The Best Enterprise Learning Management Systems (LMS) & Key Features

As companies grow and expand, so do their operational and strategic challenges. When you have more staff, more customers, and more resources, you need to approach everything from marketing to finance in new ways. 

Learning and development is no different. You have new and increasingly complex training needs, and your legacy learning tools just can’t cut it. It’s time for a step up. 

The only effective and efficient way to ship training content at scale is with an enterprise learning management system (LMS). 

In this article, we'll explore the best tools on the market, the must-have features for your enterprise LMS, and share an RFP template that will make the final choice simple.

What is an enterprise learning management system?

An enterprise learning management system gives your large and diverse team the information and training they need, when they need it. Designed specifically for and suited to enterprise-level companies, the right LMS centralizes learning content and materials, streamlines (even automates) learning paths, and increases individual autonomy while keeping the L&D experts in control of the process.

Today, a modern and effective LMS solution will empower your team as you look to move the needle on those crucial metrics and prove impact to your stakeholders. An enterprise LMS even empowers your employees’ learning all around the globe, with highly accessible features like mobile learning. It works just as well in-person or asynchronously, and lets learners complete actions at the best time for them. 

What separates enterprise LMS tools from the rest?

We’ll look at the specific features to prioritize shortly, and you can scroll down now to see our top tool suggestions. But there are few characteristics of enterprise-worthy LMS systems that don’t apply to every solution. 

• They’re all-in-one (or close enough). Enterprise companies often turn into “graveyards of failed technology,” with redundant legacy systems clinging on for no good reason. In L&D, we often see separate LMS and LXPs, content libraries, compliance training tools, sales enablement, and more. The whole never really adds up to the sum of the parts. A good enterprise LMS delivers all of this, so you can leave the graveyard behind. 
• They integrate seamlessly. You also have non-LMS software that the company runs on, from ERPs and HR tools to business intelligence and sales CRMs. Employees need to know how to use them well, which means they must be part of your learning strategy. An enterprise LMS is built to fit into an enterprise software suite.  
• They deliver value fast. One big misconception around large companies is that everything must be slow, and new tools will take six months minimum to implement. Your LMS should deliver value right away, even as you take time to build the custom courses and tailored trainings you’ll eventually launch. 
• They’re built to scale. Whether your training is for five people or 5,000 shouldn’t make a difference. The right process automation means that any number of learners can engage at once, each receiving the dynamic support and feedback they need. Without ballooning your L&D team.
• They’re easy to use. We sometimes expect enterprise software to be complex in nature. But the only way these tools can have impact at scale is to be simple, intuitive, and enjoyable for users.
• They take security seriously. This is a key concern for enterprise IT teams. Your LMS needs to meet high security standards and protect user and company data. (Look for ISO 27001 certificates and ask about GDPR compliance.)

If you’re looking to manage your large team successfully, you need an enterprise LMS that can grow alongside your company, provide insights into your learners’ performance, and help foster a collaborative learning experience. We’ll see some excellent examples shortly. 

7 key features to look for in an enterprise LMS solution

1. Scalability to keep up with future growth

If your LMS cannot support a fast-growing workforce, you’ll likely hit a wall that limits your ability to deploy impactful employee training programs. For example, if your LMS only allows 100 users but you have 1,000 learners, your team members will have to share accounts — or some will miss out. Either way, your learning solution can’t accurately track individual employee engagement or performance.

The right LMS will have…

• Cloud-based, online-first learning. Any team member can connect from anywhere. Learners can take their required courses wherever suits them, and managers or trainers can provide feedback (and even build new courses) remotely. 
• No hard limits on users. 
• Team and management structure that mirrors your company’s.
• Support in the countries and languages where your teams live.

As a cloud-based comprehensive learning platform, 360Learning is able to scale alongside your company’s L&D needs. See how it works with a custom demo.

2. AI-powered tools to grow the skills you need

Corporate learning was previously reliant on slow, manual work by L&D pros. But modern automation and AI-powered tools empower you and your team to work effectively and at pace.

