Absorb LMS aims to empower organizations to train employees with the skills needed to stay modern and relevant in today's fast-paced world. The LMS software focuses on aligning learning needs with business demands.
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Schoox
Score 8.2 out of 10
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Schoox provides employee talent development, from new hire training to manager development programs, deliver the right content and courses to every employee in a social platform that keeps them engaged.
Absorb is a great LMS for most applications. It was fairly easy to learn to configure and looks very professional. Our employees adopted the system fairly quickly and we had mostly positive feedback. The base Absorb platform provides basic reporting, so if you are going to need more customized reporting, then you will need to purchase the additional module for Absorb Analyze. The Manager Experience is still evolving, and managers may want to have more ability to do things in this part of the system than what is currently available. There is a connector that can be purchased from ADP to connect it with Absorb's LMS, although our company chose to develop our own API connector. We are currently using third-party course authoring software. The Absorb Amplify courses are good if you want to add immediate content to the system, although the courses are very basic.
We have special locations that work differently and I have recommended this to them. Even for locations set up differently, it still applies. Because everything can be personalized to fit the need of the user. These locations have become so adept at it that they have become admins themselves so they can implement their ideas immediately. I have yet to come across a scenario where this is not appropriate
Usability - Both the User and Admin Experience is so simple and intuitive. The admin tools are clearly defined and laid out, yet the functionality makes it still powerful.
Integration - We used the Scheduled Data Imports and Exports to connect with our HRIS tool. After the initial configuration, it has worked reliably and gives me all the custom data I need to make assignments and reporting a breeze.
Design - I know it's covered a little bit in the Usability above, but the site just looks fantastic. There are a lot of options to customize and fit your branding requirements and all of the thumbnails/posters/billboards/etc give a very visual and appealing look to the LMS. Much better than I've seen in other products.
At the moment you are unable to schedule recurring sessions that are different durations and/or cadence to each other. For e.g. if you have 3 ILC sessions and the time between session 1 and 2 is 1 week but 2 and 3 is 2 weeks, then this can't be recurring. Meaning individual ILC sessions need to be set up and users having to enroll in 3 sessions instead of 1.
Auto enrolment for ILC sessions would be great. Would allow us to automatically new employees in to the required onboarding training without us having to do a manual file upload via FTP
Custom messaging options. In addition to the messages that can already be sent out, it would be great if custom messaging could be sent out to address a certain subject that is not covered in the existing messaging.
The option to send out resources at certain intervals after a training has taken place. We send out learning boosters for our programmes at 2 day, 2 week, 2 month intervals. This is a manual task as there is no way to automate this via Absorb.
User accounts: HotSchedules Train has each user in the system by first and last name which is a great tool but this becomes a problem when you have more than one person in your company with the same first and last name. Maybe they should identify by email instead of name so accounts of users with the same name do not merge together.
Copying Course or Test: Throughout the system you see the option to copy a course or a test but then the only place you can "paste" is within that same course or test. If I am creating two different courses or test that are similar it would be easy to use this function if it were designed a little better. Instead to "copy" a quiz you need to add all questions to a pool. In order to "copy" a course you would need to just create a new one from scratch.
We have no plans to move away from Absorb at this time. It has all of the functionality we are looking for in a learning management system and we have a lot of info stored in our LMS system for trainings including all of our current and past employee transcripts. It is also getting easier to manager with being able to connect the LMS to ADP to update employee reporting/department/location/etc. We don't have a need or reason to move away from Absorb at this time.
The training necessary for the managers and trainers is minimal. The system is very intuitive and HotSchedules customer support is the best support team I have ever dealt with. They are quick to respond and keep you informed through the whole process. As for new hires, you just put them in front of a tablet or computer and they just go. Our trainees have better retention and they much prefer to go through the training on-line then having to read pages of documents.
We cannot speak highly enough for the Elite Support service. Having a dedicated partner to help us through multiple projects, multiple upgrades, and multiple custom configurations has been absolutely key. Our CSM really has been like an extra team member and we know we can rely on him for anything we need. His product expertise and friendly professionalism is unrivaled!
We were very disappointed with D2L and Workday's ability to customize what or how content is shown to users. The platforms can be robust but the onboarding time for new administrators is much longer than Absorb. Workday's current offering (2023) for external learners is unacceptable for our use case and much more manual then Absorb's solutions. Workday does not have the ability to create engaging content or notifications to the user and the UI is pulled directly from the HCM with very little flexibility between the modules on look, feel or layout. While Thinkific was good for external users and monetization, it also lacked flexibility for multiple different demographics. EdApp while having a good mobile presence and quick turnaround for course creation, it's offerings for other engagement factors fell short of Absorb. Moodle can be a great LMS, but all of the features require you to plan and (potentially)code your requirements into the platform. This required time that we didn't have and to administrate the platform required additional personnel and resources for any changes we wanted to have after go live. We didn't have the time nor other organization resources available when launching so it couldn't be considered.
We did not use Wisetail, but we went through several weeks of training calls when we were deciding between that LMS and Schoox. We selected Schoox because of the integration with HotSchedules, something we already used, and the ongoing ease it would provide in shifting job codes and new roles within the organization
After using the Absorb LMS system, we've seen a reduction in the number of employees reaching out for troubleshooting or help requests when taking the training.
We've seen an increase in departments storing webinars to be used for future training and storage of information.
