Businesses that want to develop their learning and development strategies need to invest in a professional learning management system (LMS) and consider their LMS integration requirements.
These learning tools help companies streamline their employee onboarding and training processes, and also enable sales teams to close more deals.
They can also guide customers on how to use the company’s products and services, provide compliance training, and automate other e-learning needs.
Yet, no matter how robust these LMS platforms are, they can’t always do everything. What’s more, they need to seamlessly connect with the company’s existing tech stack.
This is where LMS integrations come into play.
What is an LMS integration?
An LMS integration connects your LMS with other software tools as part of the company’s existing tech stack.
These connections between tools need to be seamless to create a unified learning environment and a good user experience.
They also allow for the exchange of information and functionalities between the two systems, optimizing business operations, streamlining communication and admin tasks, and aiding better overall decision-making.
They break up data silos between different departments and their respective software solutions, helping the entire organization work more cohesively as a unified team.
With an LMS-CRM integration, for example, companies can increase their sales numbers by providing both sales and customer training.
Such a customer relationship management (CRM) integration can also empower sales teams to engage better with clients, as well as manage and analyze customer data from a centralized location.
Simply put, LMS integrations with the organization’s tech stack can greatly enhance its digital ecosystem, especially if the aim is to develop a learning-centric company culture.
We should also make a clear distinction between an API and an integration.
What is the difference between an API and an integration?
The main difference between an LMS integration and an application programming interface (API) lies in how the bridge between multiple software systems is made.
- An API represents a set of standards and protocols that allow two or more applications to exchange data and perform certain tasks between themselves.
- An integration, on the other hand, means that specific lines of code were written in the system itself as it was being built, to work together with another application.
At the end of the day, an API is still an integration since it serves the same purpose—to facilitate data exchange between two or more systems. It just goes about it in a slightly different way.
What are the benefits of LMS integrations?
Whether we’re talking about APIs or custom integrations, companies can expect to see several benefits when connecting third-party applications with their LMS.
Benefit #1: Centralized access
LMS integrations make it possible for users to access all online training and e-learning resources from a centralized location.
- This includes everything from online courses, e-learning content, and training programs, webinar and video conferencing, content authoring, learning-data reporting and analytics, and more.
- Depending on the LMS, learners, admins, instructors, and other stakeholders can access the entire suite of integrated tools via a single sign-on (SSO) integration.
- They can gain access to everything with the same login credentials for authentication, greatly reducing the time and effort spent remembering and reentering multiple passwords.
- This not only increases the user experience with the learning platform but can also increase the entire system’s security.
Benefit #2: Enhanced data integrations and analytics
LMS integrations can break isolated departmental data silos and bring that information together under the same roof.
- LMS integrations can facilitate big data analytics and custom reporting for better and more informed decision-making.
- Instructors and administrators can, for example, collect valuable information on key e-learning metrics such as learner progress and engagement, course-completion rates, or improved productivity to identify any trouble areas and make improvements.
Benefit #3: Personalized learning
Some of the best LMS solutions out there come equipped with certain features and functionalities that help provide better learning experiences.
- When paired with certain LMS integrations, these training platforms can personalize the e-learning experience to suit each individual user’s job post, experience, skill level, and preferred method of learning.
- For example, if you integrate your LMS with user-data analytics tools, you can keep track of user performance and behaviors to design adaptive learning courses based on custom-built learning paths.
- Other integrations use AI and can help gather real-time learner feedback, and offer custom recommendations and contextual support for more engaging and personalized learning experiences.
Benefit #4: Improved compliance
An LMS integrated with an HR system brings numerous benefits to the table.
- Aside from automating many time-consuming tasks and the need for employee-data duplication across both platforms, it can also help with industry regulatory compliance.
- The integrated system can ensure that all employees are up to date with their compliance training by automatically tracking their progress and course-completion rates.
- These systems can also streamline the certification process, as well as send out notifications for refresher training or recertifications.
- This list of benefits is by no means exhaustive as others could arise depending on the type of LMS integration involved.
Types of LMS integrations
Third-party integrations come in various forms depending on each individual LMS’s features.
They help to streamline, optimize, and automate many e-learning and training processes, either supplementing the LMS’s capabilities or enhancing its existing ones.
Most training platform providers will look to make their system as comprehensive as possible through built-in functionalities while augmenting the tool’s capabilities via integrations.
That said, here’s a list of different types of LMS integrations.
- Content management integrations: As their name suggests, these third-party integrations make it easier for administrators and instructors to curate, access, share, and publish e-learning content.
- They can also automate many administrative tasks and workflows or synchronize content and user data between platforms.
