The Benefits of Centralised Learning Content Management

One of the most time-consuming tasks for a Learning and Development professional is creating and managing learning content. This encompasses all sorts of activities, from liaising with SMEs and leaders across the business, to storyboarding content, to working together reviewing and editing assets, to rolling content out across multiple learning platforms.

The scale of learning content that needs to be managed within an organisation can quickly become overwhelming for everyone. This is usually a manual process, requiring a lot of back-and-forth and lengthy collaborations between and across teams. Of course, this isn’t sustainable, as it wastes time on unnecessarily lengthy processes and documentation, taking the Learning and Development team away from more important tasks. However, with the right tools and processes, the L&D team can take control and manage this process efficiently and effectively.

Why centralising learning content management is critical

Centralising the management of your learning resources will streamline the entire content management process for your Admins and Authors, saving time, reducing frustration and boosting operational efficiency across your teams.

For Admins, it means having one place to manage all content – think of it as your “content control room”. Once you centralise that control, you can then distribute your content to every destination from one place, instead of wasting time manually uploading assets or learning objects one system at a time.

A one-stop learning content repository

Some organisations split the creation of learning materials and resources across multiple platforms. This could mean an authoring tool for eLearning courses, a software simulation tool for IT training, a shared workspace to manage your assets… the list goes on. While it may be possible to manage all these tools across your organisation initially, as requirements grow it becomes increasingly difficult to manage and update your learning content efficiently.

A one-stop content repository, in this case a Learning Content Management System (LCMS), is a central hub designed to simplify access to, and management of, essential materials, saving your team from wasting time navigating a labyrinth of files and folders spread across systems and projects. Having a centralised tool for all content creation enables you to make quick updates and efficiently republish courses, making your life infinitely easier.

Switching to single sourcing

Single sourcing is the practice of creating learning content once and reusing it in various places with minimal effort. With the right LCMS, you can use the common content as a baseline, and customise the rest for each intended audience, all within a single course. In the case of multi-language course creation for example, the single-sourcing approach allows Authors to create a single course that is then used as the “master” to produce a host of language variations. You don’t need to create and publish every translation as a separate course – everything is stored in one master project. Single sourcing means increased efficiency, consistency and scalability across all learning content management processes.

But it’s not just about managing where your learning content is stored. Single sourcing also enables you to save significant time across the entire content creation and management cycle, from creation, to review, to QA, to content auditing and updating. It means you can manage every step of the content process in one platform, and report on the usage of each asset to ensure full visibility of your resources and compliance needs.

Why a Learning Content Management System (LCMS)?

An LCMS is the must-have tool for any organisation looking to save time and effort by streamlining its learning content management processes. It doesn’t replace your Learning Management System (LMS) but works alongside it, meaning you can switch to a “one-and-done” approach to uploading, distributing and updating your learning content.

What an LCMS does offer, however, is the ability to create content, collaborate on the review process and manage a multitude of content variations from a single location. This is infinitely easier than creating a learning asset using one tool, getting it reviewed and edited by each individual stakeholder, going back to the original tool, editing it, then finally uploading it across your platforms.

Your LCMS can also facilitate:

  • eLearning content authoring
  • Software simulation creation
  • Scenario branching
  • Gamification
  • Video interactivity
  • Collaboration, review and approvals
  • Multi-format publishing
  • Creating a knowledge base from your existing content

Shifting your learning management strategy

Switching to a more centralised learning content management strategy requires a shift in mentality and your overall learning strategy, so it pays to make sure that everyone is aligned around your new and improved processes.

If you’re looking to maximise your return on a centralised content strategy, opting for an LCMS like dominKnow | ONE is the smart choice. With dominKnow, you can adopt a centralised strategy that will save you hundreds of hours on your content management, providing an efficient learning process. It’s an absolute must for large organisations with learning and development teams that have multiple authors collaborating on elaborate learning projects.

Efficiently manage content permissions for teams

dominKnow | ONE also offers additional functionality to support Lead Developers managing several projects involving multiple Authors. Using dominKnow | ONE’s Content Permissions feature you can instantly assign Authors and Reviewers to the content they need to collaborate on using the ‘Team’ permissions and content ‘Collections’ feature. This removes the admin tasks of manually checking the relevant resources for each individual project.  Once a user is added to a Team that is connected to a Collection of projects, they automatically receive the access they require to either develop the content further or review and provide feedback, depending on their role. Allowing multiple owners on a Team also ensures that nothing slips through the net, particularly in larger organisations. Developing content in silos becomes an issue of the past.

Find out more about dominKnow | ONE

If you would like to learn more about the LCMS capabilities of dominKnow | ONE, join our next webinar or request a 1-2-1 demo.