We can now streamline and even fully automate tasks like skills mapping, authoring, assessments, feedback and follow ups, and company-wide analysis. From speeding up the content creation process and ramping up course enrollment, to auto-tagging and deeper analytics and reporting, AI-powered functionality is now necessary for the modern enterprise.

This transforms the L&D professional from administrator and facilitator to a more strategic, value-adding leader.

The right LMS will have…

• AI-powered content creation to ramp up your course authoring processes to design engaging learning content in minutes.
• Automated enrollment prompts, reminders, and follow ups with learners.
• AI-enhanced reporting.

3. Reporting and analytics features to track performance at scale

Reporting and analytics help you understand how well your eLearning training programs are performing and whether they’re ultimately working. When you’re tracking dozens of training programs and hundreds (or thousands) of learners, good analytics are critical. 

In a small company, you might skate by without reporting for a brief period through casual check-ins and conversations at the water cooler. But in an enterprise setting, you have far too many learners to gauge learner sentiment or performance without a real process in place. And just as crucially, you’re expected to show real ROI from enterprise-level learning programs.

Your training software should deliver in-depth and regularly updated reporting that helps you develop the best L&D programs possible. Here's one example of how we manage reporting in 360Learning:

An enterprise LMS must give you a bird's eye view of essential statistics. Without reporting and analytics from your LMS, you’ll fail to understand whether your training and efforts to reskill and upskill are working.

The right LMS will have ...

• Overview stats like course completion rates, learner progress, participant satisfaction, average course rating, and more.
• Analytics that show course performance over time, and skills attainment at the team and company level.
• Industry benchmarks to measure your organization’s performance.

4. Gamification capabilities to boost learner engagement

Gamification increases eLearning engagement by giving participants some kind of reward for completing the training. This is especially helpful at large companies, where employees can become complacent, tune out, or simply get lost in the shuffle.

Online courses and training can feel like a slog for some learners. Too many L&D programs simply buy a large content library and hope that employees will motivate themselves. Gamification adds a more tangible goal to work toward in the form of a badge, achievement, or leaderboard spot.

And gamification delivers tangible results, too. Studies show that gamification increases the quality of work and the participation rate of learners. Here's how we incorporate gamification into training at 360Learning:

The right LMS will have ...

• Achievements that act as a testament to your team’s hard work and give them something tangible to unlock. Find an LMS that lets you set achievements for courses, like first completion, highest score, and so on.
• Leaderboards that allow your team to compete for the top spot on a particular course. 
• Challenge modes. A challenge mode can act as a hard difficulty, allowing your team to try completing a course as quickly and accurately as possible—with only one attempt.

Related: 6 Ideas for How L&D Teams Can Use Genially for Interactive Learning

5. Collaborative authoring support to draw from employee expertise

Collaborative authoring lets you involve your entire company in course authorship, speeding up the online training creation process. Without collaborative authoring support, the onus of creating courses falls on you and the rest of the L&D team. 

At best, this means you’re spending more time than you should on course creation. At worst, you’re creating courses on niche topics that miss the mark. As your team grows, it will become more and more likely that you have experts on specific topics all over the organization.

Collaborative authoring support democratizes the learning process, giving your entire company the opportunity to take part in the creation of training. This takes some of the work of meeting training needs off your plate, gives others a chance to share knowledge, and can even result in a more learning-oriented environment.

Here's an example from 360Learning:

The right LMS will have...

• Collaborative authoring tools so you can combine your efforts and tag team content with co-authors.
• The ability to grant authorship to team members on a course-by-course basis. 
• A chat, comment, or forum section so you can communicate with co-authors to ensure everyone’s on the same page.
• (Bonus) eCommerce integrations so that you can consider selling your compliance training content if it is proven effective and is applicable across your industry, such as HIPPA in healthcare.

6. Skills management for a future-proof workforce

Keep a sharp eye on the skills market to ensure your company has access to the right skills to react to markets as they change. A recent study from Deloitte found that many leading organizations are now applying skills-based models and shifting away from the traditional model based on the job role. 

As organizations start redefining themselves as skills-based organizations, the right enterprise LMS systems will need to include skills management features.

