ISG Research is happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Buyers Guide, an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Learning Management Systems: ISG Research Buyers Guide is the distillation of a year of market and product research by ISG Research.
Learning Management Systems (LMS) are moving from compliance workhorses to
ISG defines Learning Management Systems as structured platforms designed to administer, deliver, track and report formal learning across an organization. They are
Enterprises today want fewer systems doing more work. That means LMS platforms must integrate cleanly with HCM/HRIS, identity management platforms, collaboration hubs, content providers and—where relevant—frontline and industry systems. The mandate is practical: reduce risk, activate skills and shorten time‑to‑readiness for critical roles. Learners expect an experience that feels modern and personalized; leaders expect visibility that goes beyond completions to reveal risk hotspots, skill coverage and next‑best actions for managers.
The convergence of LMS and LXP is being driven as much by buyer preference as by provider roadmaps. Organizations no longer accept a bifurcated stack for structure versus experience. Instead, they want a single platform that enforces policy and auditability while enabling discovery, recommendations and light skills insight. This shift is also reshaping extended‑enterprise learning: many common partner and customer education scenarios can now run on the same stack, avoiding the “two‑platform tax” while keeping data and governance coherent.
Historically, LMS deployments centered on mandatory training—policy acknowledgements, regulatory certifications, ILT/VILT scheduling and standardized curricula—with reporting designed for audits. Usability was secondary to control. As the digital workplace matured, however, demand grew for self‑paced, mobile‑first experiences and for learning that fits around work, not apart from it. The rise of LXPs highlighted discovery, curation and social features but often lacked the structured administration large enterprises require.
Over the last several years, these streams have converged. LMS providers incorporated LXP‑like features—recommendations, playlists, simple skills tagging—while preserving assignment rules, versioning and evidence of completion. At the same time, the content ecosystem exploded, shifting L&D from pure creators to curators and elevating the importance of metadata governance, lifecycle management and deduplication. The result is a modern LMS that blends compliance rigor with approachable, skills‑aware experiences.
Enterprises need audit‑proof control and human‑centered design in the same product. Practically, that translates to rules‑based assignment (by role, risk, site, union rules), version control with history, blended instructor-led training or virtual instructor-led training and self‑paced delivery, and airtight reporting—paired with intuitive interfaces, mobile access (including offline for frontline roles) and learning surfaced inside collaboration tools. They also need skills‑aware pathways that reflect job requirements and proficiency, not one‑size‑fits‑all curricula. Managers need clear prompts—who’s at risk, what learning closes the gap, by when—embedded in their daily views. Global organizations need strong multi‑region administration, localization and accessibility. Finally, many buyers prefer a single platform that can also handle common external‑audience use cases without standing up a second stack.
To meet these needs, successful LMS platforms must strike a balance between governance and experience. They require a strong compliance backbone—complete with granular roles and permissions, delegated administration, version control and defensible audit trails—while also delivering an intuitive, consumer-grade interface that works seamlessly across devices. The experience layer must go beyond aesthetics to include personalized learning paths, relevant recommendations and social elements that enhance engagement without compromising policy logic. Skills awareness is another critical dimension: modern LMS platforms increasingly embed or integrate job and skill ontologies to inform assignments, guide learners toward proficiency and provide managers with visibility into team readiness. Analytics must evolve from static reports to actionable insights, enabling organizations to identify compliance risks, monitor skill coverage and prompt timely interventions.
Equally important is ecosystem connectivity: integrations with HCM systems, identity platforms, content providers and collaboration tools must be reliable and low-friction, ensuring that learning appears in the flow of work while maintaining a single source of truth. Operational excellence underpins all of this—fast implementation, transparent release cycles and administrative ergonomics that reduce manual effort and error. Finally, artificial intelligence (AI) should serve as a practical enabler rather than a novelty, automating repetitive tasks like content tagging, assignment logic and nudging while remaining explainable and controllable. In short, the most successful LMS platforms combine compliance rigor, user-centric design and intelligent automation in a way that is trustworthy, scalable and aligned with enterprise priorities.
