ERP is a great acronym that very people know. Even people who work at an ERP may have no clue. What they do know and perhaps you do too – are some of the vendors – Workday, SAP and Oracle. Brand name recognition. There are plenty of companies who do not purchase every module that these vendors sale. Just as there are plenty of people whose role is in training or L&D who do not train folks on all the modules their company purchased or select the ones they deem as essential – to zero in on – albeit the “company” thinks they are all essential. You may be in HRIS or HR and tada – you are training other people on how to use a certain module or two. Or you might be in Marketing, and you went with the ERP’s LMS and now are stuck learning it and then rolling it out.
When a company purchases an ERP it is not a cheap affair. Nor is it a quick rollout. These babies are expensive, even with scaled down module selections. Their LMS though is a whole different story.
SAP for example, pushes SuccessFactors, a cash cow for them.
If you only knew how much SF generates for SAP, you would experience sticking your finger in an electrical socket and see what happens (do not do this).
When SAP owned Litmos (they purchased Callidus Cloud who owned Litmos), not only was it a debacle, they rewarded Litmos by reducing investment into R&D (according to execs I know/knew at Litmos).
You want Enterprise? Go with SuccessFactors. You have 200,000 plus users? Go with SuccessFactors, because Litmos can’t handle that size of a client (they can, and they did have clients).
It got so bad, that if you were interested only in Litmos, a SAP salesperson would have to be on the same call (I experienced this, and I heard from Litmos salespeople on this approach).
Needlessly to say, SF was the golden child – Litmos? The repulsive sister from Cinderella.
I should mention that SAP no longer owns Litmos.
Prior to the buy of SuccessFactors (originally recruiting software, I kid you not), if you wanted an LMS from SAP, good news – they had their own.
Let’s hear a true story about what one exec from SAP told me, when they are seeking a solution to rollout to their salespeople in the states (prior to going to Europe and elsewhere, as I recall).
Exec – We are looking at either building our own learning platform or going with one that already exists.
Me: Why don’t you just your own LMS (from SAP). (Now, I knew why, but I wanted them to say it).
Exec: It’s doo doo (they said something else, but this site is rated PG). We just toss it in for clients who want an LMS.
Nothing says confidence like a sales exec dissing their own learning platform for picking another or buillding their own, then this little ditty.
Where you might ask, did SuccessFactors, a recruiting platform, get into the LMS market?
Why, they purchased a huge loser with a big audience, who loved it for some reason – despite the fact that it’s UI was right up there with Mosiac 2.1 (the original Web browser) – and for those who can’t see that, or are to young, right up there with a water ballon made of concrete.
Plateau Learning. The future of never moving forward. Yes, it had the numbers, and for the first year, SF made drastic changes to it. Anyway, let’s move on.
Next up on the ERP list of do you remember is Oracle. I never called for their LMS. It was clunky, and they loved those CDs for learning their system (dullsville, the CBT things). The system egads. Clearly Oracle recognized this and went out and bought Taleo. Taleo you say? Yep, Taleo who previously bought Learn.com promised to invest quite a bit to take it to the next level. Guess what happened?
They did virtually nothing. Learn.com started out as an LMS (yuck) but saw the future and moved to selling courses and content. We are talking in the stone age for the industry. The only other power was Skillsoft, who went an acquisition spree (RIP NetG and Element K).
Learn.com still kept their LMS, so it was basically you can buy your content for your system or stay with our system and get the content. Frankly, the money was in the content, the system a here you go.
Taleo, as once a recruiting system (does anyone else see a pattern here?), got acquired by Oracle, and then was wrapped into something called Fusion. I remember seeing it, and saying to myself – this looks old.
But guess what? You could buy Oracle’s LMS or the Taleo thing. Lucky!
Workday. Founded by the guy who founded PeopleSoft. Workday is strong, big-time player in the ERP segment, and I know plenty of people who leverage its HRIS among other modules.
Workday buzzed around the idea that they had an LMS in the works, I recall, but actually didn’t. Wait. Let’s solve our problem by purchasing MediaCore and a touch up, here we go Workday’s LMS. The good news? MediaCore wasn’t once a recruiting system. It was a VLP (Virtual Learning Platform).
Workday’s LMSs whole premise was that you already have the HRIS of Workday, and you buy the LMS and it is all push and pull with the data. Okay. Then, fast forward and Workday sees a problem. They have clients using an external LMS for their clients. Think the old school term of extended enterprise.
Yowsa! What can we do? I know, let’s offer an extended enterprise version to our current customers and future customers using Workday, as a way to deter them from going with someone else.
Today, Workday has their LMS for internal (employees), then for an extra fee you can get the “Extended Enterprise,” version.
Why keep the ERP’s LMS?
It’s a simple play used over and over again – by staying with us, it is easy to integrate, keep your data safe (no need to migrate), and those other vendors? Well, they can’t ensure that the migration of data is feasible/doable, poor integrations and issues.
This spin continues to this day.
It’s a bunch of stale bananas you find in the grocery store under fresh. I mean who notices brown ones anyway?
Here is the fun part (yes, okay not really)
- It’s not cheap. Well, I hear Workday’s LMS tell me that the pricing is all over the place. If you are paying a lot for it, well, that’s okay too. Their extended enterprise is an add-on, and that is not cheap.
- SuccessFactors is not cheap. Not even close.
- Oracle Learning – You can find it – under Talent Management. A perfect place for learning (it’s not)
- Other ERP systems that offer learning? Not cheap
The UI/UX experience
I’ve seen them all, and what I see is a consistency that is pretty underwhelming. I can’t figure out for the life of me, why anyone would use, let alone buy Workday Learning. I’ve seen it. Yes, it has some intriguing features, but the UI/UX is blah. There isn’t anything there that says, “buy me, I’m forward thinking.” No, it is more of buy me – because we are part of the Workday ecosystem.
