There’s a lot of talk about “the learning ecosystem” these days. But what does that really mean?

In short, it means the integration of the LMS with other enterprise applications such as CRM, HXM / HCM, web conferencing, eCommerce, eSignature, and others to create an interconnected “ecosystem” to serve the purpose of learning.

Just as a team is more powerful than an individual, an ecosystem of solutions is more powerful than an isolated platform. So, the more integrated your systems are, the more seamless an experience you can provide to employees, customers, and partners as they interact with solutions beyond the LMS – but which have been brought into the ecosystem to support the learning experience.

Creating this network can help maximize the power, efficiency, and adoption of the learning system itself, which should – although connected with other systems – still be treated as the hub from the L&D perspective. Within the learning ecosystem, the LMS is still the centralized place where all learning content and programs are managed. In other words, L&D people don’t need to worry about administering or managing the interconnected enterprise solutions. When integrated, the LMS simply shares learning content and data with the other systems.

CRM and LMS: A Match Made in Cloud Heaven

While there are many solutions that make sense to include in the learning ecosystem, the most popular and perhaps most powerful is CRM. By integrating training into the CRM experience, learning can be woven into people’s day-to-day workflows and not perceived as a disruption or isolated activity.

Salespeople and customer service agents in particular, as well as some marketing people, who spend the majority of their working hours deep in the CRM system, can be presented with learning opportunities or seek new training from within the CRM, never having to log in and out of multiple platforms.

It just makes sense to tie the two together because ongoing training is critical to success in customer-facing roles. Knowledge is essential to providing top-notch customer experiences and at the pace of business today, knowledge expires at a rapid rate. Without continuous learning, these professionals may find themselves in the uncomfortable position of knowing less than a customer. That’s not likely to win a deal or earn a five-star service rating. To succeed, training needs to be teed up in the CRM.

Targeted Training in the Flow of Work with Litmos and Salesforce

We’ve been discussing CRM and LMS integration at a high level thus far, but for the sake of this article, let’s zero in on the system most synonymous with CRM: Salesforce.

Litmos for Salesforce is a powerful integration that serves as a key component in many top-performing companies’ learning ecosystems. It enables you to offer targeted training to employees, customers, and partners directly within Salesforce. The system will recommend courses based on Cases, Leads, and Opportunities to guide learners in sales, marketing, and customer service.

Once they engage with the training, these CRM users likely don’t realize that the training being delivered is coming from Litmos because it’s custom-branded to match their company’s look and feel, and is appearing within Salesforce, so it feels completely familiar and comfortable to access and navigate. The experience is seamless: training is served up as part of the regular flow of work within Salesforce.

One of the capabilities that makes this integration essential to the learning ecosystem is the ability to automatically provision learners and feed learning data back to Salesforce for intelligent reporting. This saves tons of time and eliminates manual effort in conveying data between two systems.

Among the other benefits and capabilities:

• Boost sales performance by prescribing training to accelerate and enhance deals.
• Enhance customer experience with recommended courses that support sales, marketing, and customer service.
• Use Salesforce Digital Experience Clouds to train the extended enterprise such as partners and customers.
• Measure and analyze the impact of training with built-in reports and dashboards.

It should be noted that Litmos Training has been officially certified by Salesforce. If you’re looking for a way to integrate learning with Salesforce, don’t hesitate to reach out to sales@litmos.com. For more on Litmos for Salesforce, including features and screenshots, please take a look at this datasheet.