6 Signs That Your Training Company Needs To Look For A New Course Management System

6 Signs That Your Training Company Needs To Look For A New Course Management System
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Summary: Is your current Course Management System the perfect system for your training business? Or should you be looking around for something else?

Does Your Training Company Need A New Course Management System?

If you already have a Course Management System (CMS) in place within your training company, you may think you don’t need to do anything else to ensure your training administration, as it is easy to manage. However, if you have a sub-par CMS, then you may actually be making things more difficult for yourself.

Course Management Made Easy: How Training Companies Can Effectively Manage Courses And Events In One Place
Discover how to make the most out of your Course Management System (CMS), the perfect tool to manage all your training courses from one place.

Here are 6 signs that your CMS isn’t the best, and you need to start looking around for a new one!

1. It Takes A Lot Of Time And Effort To Set Up Your Courses

What’s the point in spending lots of money on a Course Management System that doesn’t make scheduling your courses as quick and easy as possible? The ideal Course Management System will take all the effort out of the process for you, meaning you hardly have to lift a finger to ensure your courses are properly scheduled.

A Course Management System that comes equipped with course templates will be your best bet at making sure the process is as easy as possible. Course templates mean that you can set up a template for every different type of course you run. That way, when you need to schedule a further instance of that course in the future, you can start with a template which is mostly filled out, rather than having to start from scratch every time.

You can fill out information like the course name, course description, and the length of the course in advance, meaning you only need to fill out that info once, and when you set up a new version of the course, you only need to insert the changeable data, such as the date, the time, and the instructor.

2. It Doesn’t Integrate With Your Website

If you have a CMS, it needs to integrate with your website, otherwise it’s pointless! Integrating your CMS with your website means the end of duplicate data entry for your team, as everything you enter into your CMS will be pulled automatically through to your website!

Every time you schedule a course, the data will be uploaded to your website so your students can start signing up for those courses straight away. And if you’re using course templates to get this job done, just think about how quickly your course scheduling will be in the future.

It also means all the data entered into your website will be pulled back into the CMS without any additional work, so you’ll never lose the details of a sale, and you will never oversell the available places on your courses!

3. It Doesn’t Integrate With Other Tools

Similarly to integrating with your website, your CMS needs to integrate with the other tools you use to run your business. A CMS will be specialised at helping you schedule your courses, but it won’t have the functionality you need to run every other part of your training business. This could be things like email marketing, video conferencing, and financials.

Find a CMS which has the functionality to integrate with other tools, and you will be able to manage all the elements of your training business from one central point rather than switching between lots of different systems all the time.

4. You Can’t Assign Resources And Staff To Courses

You want a CMS that will allow your training company to be as organised as possible, and this includes being able to assign things like staff and resources to each course to ensure you have everything you need to run the course, and you don’t accidentally double-book something.

A good CMS will allow you to keep a record of all your staff, resources, and classrooms, so they can easily be assigned to courses in a few clicks.

5. It Doesn’t Support All The Types Of Learning You Offer

If you offer lots of different types of learning, it’s important to get a CMS which supports this. Even if it’s types of learning you want to support in the future, it’s better to have a CMS that’s going to grow with you, rather than having to swap systems every time you want to expand your learning offering.

Whether it’s online, offline, classroom-based, virtual Instructor-Led Training, or blended learning, you need to make sure your CMS has the functionality to let you run those courses, rather than having to use a different system for every type of course you run.

6. You Can’t Automate Student Communications

One of the biggest time drains for a training company is sending emails to students. These are things that need to be done, but they can be boring and repetitive for your team to complete.

It’s key to your training business that you get a CMS that allows you to set up automated communications to make emailing your students a breeze.

This way, you can set up an email template for each type of email you need to send, and then decide on the trigger which will cause this email to send, such as a course information email sending when a student books a place on a course.

Not only will your team not have to spend lots of time writing and sending these emails, but they also won’t have to spend time during the week checking on which emails need to be sent and when, and making sure that everyone has the information they need, as it will all be handled automatically for you.