Thought Industries

Score8.8 out of 10

6 Reviews and Ratings

What is Thought Industries?

The Thought Industries platform enables enterprise organizations to create, manage, distribute, monetize, and analyze their end-to-end customer education and external training initiatives. The solution addresses the unique needs of customer education, and aims to make it easy to handle complex learning operations at scale to empower growth.

Its administrative capabilities include native tools and thirdparty integrations, businesses boost learner engagement, operationalize processes, and execute an impactful, outcome-driven customer education program to continually drive new revenue. The platform removes the burdensome need for multiple solutions – surpassing the capabilities of a traditional LMS – to execute a single initiative, freeing up resources. The tools are designed to help organizations improve their efficiency which helps businesses consolidate their technology, optimize operations, and grow their online learning capabilities. The vendor states the solution encourages users to leverage nontraditional learning methods that engage customers and ignite behavioral change that leads to longer lasting relationships.

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Screenshot of Modern-looking learning sites

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Screenshot of Modern-looking learning sites

Learning administration
Administrators can manage the content and people (students/employees, course authors, instructors, etc.) on the platform.
Category average: 9.2
Course authoring
Users can develop and assemble online learning content.
Category average: 7.5
Course catalog or library
Learning content is organized into a course catalog or browsable library.
Category average: 8.4

Progress tracking & certifications
The system tracks individuals’ progress on courses, scores, transcripts, certificates, etc.
Category average: 8.3
Social learning
Includes features for collaboration and knowledge sharing among peers.
Category average: 4.9
Assignments
Users can assign courses/curricula to individuals or groups, with due dates.
Category average: 6.6

#1 most frequent

Information

40.0%

36 installations of 90

#2 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

21.1%

19 installations of 90

#3 most frequent

Manufacturing

6.7%

6 installations of 90

Tom Studdert, Ed.D.View profile

VP, Customer Onboarding & Education in Customer Service at ZoomInfo (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Thought Industries as our primary customer learning platform. We deliver a variety of training modalities through Thought Industries including - Live webinar-style training for each product we sell (vILT) - On-demand courses for products and best practices in sales, recruiting, marketing, and operations - Certifications for products - Learning pathways for self-service implementation and training. Our business challenge when we purchased Thought Industries was to scale our learning programs to our growing customer base. Now, we use it as a way to distinguish the modalities and, based on the customer's package, determine eligibility for different styles of training.

Pros

Excellent and modern UI with ability to use .css to customize experience
Reporting including a BI connector tool
Integrations with Salesforce (managed package), Zoom, and a robust API
In-app authoring tool
Continued education for customer education professionals

Cons

More integrations with data warehouses and data lakes (out of the box)

Return on Investment

University users are more likely to renew (10-15%) than non university user.
University users are more likely to upsell (5-10%) than non university user.
University users have higher usage of our platform (15-20%) than non university user.
Certified users have higher usage of our platform (40%+) than non university user.

Alternatives Considered

Skilljar Customer Education Software, Cornerstone OnDemand and LearnUpon

Ramon Mayo

Director of Planning and Administration in Human Resources at Urban Ministries (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Thought Industries to sell courses to our customers. It is primarily being used by the IT and Marketing departments. We now can create and sell courses based on our quarterly and annual content. This enables us to give customers interactive media and it also gives us a way of creating more revenue by subscription than just single product sales.

Pros

Ecommerce: The eCommerce options on Thought Industries are far better than any other LMS. You can sell subscriptions, one-time products, and even physical products.
Note-taking: The ability for users to take notes and journal is a key feature as a lot of our customers are teachers and they are learning the Bible and may want to go back and integrate their notes in other lessons.
The ability to handle video and audio is exceptional, especially how the video files can be stored in Wistia.
The panorama feature is helpful as we have many products that we white label and now, we can create courses for those customers as well.

Cons

The SCORM functionality needs improvement. In my opinion, it's clunky and not mobile-friendly.
The layout needs more flexibility. Our business has unique customers and a wide range of customers so being able to change it according to their needs would be helpful.
There is no image library. You have to upload each image every single time.
Updating changes can be slow.
It needs a drag-and-drop functionality.

Return on Investment

Our customers love the new look of our courses on Thought Industries.
In our usage experience, we were late in getting our courses launched due to some design functionality issues.
We are steadily growing with customers signing up for courses every day.

Alternatives Considered

Tovuti LMS, Thinkific and Docebo Learning Suite

Other Software Used

WordPress, Mailchimp, Smartsheet

Verified User

Manager in Marketing (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have two main use cases with Thought Industries. First, is internal training for our employees. Second, is to provide continuing education for medical coders and billers. Thought Industries provides a single platform for us to do both, and customize each to their respective audiences. We also hope to eventually also build an additional site to provide on-demand training to our end-users.

Pros

Onboarding
Creating multiple individual, customizable, branded learning sites
Ease of creating courses natively in the platform

Cons

Lacks the ability to make courses required
Cannot pull a report for a course(s) to show who has not started the course
Cannot reset gamification or run specific gamification campaigns
Although SCORM compliant, SCORM courses often break or do not show as complete on the learner side even when the module is marked as complete on the back end

Return on Investment

Increased employee training

Alternatives Considered

Absorb LMS, TalentLMS and Docebo Learning Suite

Other Software Used

Camtasia, Snagit, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe Illustrator CC, Adobe PhotoShop, HubSpot Marketing Hub, HubSpot Meeting Scheduler, HubSpot Sales Hub, HubSpot Academy, Hootsuite, Loomly

Verified User

Director (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are a B2C Education provider (for-profit education products) that we sell to individuals looking to learn how to trade. We require not only a robust Learning Management Platform but also an eCommerce component to purchase additional courses. We selected Thought Industries because they solved both issues without any additional add-ons or third-party services. Our use case was simple (moving from Moodle)
- We need to implement with our CRM - either a direct connection or API.
- The ability for users to purchase courses (or subscribe to courses) directly through the LMS.
- Data to drive engagement, access, and eCommerce which is tracked and managed by the LMS.
- Hosted on their servers with promised uptime of 99%.

Pros

Built in eCommerce pages and purchasing options.
Data to drive real-time decision making.
Customization options.
Team to work with our needs and custom scope.

Cons

The subscription experience is really cumbersome and confusing for users. If I subscribe to a product - I shouldn't have to enroll AFTER I subscribe.
Webinar integration is iffy and connections aren't consistent.
Live Training and Hybrid Trading Courses were built backward from the perspective of adding other eLearning elements.
Cost can be pretty expensive and there are a lot of add-ons that do come at an additional cost.
Mobile Experience (phones) lacks because of how the platforms is in widgets.

Return on Investment

Multiple Months with $20,000 in eCommerce Sales.
Site Up Time and Engagement has remained steady for all 4 years.
Course authoring is faster and more efficient.

Alternatives Considered

Blackboard Learn, Canvas, Cornerstone OnDemand, Moodle, Coassemble, Vector LMS (formerly Convergence LMS), Docebo Learning Suite, Trakstar Learn (formerly Mindflash) and Tovuti LMS

Other Software Used

Slack, Google Slides, Google Sheets, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe Illustrator CC, Jira Software, GoTo Webinar

Litmos

Skilljar by Gainsight

Thought Industries

What is Thought Industries?

Categories & Use Cases

Media

Key Features

Top Performing Features

Learning administration

Course authoring

Course catalog or library

Areas for Improvement

Progress tracking & certifications

Social learning

Assignments

Most Frequent Users

Information

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

Manufacturing

Reviews

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Cons

Return on Investment

Alternatives Considered

Other Software Used

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