Within the broader Buyers Guide, the Learning Management Systems category evaluates platforms whose primary purpose is to administer, deliver, track and evidence formal learning across the enterprise—while now also delivering a baseline of experience features that buyers expect in a single platform. Our analysis emphasizes the compliance backbone plus modern experience combination, the quality of integrations and the operating model that determines day‑to‑day success for L&D teams, managers and system administrators. We also consider the reality that many enterprises want to educate external audiences without parallel stacks. Accordingly, we assess whether an LMS delivers practical, “light EXE” capabilities—multi‑audience administration, basic branding and simple commerce/certification—sufficient for common partner and customer scenarios while preserving governance and data coherence.
Enterprises evaluating LMS providers should prioritize platforms that prove compliance and scale operations while feeling modern and skills‑aware to end users. Focus selection on auditable rules, versioning, blended delivery and evidence; integrations that make learning visible in the flow of work; analytics that move from counts to actionable risk and readiness; skills frameworks that inform assignments and guidance; and administrative ergonomics and trustworthy AI that reduce effort without sacrificing control. In short, choose the LMS that keeps you audit‑ready, makes managers effective, respects learner time and is operable by the team that runs it.
The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Learning Management Systems evaluates software providers and products in key areas relative to administration, delivery, tracking and reporting of formal learning across an enterprise. LMS are optimized for compliance, certification and curriculum-based programs and often serve as the system of record for enterprise learning. Additionally, they must possess a user-centric learning experience often associated with LXPs.
This research evaluates the following 25 software providers that offer products that address key elements of learning management systems as we define them: 360Learning , Absorb, Acorn, Adobe, Anthology, Cegid, Cornerstone, CYPHER, D2L, Dayforce, Docebo, HiBob, isolved, Learning Pool , LearnUpon, Litmos, Moodle, Oracle, PeopleFluent, Sana, SAP, Schoox, Skillsoft, Thrive and Workday.
This research-based index evaluates the full business and information technology value of learning management systems software offerings. We encourage you to learn more about our Buyers Guide and its effectiveness as a provider selection and RFI/RFP tool.
We urge organizations to do a thorough job of evaluating learning management systems offerings in this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these software providers and as an evaluation methodology. The Buyers Guide can be used to evaluate existing suppliers, plus provides evaluation criteria for new projects. Using it can shorten the cycle time for an RFP and the definition of an RFI.
The Buyers Guide for Learning Management Systems in 2025 finds Oracle first on the list, followed by Cornerstone and Schoox.
Software providers that rated in the top three of any category ﹘ including the product and customer experience dimensions ﹘ earn the designation of Leader.
The Leaders in Product Experience are:
The Leaders in Customer Experience are:
The Leaders across any of the seven categories are:
The overall performance chart provides a visual representation of how providers rate across product and customer experience. Software providers with products scoring higher in a weighted rating of the five product experience categories place farther to the right. The combination of ratings for the two customer experience categories determines their placement on the vertical axis. As a result, providers that place closer to the upper-right are “exemplary” and rated higher than those closer to the lower-left and identified as providers of “merit.” Software providers that excelled at customer experience over product experience have an “assurance” rating, and those excelling instead in product experience have an “innovative” rating.
Note that close provider scores should not be taken to imply that the packages evaluated are functionally identical or equally well-suited for use by every enterprise or process. Although there is a high degree of commonality in how organizations handle learning management systems, there are many idiosyncrasies and differences that can make one provider’s offering a better fit than another.
ISG Research has made every effort to encompass in this Buyers Guide the overall product and customer experience from our learning management systems blueprint, which we believe reflects what a well-crafted RFP should contain. Even so, there may be additional areas that affect which software provider and products best fit an enterprise’s particular requirements. Therefore, while this research is complete as it stands, utilizing it in your own organizational context is critical to ensure that products deliver the highest level of support for your projects.
You can find more details on our community as well as on our expertise in the research for this Buyers Guide.