Effectively transferring knowledge, both within and outside your organization, is a significant challenge for many social organizations. Training courses are tracked in an Excel spreadsheet, registrations are handled via email, certificates are scattered across folders on the server, and no one really has an overview of who has completed what. It works, to a certain extent. But as an organization grows, the chaos increases and the overhead becomes more expensive.
At some point, the question arises: do we need a learning platform?
This article will help you answer that question. We explain what an LMS is, what role it plays in your organization, and what you specifically need to get started successfully, even if you have zero experience with these types of systems.
LMS stands for Learning Management System: a digital platform on which you can organize, offer, and manage learning activities. Think of it as a central location where employees can take training courses, managers can view progress, and administrators can create and schedule new courses.
But a good LMS is more than just a digital course library. It connects learning to the daily practice of your organization: it links to your HR system so that certificates automatically end up in the personnel file, it allows you to create training profiles per position or team, and it provides insight into who has completed which courses and who has not.
For organizations in healthcare and education, there is an additional dimension: the LMS supports mandatory and accredited training, SKJ registration, compliance with laws and regulations, and demonstrable assurance of the quality of your employees.
Before taking the plunge, it is a good idea to check whether the pain you are experiencing can actually be solved with an LMS. Typical signs that an organization is ready for a learning platform:
Do you recognize three or more of these points? Then there is a good chance that an LMS will help your organization in a structural way.
Zorg voor Leren, a national training provider for healthcare professionals, started with a self-built LMS in WordPress. It worked until growth outpaced the system. Owner Nadine de Mooij: "The solution was not very scalable and required a lot of manual work, for example when creating accounts and processing payments." Only after switching to a professional platform did everything become automated. Sound familiar? Then it's probably time for the next step. Read more about the collaboration with Zorg voor Leren here.
This is a question that many organizations ask too late. An LMS is not an IT tool that you install and forget about — it is an organizational tool that touches on HR, L&D, communication, and line management all at once.
In practical terms, the LMS takes the position of your organization's central learning environment. This means that it connects to:
HR and personnel management. Through a link with your HR system (such as AFAS), employees are automatically created, assigned to teams, and linked to the appropriate training profiles. Certificates are automatically written back to the file. This saves a tremendous amount of manual work and prevents errors.
Line management. Managers gain insight into the training status of their team — not only to ensure compliance, but also as a topic of discussion during performance reviews and development programs.
Communication. An LMS only works if people actually use it. Introducing a learning platform requires a communication approach that fits your organizational culture. This is not a technical issue, but a people issue.
Content and knowledge retention. Who creates the training courses? Who monitors the content to ensure it remains up to date? An LMS makes existing knowledge visible and accessible, but also requires structural maintenance.
Not necessarily, but you do need people who take ownership.
A common assumption is that an LMS "runs itself" once it has been set up. In practice, a well-functioning learning platform requires ongoing attention. The extent of that commitment depends on the size of your organization and your ambitions.
As a rule of thumb:
Small (up to ~200 employees): One application manager who manages the platform for 4–8 hours per week is often sufficient. This can be combined well with an HR or training role.
Medium-sized (200–800 employees): You will benefit from a clear division of tasks: one or two application managers for the technical side, a planner for course administration, and someone from HR or L&D who monitors the training policy.
Large (800+ employees): Here, it pays to have a real academy team: an L&D coordinator, one or more administrators, a content manager, and alignment with the HR cycle.
What you always need, regardless of size: an internal owner who wants the LMS to succeed. A platform that is not anyone's priority will not be used.
Don't have the capacity in-house? You don't have to do it alone. More and more organizations are choosing to (temporarily) outsource the implementation process and/or management of their learning environment to an external L&D professional. Specialized agencies such as Context Company, Flipped, andEducademy provide people who Procademy and help your organization get started until you have built up sufficient knowledge and capacity internally. This lowers the threshold; you don't have to wait until you have found the perfect internal candidate.
The good news: you don't have to worry about data migration. There is no years-long learning history that needs to be converted, no old course structures that need to be cleaned up. You start with a clean slate.
That is an advantage, but it also imposes other requirements. Whereas an organization that is migrating already knows how to organize learning, a start-up sometimes still has to figure that out. The technical implementation is not the most difficult part; the substantive foundation is.
What requires extra attention during a cold start?
Establish a training policy. Which training courses are mandatory for each position? Which are optional but desirable? How long are certificates valid? Ideally, this is the homework you do before the technical setup, because it determines how you structure your training courses and training profiles.
Collecting and structuring content. What teaching materials already exist? These could be anything from PowerPoint presentations from internal training courses to video recordings, external e-learning modules, or PDF handouts. This material must be assessed, cleaned up, and structured for the platform.