- Examples of such integrations include Google Drive, Microsoft SharePoint, Dropbox, and OneDrive.
- E-learning content authoring: LMS can integrate with a variety of content-authoring tools. While many LMSs come equipped with some built-in content creation capabilities, the features are often far from comprehensive.
- Authoring applications can include video- and audio-editing features, drag-and-drop templates, screen recording, gamification elements, and more.
Popular examples include platforms like Elucidat, Camtasia, or Lectora.
- Authoring applications can include video- and audio-editing features, drag-and-drop templates, screen recording, gamification elements, and more.
- Identity and SSO integrations: As we mentioned previously, single sign-on (SSO) integrations allow users to use a single set of credentials to access all integrated platforms.
- Learners and admins don’t need to have different passwords for each tool, making the entire process a lot more easy and user-friendly.
- Common LMS-SSO integrations are Google Workspace, OKTA, SAML 2.0, as well as social media platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn.
- Video conferencing and webinar integrations: These tools allow for both individual and group learning and enhance the collaboration potential of the LMS.
- This type of integration can also help admins by automating time-consuming tasks like learner enrollments or training module scheduling from a single place.
- Examples of video conferencing and webinar tools include Zoom, Adobe Connect, GoToMeeting, GoToTraining, GoToWebinar, or Microsoft Teams.
- Payment and e-commerce integrations: These are particularly useful LMS integrations as they allow you to sell any e-learning course you may have created.
- This provides an additional revenue stream and you can accept credit card payments straight through your LMS.
- Some of the most popular payment and e-commerce platforms that you can integrate your LMS with are PayPal, Shopify, Adyen, or Authorize.Net.
- Data analytics and reporting: These integrations allow companies to get a bird’s-eye view over their entire learning and development strategy.
- These tools can gather and analyze information from all across the organization and generate custom reports to help with better decision-making down the line.
- Among the biggest names in this sector are Google Analytics, MySQL, IBM Digital Analytics, and Snowflake.
We’ve also talked about CRM and HR and human capital management (HCM) integrations.
There are also other types, like customer experience, sales enablement, marketing, social media, or team productivity LMS integrations.
With an LMS like Docebo, you can integrate with all of these platforms and more. In fact, through Docebo Connect, you have access to over 400 third-party tools in a wide variety of fields.
LMS integration examples
See ten powerful tools and LMS integrations, and how they can work together with an LMS to improve your e-learning processes.
1. Zoom
Zoom is the world-renowned video conferencing and communications tool. When you integrate Zoom with an LMS, you can facilitate online and instructor-led training, webinars, and workshops.
You can also set up events and training sessions directly from the LMS user interface.
Depending on the LMS and its functionalities, you can also use the Zoom integration to automatically track attendance, record training sessions, set reminders, and more.
2. Google Workspace
By integrating Google Workspace (formerly G-suite) with your LMS, you can provide all employees, customers, partners, and other users with a single point of access.
They’ll no longer have to maintain separate login credentials. They can quickly and easily access their learning materials through their Google Workspace integration.
3. Slack
Slack is among the best collaboration tools in the world. It helps teams easily share, communicate, and work from anywhere around the world.
When it comes to a direct LMS-to-Slack integration, you can look forward to things like notifications whenever new events are taking place in the LMS.
These can include things like new courses, course updates, webinar sessions, Q&As, quizzes, social learning interactions, and more.
You can also automate processes in your LMS by building workflows with built-in Slack interactions.
4. Microsoft Teams
A Microsoft Teams integration with an LMS will facilitate online instructor-led training through the Teams corporate platform.
You’ll be able to set up training events and e-learning sessions directly in the LMS and run the learning program from your primary video-conferencing tool.
Trainers and administrators will also be able to access all the LMS’s functions such as content catalog, assessments, survey, reporting, etc., directly from the MS Teams interface. Learners can also receive notifications and reminders and can connect to the LMS through a single sign-on feature.
5. LinkedIn
A LinkedIn integration makes it possible for learners to create their LMS profiles by using their existing LinkedIn accounts and user data.
This is another example of a single sign-on connection where users don’t need to remember a different set of credentials to access their learning content whenever they need to.
In addition, you can access LinkedIn Learning’s extensive course library, making its content available through an LMS as off-the-shelf courses.
6. Shopify
With a Shopify-LMS integration, companies can sell their online e-learning and training courses using Shopify’s storefront.
This helps open up a new revenue stream for organizations, encouraging them to constantly update and create engaging training course materials for employee onboarding, upskilling and reskilling, compliance training, sales enablement, and more.
7. Hubspot
HubSpot is a popular CRM tool for all-in-one client engagement and activity tracking, and providing better overall customer experiences.