These features empower you and your team to elevate your upskilling and reskilling training programs as you help learners develop the skills they need internally, boosting retention and lowering the need to hire externally to fill skills gaps within the company. 

The right LMS will have …

• The ability to map learners’ skills through career path modeling and tailored learning paths, so you can pinpoint the skills employees need to develop.
• The capability to identify the skills that employees already possess and those skills gaps within your business that you need to close to stay competitive. 
• A detailed skills inventory and AI-powered skills ontology. 
• Skills auto-tagging, and the ability for employees to assess the accuracy and relevance of those skills.

Across large corporate learning programs, these AI-powered skills management features are a must-have for an enterprise LMS.

7. Built-in authoring tools provide the all-in-one LMS package

Authoring tools are required for publishing courses in a format that works with your LMS. You’re likely to publish more and more courses as your company’s learning needs grow, making authoring increasingly important. 

And you’re less likely to rely solely on ready-built content libraries that don’t speak specifically to your business and needs. 

Integrating an authoring tool with a compatible course format for your LMS can be a challenge. If you switch LMS platforms, you’re left to choose from platforms with integrations that accept your authoring tool’s file outputs.

Which is why an enterprise LMS should have high quality authoring tools built in. These let you publish content in a format natively supported by the LMS. And your subject-matter experts only need to learn one tool. 

Built-in authoring also saves you the added cost and time of securing and paying for a third-party authoring tool.

The right LMS will have ...

• Built-in authoring tools. Beyond making it easy to quickly publish courses, these tools also give you additional insights into your course performance.

For example, 360Learning’s authoring tool being built-in not only makes publishing easier, it also allows you to check course performance via built-in analytics and reporting.

6 top enterprise learning management systems

The following platforms meet all or most of the above criteria described as possible. They combine LMS, LXP, course library and authoring capabilities. They’re also remote-friendly, and for the most part easy to use. 

Give real consideration to the core values and learning philosophies espoused by each. If the features and functions don’t differentiate one from the others, their driving values hopefully will. 

1. 360Learning

360Learning is an LMS with LXP, Academies, and AI-enhanced authoring built in. It prioritizes skills-based collaborative learning, and puts your in-house subject-matter experts in the best position to succeed. 

Perhaps most importantly, it’s easy to use for L&D pros and learners, and ensures that everybody can follow the ideal learning path no matter where they are in the journey. Its AI and collaborative learning features turn your whole team into L&D contributors, so you can upskill quickly and continuously from within. 

360Learning lets enterprises deliver tailored employee training, as well as strategic external training, like customer onboarding and support, and partner enablement. Its robust integrations with 50+ systems let you connect all your business systems and streamline workflows, while eliminating manual double-data entry.

Known for: 

• Fast, AI-powered course authoring
• Automated skills mapping, audits, and analyses
• Security and compliance training led by subject-matter experts
• Branded academies to own your training material and develop proprietary skills
• Scalable structure which easily delivers learning to teams of any size
• Everything you need for smart, strategic L&D programs

See pricing, or request a demo here:

2. TalentLMS

TalentLMS has a user-friendly, straightforward interface that makes it simple for both instructors and learners to navigate. A good fit for large organizations, this learning management system offers ease of use and customizable options, catering to businesses with different levels of technical skill. 

TalentLMS includes a range of tools for tracking learner progress and employee performance, managing courses, and adding gamification elements. It also supports multiple languages and allows the upload of SCORM, xAPI, or cmi5 files.

Additionally, it provides seamless eCommerce integration, which is a bonus if you’d like to monetize courses. You’ll find further integrations with key HRIS, CRM, and business communication tools. 

Known for: 

• Solid out-of-the-box features which get you up and running quickly
• Good reporting with the possibility to customize where needed
• Good gamification features that keep learning interesting
• The ability to organize content by groups, branches, and categories
• Agreeable pricing tiers

See TalentLMS pricing.

3. LearnUpon LMS

LearnUpon is an LMS designed to streamline and centralize organizational training, making it easier to manage, deliver, and monitor learning. Ideal for growing organizations, it’s a good option to implement while your organization is small and let it grow with you. 

