Almost 4 of 10 U.S. companies that use eLearning are less than satisfied with their LMS. According to Brandon Hall Group’s research LMS Trends 2015, data shows that 38% of the companies surveyed are considering a system change.
We gathered feedback from eLearning experts and created a detailed step-by-step plan that will help you see through the marketing hype and find out how to choose an LMS that matches your needs.
With so many (600+) learning platforms to select from, you need to start with a well-defined search criteria. It’s crucial to know exactly what you need from an LMS and how it can help you reach your training goals and business objectives.
Set the business goal you want to achieve with the help of eLearning. To do this, ask the question: “What do I want to achieve from training?” From the answer, it’ll become clear what result to expect. Aims should be specific, measurable, achievable, and time-limited.
For example:
To make it clear how to reach a goal — break it up into smaller tasks. The result is a realistic project roadmap.
For example, if the goal is:
Reduce the time for sales representative certification from 3 months to 1 week.
You can set the following objectives:
When choosing a learning management system, it’s critical to understand exactly who you will train. It will help you better define your learning strategy requirements in an LMS. To reach a clear understanding of who your audience is, answer five questions.
By answering these questions, you will be able to identify the LMS features needed to achieve your training goals and create a comfortable, engaging environment for learning.
After determining the learning goals, objectives, and the audience demographics, you now need to focus on the demands for the system. The more complete your list of LMS requirements, the easier it is to find the ‘best-fit’ solution.
It’s important to define your LMS requirements through the lens of your business in three key categories. To learn what the lms requirements are, read the article.
You’ve already defined the LMS features you need and the cost range. Now your challenge is to narrow the hundreds of choices down to a short list of solutions. To get started, use one of the following methods for selecting vendors.
“Ask your friends and colleagues what solutions they’re using. If you’re looking at an LMS and you know someone who uses it, they can be a great asset, as they have hands-on experience and can tell you how things are going.
View ratings and LMS user reviews. There are a lot of websites such as Capterra and G2Crowd that will help you compare systems.
Use the filtering tool in Capterra’s LMS software directory to check off your must-have features and narrow down the list.
Result: A ‘first-cut’ list of 10-15 learning platforms to start with.”
Now that you have a first-cut list, it’s time to dig a little deeper and learn a bit about each LMS. Ultimate goal: Get to a “short-list” of 3-5 vendors.
This research will likely shorten your list to 5-7 vendors that meet your requirements.
“However, don’t use the results of the initial research to finalize your decision, as it can mislead you from making the right choice. To choose one of several learning platforms, you have to check them yourself to make sure that they do what the vendors say.”
If you buy a car, you test drive it. Demos are key to getting a feel for the learning platform and seeing if it will help you achieve your goals. Most LMSs offer free trials, usually for 14-days. During this time, you have a chance to check all its capabilities. Don’t settle for just browsing through the features; try outlining a few scenarios that you and your users will most likely experience in the system, so you can see exactly what they look like.
Find out what services tech support provides and make sure to try contacting the support team. Pay attention to how quickly you receive an answer if the support engineer helps you to solve the problem, and whether it’s easy to communicate with them.
After you’ve tested the platforms, the shortlist is likely to be reduced to 3-5. Ask these vendors to hold a use case demonstration for you, but don’t forget to prepare in advance.
Here’s what simple Use Case might look like:
Background | Use case |
You assess your employees every three months. In two weeks, they are going to complete several courses and take tests. You want to create the courses and tests right in the LMS. | Ask the vendor to walk you through how to register a user, create a test and a course, and upload the content. |
Besides experienced employees, there are a lot of newcomers in your company for whom you need to make different learning programs. | Ask the vendor to demonstrate how to create a learning path that includes different kinds of content. |
You’re planning to hold face-to-face training with an instructor. | Ask the vendor to show how to manage classroom schedules and locations, track attendance, and assign users to courses. |
It’s a good idea to ask the vendor to conduct a demonstration from the learners’ point of view — how they log in, view courses, take tests, look through the results, and see how the system tracks their progress and data.
Prepare a list of questions that you can ask the vendor during the demo. Here’s a sample list of questions:
It sometimes happens that you can’t make a choice between two or three finalist systems, any of which meets your demands.
“To settle on a product, make a list of your requirements, including the number of learners, and send it to the vendors. LMS user-friendliness, features, availability in cloud or not, implementation timeframe, support and maintenance, final license cost — all of these play a crucial role in identifying the right LMS. Compare the responses and select the vendor whose terms suit you best.”
Choosing an LMS can seem quite intimidating, but following this guide will definitely facilitate the task. Keeping all of these helpful tips in mind will allow you to avoid a costly trial-and-error process.
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We would like to express our gratitude to our experts for sharing their expertise on how to choose an LMS and helping with this article:
Mona Shaker, an LMS expert and e-Learning consultant with wide experience in e-Learning. Mona provides technical consulting services for different educational institutes and training centers in the Middle East and Europe. She has helped multiple organizations find the perfect Learning Management System that met their business needs. Mona also consults with customers to support LMS deployments
Ravikumar Ramamurthy, lead LMS consultant at IBM India Private Limited. Ravikumar has 14+ years of experience in the area of LMS Project Management, Implementation, Configuration, Customization, Consolidation of LMS & Data/Content Migration from old legacy systems & Application Support of various Learning Management Systems.