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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SumTotal Talent Development
Score 7.5 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
The SumTotal Core Platform (formerly elixHR) is a human resource information system (HRIS) integrable with the SumTotal Talent Expansion Suite of software: SumTotal (LMS), and the SumTotal Work workforce management and payroll system. All SumTotal software is now offered and supported by Skillsoft since the October 2014 acquisition.
I joined a company already using Absorb so I did not pick Absorb but given the chance- I would pick Absorb over any other LMS I have worked with in my career. Absorb is powerful enough to do what I need it to do, but organized well enough that the features and functions I don't …
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.
Very good for learning and development and training of employees. For Applicant tracking, recuirement, onboarding, and enablement, I prefer SAP SuccessFactors or Skillate. I also found that the SumTotal app is not very friendly on android and crashes sometimes and it is not optimized for mobile. Hence I end up never using it.
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.
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.
I have transitioned from a position who supported the product to a position where I use the product. I continue to be impressed with the robustness of the product and how efficient it is. It is a user friendly software that can be used to navigate and accomplish tasks to meet organizational requirements.
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.
When I came to my company, they had been using a "light" LMS called Articulate. It was cheap and bare bones; i.e. not a lot of features, really just a platform to launch eLearning from and not real interface for student to utilize. When I began to overhaul the training department, this was one of the first things I changed. Articulate would only run courses built in their software, and the software was not 508 compliant. In addition, we had no ability to create learning plans, house transcripts, customize the interface, or manage the students. I made the choice to select and LMS that was a true LMS with all of the features that were critical to our clients' needs. Thus far, SumTotal has been able to support all of our needs, except one; mobile learning that is media rich
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.
