The Business Case for multi-tenant LMS

 

Current discussions surrounding multi-tenancy and Learning Management Systems or LMS have focused primarily on describing or defining multi-tenant architecture and the benefits that it affords an IT Department from an a cost savings and management perspective.  Rarely discussed is how such an environment can create a profit center.

 

Briefly explained, multi-tenancy is a computing technology that allows multiple customers (tenants) to share the same application(s) or computing resources with securely, reliably, and with consistent performance.  Cloud technologies and providers utilize the concept of multi-tenancy to share IT resources.  The analogy most often used is that of an apartment building.  The apartment building provides the shared infrastructure but the tenants and their possessions are uniquely theirs;  tenants cost-efficiently share the common infrastructure of the building but are separated; walls and doors give them privacy from others. Some infrastructures use virtual environments to partition tenants while others use custom software architectures.

 

The benefits most often cited from an IT perspective:

 

1. Simplicity – All users are operating on the same database, OS, and version

2. Cost savings – Provisioning, maintenance, systems management, trouble shooting

3. Reliability – Less variables in the architecture and standardization creates a more reliable environment.

For companies with an extended enterprise or workforce that includes resellers, channel or business partners the benefits of using a multi-tenant LMS are numerous. With a multi-tenant environment each partner can have their own unique LMS environment.

 

Benefits and Advantages of Salesforce and embedded LMS

 

• Rapidly train customers and partners on new product roll-outs
• Track compliance

• Partner certification

• Reduce support costs

 

Most often overlooked, and not discussed is how using a multi-tenant LMS environment can create a profit-center by selling training to customers and partners.  When an IT investment is made, if a business case can be made that a solution can not only reduce cost, but also can increase revenue it is a compelling argument for decision makers.  By adding e-commerce functionality, you can expand your LMS beyond the traditional “in-house” training and learning platform.

 

By offering technical training courses and certification options, your LMS now becomes a profit center for your business.  From a business perspective, transitioning your LMS to a multi-tenant architecture, integrating and embedding it within Salesforce for employees and partners via the Partner Portal and adding an e-commerce component for training, courses and certification makes for a compelling argument from both an IT and business perspective that is hard to dismiss.

If you are interested to know more about Salesforce LMS, we are conducting a Webinar on Salesforce based LMS for Sales/Employee/Partner/Customer Training on Oct 10, 2017 12:00 PM in EST

Kindly mark your presence for the same here

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