Trevor,
Since you want to avoid reinventing the wheel, I would suggest that your programmer simply look into making your LMS SCORM Compliant. SCORM 1.2 is the simplest version to comply with but most people agree SCORM 2004 version 3 is a better choice because it allows for sequencing rules.
If you REALLY want your LMS to stand out from the crowd more then by all means look at making it compliant with the newer TinCan xAPI standard.
Captivate already publishes to all of these standards. So ensuring your own LMS will work with them means that you can potentially have a larger number of e-learning developers out there that are able to contribute content for your LMS.