As for those integrations? They had a huge issue with LinkedIn Learning Courses.
The problem? Learners were going into LL, and the Workday system could not pull back the data of what they are taking. I know, a small issue. Who really needs that anyway?
You remember that LL Hub that rolled out a couple of years back? It was partially an approach to integrate with Workday (according to multiple customers of WD that had the integration issue).
Oh, I should add that when this rolled out, Workday failed to tell their WD Learning clients it was coming. Surprise!
As for other integrations – look, integrations in general are not 100% foolproof despite what a vendor in the learning system industry or any other industry tells you.
And if a vendor makes it out as easy and simple, as though you can just enter a car and turn on the Kazoo HD radio Love Boat, they must assume you are in the Middle Ages and are warming up the crowd as a Jester.
SuccessFactors? Yes, they have made improvements but their UI/UX isn’t something that wows me. It is just the same of many systems I have seen. I honestly don’t get it.
They are owned by a multi-billion-dollar company, who could easily shove hundreds of millions of dollars into this and make it into a rocket ship (not Boeing’s – BAM). Why aren’t they – because I did note it is a cash cow (that means it makes a lot of $$$$$).
Oh, integrations are easy, by the way, and you are staying in the SAP ecosystem family. Those other systems? May not work, you will have issues, the integrations are a problem, and blah blah blah blah.
Oracle Learning – Take a look at their UI/UX. They proudly show it on their site, and hey, you can even take some free courses through MyLearn – Oracle University. I decided to jump in and take a freebie course. If I am trying to get folks to buy my system, I would definitely not show one of these.
Maybe I didn’t take a look at the right one. Let me try this one. Nope, same. Then again, it is far better than those CD things they had clients use (including JD Edwards).
The pitch on why to stay or buy OL? Read above with the other system pitches. You will find it there.
Did you know?
For the longest time, Workday was using Cornerstone’s LMS for their clients, despite WL existing! Nothing says we are better than other systems, then using another system for their clients to learn.
They now use their own system.
Why should you stay with the ERP’s vendor’s learning system?
I think they do an excellent job at the fear factor approach, along with the whole data issues, integrations spin and keep the ecosystem rolling angle.
When I hear people buying these systems, they already either have one of the ERPs modules, or are going to buy the ERP’s solution modules.
Okay, I shouldn’t say that universally, because SF doesn’t follow that mantra. But as mentioned earlier, it got to a point where you had a SAP salesperson on the call when you were only interested in the Litmos LMS. I remember telling the salesperson at Litmos, that is the worst idea I have ever heard.
Actually, the worst, was when some cereal company decided to sell their cereal as a snack. For some reason, it failed.
Finish the SAP Scene
However, if you don’t want SAP, that’s cool – you can still buy SF.
Workday Learning is tied to tight with the Workday data spin, for someone to try to buy it separately – which you can’t do anyway – because why would you?
Oracle is tied to the Oracle platform.
Exit the Bogeyman, Enter the world of reality
If you haven’t figured it out by now, anything any ERP salesperson tells you when it comes to their learning platform, LMS or whatever they call it, comparing it to another LMS, LXP, Learning Platform, Change Experience Platform (the future learning system to watch for – you heard err read it here first) or whatever learning system term a vendor uses – well, okay maybe a whopper and I’m not referring to Burger King.
Sure, there will be some systems you are interested in, that cannot do, say upskilling or reskilling – but here’s the thing 99% can.
They may not say it, may not pitch it, but if you are taking content to learn something new – you are learning a new skill or improving upon a skill or reskilling. The system that still does the best in terms of skills capabilities is Cornerstone Learn.
Funny enough, they are one of the few vendors that rumbles up against the ERP learning systems a lot. Yes, there are others – Docebo, Thought Industries (for external, albeit they are now going into internal and combo – internal/external) and others such as Learn Amp.
The fact remains though, that each of these systems I list above are better. They have better UI/UX. They have better forward thinking capabilities.
They can integrate just fine (again, nobody is perfect out of the gate). If you want to use one system for internal and another for external – you can. I know of companies who are clients of WD, who use a different system for external.
You want a system that rocks for technical skills only? Pluralsight does that. You want a system whose analytics blow any of these learning external systems out of the water?
Look around. Absorb’s advanced analytics does, the same as a vendor such as Juno Journey. Cornerstone has solid metrics, Docebo – go and pay the advanced one (out of the box won’t do it). You want truly the best metrics in any system – well it is Pluralsight hands down – too bad it is only for technical skills.
That said, there are a lot systems out there who can easily compete and rumble past any of the ERP learning systems, if you look around. Seeking strong AI capabilities – that are Gen AI and not machine learning? There are systems out there, that beat out the ERP learning systems.
Bottom Line
If the ERP learning systems, such as SF for example, totally revamped and rehauled and changed their approach to the industry and invested significant amounts – i.e. SAP – into SF, then it could be a whole new game.
But it doesn’t appear to me, that this mega investment has taken place. And therein lies the challenge with the ERP learning systems.
They are there. They are not the driver for you to buy an ERP system. Nor should they be.
If though you think the investment dollars compared to say another ERP module will match or surpass it, well, it’s not going to happen.
Think this way, whom would you rather have
A learning system company whose sole role or heavily committed to learning as the priority (thus investment $$$$) role
or an ERP who
isn’t?
E-Learning 24/7
