Business Process Guidance (BPG) initially evolved from the Learning and Development concept of Employee Performance Support Systems (EPSS). Because of these origins some organizations have attempted (unsuccessfully) to use their Learning Management Systems (LMS) to achieve the same outcomes as BPG.

This LMS-based approach involves slicing up learning content into the smallest possible elements and applying a metadata schema like SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) to build a real-time support system within an existing LMS infrastructure. This approach has been largely unsuccessful :

These factors explain the poor employee adoption rates of the LMS-based process guidance initiatives and why time-and-again organizations in complex, changing and regulated environments turn to a dedicated BPG system.