The platform is particularly effective for and primarily suited to customer education and education. It includes reporting tools to evaluate learner progress, built-in assessment features, and powerful integrations to enhance course enrollment. The logic is easy to understand, and aligning it with your organizational structure is straightforward. 

LearnUpon uses an interactive course authoring tool to create content throughout the learning journey, such as microlearning, modules, or learning paths. It also supports SCORM and xAPI files, videos, and can incorporate blended learning methods.

Known for: 

• Responsive support and an effort to improve based on feedback from clients
• Simply UX with a logical structure and flow
• Good integrations for core business tools like SSO, Teams, Slack, and Zoom
• Fast setup and very helpful onboarding resources

See LearnUpon pricing. 

4. Learn365

If you’re one of the many enterprise businesses using the Microsoft Office suite of tools, you may find Learn365 intriguing. Zensai Learn365 is a learning platform integrated with Microsoft 365 and Teams, designed to seamlessly embed learning into daily work activities.

With Learn365, you can automate the management of training, ensuring employees stay up-to-date with essential health and safety, corporate, legal, policy, and other corporate content.

Additionally, monitoring completion rates is simple with features like Read and Understood confirmations, automated SOP publishing, and certificate management tools.

Known for: 

• Very strong integrations with the Microsoft 365 and Teams
• Good level of customization
• Ready-to-use course templates
• Strong security, and the ability to keep user data within existing tools

See Learn365 pricing.

5. Litmos

Litmos is a cloud-based LMS offering a user-friendly platform for professional learning and development. Ideal for corporate training and courses, Litmos provides extensive content libraries, workflow integrations, and comprehensive support services. 

It’s known for its ease of use, customizable branding, mobile learning tools, and straightforward integrations with your existing systems. One particular value for enterprises: if you have multiple entities within the larger organization, you can set them up separately but still manage all from one place. 

Litmos also prioritizes security with robust measures, including a secure hardware firewall to protect user data. The LMS integrates seamlessly with CRM tools, offering over 50 connectors and a powerful API.

Customers include major enterprises like IBM, YouTube, Ford, Girl Scouts, and ADP.

Known for: 

• Good mobile learning tools and works on all major platforms
• Ability to create course streams and hide training programs from certain roles and teams
• Responsive, high-quality customer support
• Robust reporting capabilities
• Capability to create and manage sub-entities within a larger corporation

See Litmos pricing.

6. iSpring Learn

iSpring Learn is a PowerPoint add-on that provides an all-in-one solution for creating, managing, delivering, and tracking eLearning. For organizations seeking a user-friendly platform to enhance performance and optimize employee training — and are already using PowerPoint — iSpring Learn is a strong choice.

iSpring Learn users can also purchase the iSpring Suite authoring tool, which enables rapid content development, including quizzes and interactive elements, all while being SCORM compliant.

The platform lets you integrate PDFs, SCORM materials, and instructor-led sessions, helping you meet compliance standards and other important business training needs.

Known for: 

• Very fast setup, with users reporting the ability to use features within minutes
• Highly intuitive and simple interface, although more limited in terms of customization
• Fun, interactive quizzes
• Ability to create learning tracks to reflect users’ needs

See iSpring Learn pricing.

Choose the best LMS solution for your enterprise

Securing an enterprise LMS with all the features above sets you up for training success. And because not all learning management systems are created equally, you can’t take this decision lightly. 

The best tools for enterprise businesses are: 

• Scalable, to deliver learning to a growing workforce without added effort
• Customizable, to suit your particular organization and its complex needs
• Flexible, to deliver learning in a range of different styles, locations, and workflows
• Collaborative, so that everyone can contribute to building a learning organization

The tools in the list above tick all of these boxes to varying degrees. But if we had to recommend you dive deeper into one, it’d be 360Learning. 

360Learning offers a truly complete collaborative learning experience featuring collaborating authoring, globalization capabilities, in-depth reporting and analytics, a robust feedback system, and now, AI-powered skills management.

For more, download our guide to choosing the right LMS for you enterprise here: