In the field of software, the term multi-tenancy refers to a single application shared by multiple user groups who each experience their own, individualised working environment.

Each ‘tenant’ is a group of users that shares certain common features with other tenants, but that may have certain design elements, layouts and privileges that are unique to their group.

A useful analogy is a block of flats. The building has a shared entrance, lifts and stairways, but each tenant has their own, self-contained flat. The tenant can choose their own appliances, furniture and interior design / decor.

A multi-tenancy LMS is a single learning management system instance that serves various learner groups with differing training needs. This may take a range of potential forms, depending on your organisational needs, and could include: 

• Different departments across a large organisation - for example, you may have separate learning environments for Sales and Manufacturing teams because their training needs are so different 
• Local offices across different locations - even multiple countries, allowing localisation or translation of training content 
• External partners - you can create tailored learning platforms for groups outside your own organisation, including suppliers, distributors and channel sales partners. This type of partner training is known as Extended Enterprise Learning. 
• A specialist training company, delivering any number of client-branded learning environments, or even using ecommerce to sell courses online. 

Your organisation-wide L&D team can control what content and features are rolled out to all tenants, and what is managed within each individual group. 

The benefits of multi-tenant LMS vs a standard learning platform are numerous, but the overarching themes are efficiency and flexibility. Here are some of the elements that L&D managers and business leaders are looking to achieve when they choose multi-tenancy:

When you need to segment the learning experience across departments, it has been common in the past for each one to have their own LMS. A multi-tenancy LMS offers economies of scale and allows each department to share the cost of the core platform and any common content, features, and system upgrades.

When every department operates in completely distinct silos, there is less functionality and visibility between them to facilitate resource and knowledge sharing. If something works for / is created within one department, a multi-tenant LMS makes it easy for the central administration team to share it across more or all departments.

With multi-tenancy, you can drill into course and learner analytics at the departmental and group-wide level. This can help you to identify and address training needs and weaknesses among certain types of user. It also helps you avoid overall learner data getting skewed by one or two outlier groups.

When something changes that affects several or all of your teams, it can be much faster to roll out from central management if they can influence all of those learning management systems in one hit. 

For example, new legislation like GDPR could affect all departments, so managing relevant training from a central location, while allowing it to be customised if and where needed, can greatly quicken roll out.

Whatever the training needs of a certain learner cohort, a multi-brand LMS enables each group to make their LMS feel like home. 

Whether it’s for external clients to have their own company branding or internal teams who just want to customise it to their preferred style, a branded LMS can enhance user acceptance and in turn, improve compliance, engagement and learning outcomes.

Redesigning organisations’ employee experience was the focus in Nick Petch’s session. Nick, who heads the Digital Learning Experience & Design Strategy team, pointed out that employee experience is a powerful way to improve organisational learning and, ultimately, the future of performance.

But not many organisations consider employee experience as an essential aspect in the learning and development process. And employee experience isn't just about creating a great experience, it's about establishing a culture and identity of learning and development that is fundamental for an organisation's success.

Every step in the employee journey from onboarding, induction and development will influence an employee’s perspective towards the organisation. When organisations don't design each of these steps carefully, employees will feel that they are not valued, which will lower staff retention rates.

Experience or designing for experience is a systemic design challenge and not a single event. Developing an experience framework represents the very first step of an employee experience.

The panel discussion with Daniel Antman, Managing Director Australia and Ivana Lee, Managing Director Asia, was about measuring results of learning and development objectives. Both agreed that creating meaningful content, where the platform works for the learners rather than the other way around, is vital to ensure that learners can feel the benefit of a Learning Management System (LMS).

In the session, the speakers also pointed out that things are not going back to normal. Adaptability, nimbleness and alignment are the steps that need to be implemented by organisations to stay competitive. For organisations that see themselves as genuine learning businesses, and who are committed to developing and growing their teams, their time has come. They are embracing the technologies that will enable them to deliver learning that is valued by those seeking the development, support and care from businesses committed to them.

Within the discussion, the presenters also answered thoughtful questions from participants. Questions came across on topics like:

• when to start redesigning the employee experience
• how to prepare the workforce with the right skills in the current situation
• the availability of imc Express

Concerning imc Express, which will be rolled out in 2021, the speakers emphasised that this tool will not replace imc Content studio.

Besides this,  there was a question if learning analytic dashboard is a part of LMS. However, this is not the case. Learning Analytics dashboard will be a separate component; it will extract the data from LMS and the business data to produce the result.

The difference between training and development was also raised. This was explained as training is a set of programs defined by an organisation and development being much more an entrepreneurialistic, where people are motivated to learn and to improve by themselves.

Participants had the option to vote in several surveys. The result:

• 50% of the audience were excited with the upcoming challenges in 2021.
• 41% expect that organisations will be doing more learning and development in 2021.
• 58% think that their organisations learning and development objectives are aligned with the commercial or performance urgency.

How can organisations and employees survive the accelerating of the digital transformation? This is a global challenge that all industries are facing nowadays and which they can only handle by focusing on learning and training. Especially the last months has opened the eyes of CEO's, CHRO's and Heads of Learning to an even more significant opportunity for reskilling and retraining. Therefore, it’s essential to use the right platform to launch into future growth and to ensure staff retention.

These were the most important themes of imc Learning Connect industry event which was organised by imc Asia and took place virtually on 24 September 2020. We summarised the key facts of the event and which topics Learning and Development professionals, learning enthusiasts and digitalisation fans should have on their watch list for the upcoming year in two series of articles. This is the first of the series.

Christian Wachter, CEO of imc, opened the event and shared an outlook on the upcoming sessions. Among others, he talked about the importance for organisations to improve their learning strategy by utilising learning analytics dashboard. He also pointed out how to redesign employee experience to encourage lifelong learning and introduced imc’s new authoring tool called blish!. He closed his presentation with the hint, that technology is only a tool to transform organisations digitally; nevertheless, the input is much more critical to ensure effective utilisation.

In the maximise Learning Outcomes Session, imc board member Dr. Wolfram Jost discussed the importance of measuring the result of Learning and Development and how these will impact the business performance. With a learning analytics dashboard, organisations can see the link between the learning program and business key performance indicators.

Proving this connection can be a great support in convincing the management:  When learning and development leaders could show the impact of their program, management shall be more convinced to invest in reskilling and retraining.

How can digital learning support companies on their process of digital transformation? That was the topic of Lawrence Loh, Country Manager of imc Singapore. He pointed out that digital literacy, access and participation are essential to optimise organisations digital competency, as all these points influence future skills, business transformation and innovation as well as job profiles. Transferred to organisations, this means they have to prepare for the acceleration of digital led trends in order to optimise organisations digital competency.

Digital enterprise organisations will need to combine their processes, technology and people in the path towards digital transformation. To speed up this process will only be possible with digital learning and therefore a Learning Management System with a good user interface and user experience will enhance the learners' potential.

User generated learning content is the topic in imc Express, an authoring tool session by Oliver Nussbaum. Everybody can produce a learning content since people has abundance knowledge they could share within their organisations. Functional understanding of software, awareness of good design and basic didactical knowledge are the skills required to be learning content producer. imc Express will support the creation of meaningful learning content with a strong Artificial Intelligence (AI); hence everybody could publish their knowledge.

That was part one of the event highlights, you can find the second part here!

Hanna’s onboarding is complete after six months. She feels like she has arrived and is in good hands. Her line manager now sets up a meeting together with the head of her department. Hanna is slightly uneasy when she arrives for the meeting and wonders whether she had misjudged her achievement after all.

Instead, she finds out that a colleague in another department had unexpectedly handed in his notice. The skills match for the position showed that Hanna already met 80% of the job requirements. While she still needed training in employee management, her superiors are confident that she will master this quickly. Hanna accepts and is promoted after only half a year with the company.