By integrating HubSpot with an LMS, companies can create automated customer onboarding and training workflows such as creating LMS profiles for new HubSpot contacts.
Businesses can also profit from this integration by personalizing learning experiences, synchronizing user data between platforms, and generating custom reports based on more comprehensive data analytics.
8. Zendesk
Zendesk is a help-desk management system to help customer service reps keep track of customer queries and tickets. It provides customizable tools for building customer service portals, online communities, and on-demand knowledge bases. There are also are several alternatives on the market in case Zendesk isn’t an ideal system to integrate with your LMS.
We’ve seen that an Zendesk-LMS integration is a very popular option that can help streamline customer service processes by automatically enrolling clients into training courses based on their interactions with the support team.
Similarly, companies can also enroll sales reps in relevant e-learning customer service courses based on their activity on the Zendesk platform.
Both these actions help smooth out and optimize the customer service process, and also provide customer training and service rep training for the best possible experience.
9. Salesforce
Salesforce is a world-class CRM tool that enables sales and marketing teams to optimize their processes and keep better track of potential leads and clients.
An LMS-Salesforce integration helps create automated workflows between the two systems. For example, companies can use LMS learner registrations to create Salesforce contacts or use the contacts to create learner accounts.
Either way, organizations will be able to quickly and effectively provide just-in-time training and improve the learning experiences of audiences.
Companies can also use the LMS to train and enable sales reps registered in Salesforce, as well as sync all relevant customer data and generate custom reports.
10. SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is a well-known online survey digital solution that allows companies to create and send out professional surveys. It also collects, stores, and tracks user data.
By integrating SurveyMonkey with an LMS, companies can create various automation rules to send out surveys at key moments during the e-learning and training process.
These moments can include everything from registering for the LMS, signing up for a course, or upon course completion.
This integration allows organizations to capture key feedback, analyze it, and work with the data to improve the learning and development process.
Whether it’s for employee onboarding, sales enablement, or gathering and analyzing learner data, you can integrate all of these tools and more with Docebo Connect.
However, when you’re in the market for a powerful LMS with good integration capabilities, there are several potential challenges that you need to be aware of.
What are the challenges of using an LMS integration?
LMS integrations can bring numerous benefits to the table. In fact, being able to integrate with third-party tools is a requirement for any LMS worth its salt.
That said, companies need to be aware of the potential challenges that exist when using LMS integrations.
The cost of integration
One of your primary concerns should be how well the training platform integrates with your existing tech stack.
There are plenty of variables that go into calculating an LMS’s pricing, and integrations are one of them.
The purpose of integrations is to streamline processes, reduce areas of friction, and improve data handling. If the LMS doesn’t integrate with your existing systems, it can add costs because you’ll have to rely on expensive custom integrations.
User adoption
Another possible challenge is how well your team will be able to adapt to the changing workflows after integrating your new LMS into your existing tech stack.
They will likely need training on how to use the new technology and all the integrations that go with it.
It helps if the LMS has a user-friendly and intuitive interface, as well as a customer support team ready and able to guide you through the processes.
A slow adoption time can result in disruptions and limit the LMS’s potential.
Compatibility issues
The e-learning industry operates on a set of standards known simply as the sharable content object reference model (SCORM) and xAPI (or Tin Can).
These two standards help ensure interoperability between e-learning software products.
For example, if you’re creating e-learning content with an integrated authoring tool, the SCORM standard ensures that it’s publishable and playable on a learning management system.
xAPI takes this a step further by also ensuring that e-learning courses and gamification features are playable on mobile devices, for example.
If one or more of the tools in your e-learning stack aren’t xAPI and SCORM-compliant, compatibility issues may arise.
Data security
Lastly, you’ll also need to consider how secure data transfers between systems are.
As these can often contain sensitive user or financial information, you need to ensure the LMS integration doesn’t violate data security regulations or place the information at risk.
When talking about LMS security, we can think of things such as single sign-on (SSO) managed by API authentication, encrypted SSL/HTTPS connections, firewalls, and more.
However, despite these potential challenges, LMS integrations provide numerous benefits in terms of workflow optimization.
The right AI-powered LMS with plenty of built-in integrations and APIs can overcome these issues and get you going with minimal to no hassle at all.
Unlock hundreds of integrations with Docebo
LMS integrations have the power to bring your entire organization together and help it work as a unified team.
You get to see what’s happening everywhere in real time and make the necessary changes based on evolving trends and business requirements.
Docebo is one such LMS that integrates with over 400 platforms and software solutions that can cater to every business need and serve almost every aspect of an organization.
Schedule a demo today and see how well it integrates with your tech stack!