Who creates the content? This is one of the most frequently asked questions, and one that surprises many organizations. A learning platform does not provide ready-made training courses. It is the infrastructure; you provide the content. This can be your own content (existing presentations, instructional videos, protocols), externally purchased e-learning courses from content partners, or a combination of both. For healthcare and educational organizations, there are specialized content partners that are tailored to the sector. It's important to consider this early on in the process: what do we already have, what do we purchase, and who is responsible for keeping it up to date?
Opt for both formal and informal learning. An LMS is not just for mandatory courses. Also consider how you can facilitate informal knowledge sharing: articles, FAQs, knowledge bases. The more ambitious you are in this regard, the richer your learning environment will be, but also the more preparation it will require.
Link to HR system. Without an existing LMS, you often don't have a standardized way of keeping track of training data in personnel files. Implementation is a good time to set this up properly. A certified link to AFAS, for example, ensures that this will happen automatically from now on.
Login infrastructure. How do employees log in? Thanks to a link with Microsoft Entra ID (Single Sign-On), employees do not need to remember a separate password and access is immediately secured.
A common misunderstanding we encounter is that organizations believe the implementation partner also provides the content, or conversely, that they have to do everything themselves.
The division is clear: you determine the content, policy, and choices. Procademy , advises, and supports with the platform. This boundary is not only practical but also fundamental; ownership of the content always remains with the organization itself. This is the only way to ensure that a learning environment truly aligns with the practical experience of your people.
What Procademy : technical setup, connections, implementation support, administrator training, and ongoing support via the helpdesk and knowledge base.
What you do: determine which training courses will be offered, who can take them, what the training policy is, and how you involve employees. And: keep the platform alive after it goes live.
This division of roles is also a good indicator of feasibility. If no one internally is willing or able to take on this responsibility, it is a sign that you should first invest in this capacity before setting up a platform or choosing a platform that includes content.
Want to know if your organization is ready for an LMS? Answer the following five questions honestly:
1. Who is the internal owner? Is there someone who is leading this project, making decisions, and will bear ultimate responsibility after it goes live? Without an internal owner, an LMS implementation will stall.
2. How many FTEs do we need to free up? During the implementation process, an internal project manager will need to spend an average of 8–16 hours per week on the project , plus the time spent by administrators, IT, and communications staff. Is that capacity available?
3. What is our training policy? Do you know which training courses are mandatory, for whom, and how often? If you don't have an answer to that question, it makes sense to formulate one before setting up a platform.
4. What does our HR infrastructure look like?Which HR system do you use? How are employees classified? The more organized that foundation is, the smoother the technical connection will be.
5. What is our long-term ambition? Do you want to digitize simple training administration, or do you want to build a fully-fledged learning environment with personalized learning paths, knowledge sharing, and external users? The answer determines the scope of the setup.
CVO (Christian Secondary Education) is a great example of how an organization can successfully take its first step without waiting for everything to be perfect.
CVO provides education through seven school groups in the Rotterdam region, with 2,500 employees and over 21,000 students. When Sanne Kamphuisen took up her position as Manager of CVO Academie in 2022, there was no learning platform at all. Knowledge sharing took place informally, often via Google Forms, and therefore remained stuck at the level of the individual school groups. The ambition was greater: one professional, central academy for the entire organization.
The CVO Academy went live in June 2023. Not with hundreds of training courses at once, but with a clear structure and clear learning objectives. Sanne's most important tip for other organizations: "Don't fall into the trap of wanting too much at once. Start small and set clear learning objectives. Procademy help with that."
This phased approach has proven successful. In the 2025-2026 academic year, the CVO Academy offered 245 learning activities, ranging from podcasts and masterclasses to workshops and learning bytes. The platform is easily accessible and user-friendly for every employee, from scale 3 to 16. "Participating is very easy, from searching to registering. We score four out of five, and everyone can work with it well."
CVO also demonstrates that an academy does not have to rely solely on externally purchased content. The focus is on the knowledge of employees themselves. More than half of the workshops at the annual CVO Knowledge Festival, which was attended by nearly 2,000 colleagues, were given by our own colleagues.
Sanne Procademy about the collaboration with Procademy : "If you want to work in a development-oriented way, Procademy is Procademy great platform that allows you to stay in tune with the development phase of the organization and employees. Procademy , moves, and grows with us."
Read the full CVO customer story →
An LMS is an investment in time, money, and organizational energy. But for organizations that want to work structurally on the development of their employees, it is also one of the most valuable tools they can use.
The good news: you don't have to have everything perfect at once. As CVO shows, a smart implementation is one that starts small and grows with you. You first set up the core, a clear structure, clear learning objectives, the first learning activities, and build on that step by step.
Procademy organizations in healthcare and education through this entire process, from the initial orientation to a fully independently managed Academy. More than 160,000 participants from over 100 organizations—including Visio, Bartiméus, Timon, Nidos, and Cito—use our platform every day. We are happy to help you think through your specific situation, ambitions, and preconditions.
Are you curious about what an LMS can do for your organization? Contact us for a no-obligation consultation.
