particularly like the license management feature that can be actively managed, making the uncertainty of how many people will take the course much less of a concern. In this TalentLMS offers very good and transparent solution that is good value for money. Learner archiving is treated very well and fairly.
Workflows and schedules are a very strong feature of the product, but to get the best you do get upsold to the Plus Plan where the learning pathway feature is very good indeed. Certificate reminders and re-assign is good.
Roles and permissions are solid and easy to use.
Course Content Creator within the LMS
Content upload and content creation is well catered for and the ability to curate content from other resources is provided.
The “Fetch” from YouTube is slick and you can also create your own videos using the self – record feature.
TalentLMS also allows for presentations to be converted to video as well and video delivery and tracking using the timer feature is very good and useful xAPI statements can be created as well. (For the recor,d TalentLMS supports SCORM 1.2 as well as CMi5 and xAPI as noted).
iFrame embedding is also possible so a website can be fully integrated as part of the course quickly and easily.
Assessment is managed well and a photo ID option is provided for. I would like to see TalentLMS develop a few more assessment options (Hot Spots would be good). I was impressed by the use of text analysis for free text answers and the ability to provide instructor moderated support to courses as well.
Blended learning can be managed effectively and easily in TalentLMS. Reporting is good and can link to the test results directly which is a nice feature. Setting up of reports and scheduling them is also very good and useful.
In Summary:
TalentLMS delivers a smooth and seamless integrated learning experience that appears to have been built with video in mind from the outset, and therefore is aligned to the modern learner, giving great balance to the product.
TalentLMS has really got its offer pretty much on target for the mid-corporate LMS market – enough features for most organisations without making its solution overly complex, which is an excellent attribute in my opinion.
Speed and ease of set up with free support is a powerful incentive for organisations to choose TalentLMS, given it comes with a robust API that allows for sophisticated integrations (several out of the box), which is increasingly important in my view.
For the organisation, TalentLMS also offers transparency in commercially predictable set up, support and license management costs, along with enough features for the mid corporate organisations that needs to balance costs carefully – see their pricing here.
Can we call this the Goldilocks LMS for the mid corporate market: not too hot and feature complex, not too cold and feature thin?……. probably so.
However, what we can definitely say is that TalentLMS is a learning management system that can deliver integrated learning experiences very effectively.
Learn more about this excellent learning platform on the TalentLMS website where you can take a tour of the product and create an account.
