Five steps to LMS success
As companies and organizations grow, the need to develop employee capabilities and offer career development opportunities becomes critical. The ability to scale and deliver learning to employees beyond a “lunch and learn” can be costly and complex. A learning management system (LMS) provides the flexibility and ability to deliver learning to employees quickly and effectively.
How do you start? The logical starting point is searching the Internet for LMS providers which will most likely yield numerous options to choose from or even asking for a recommendation from a professional network. There are many solutions out there but knowing which LMS provider has the right solution and features is critical for an organization’s success.
These are the five key steps to ensure companies get the best LMS strategy and solution, right-sized to their needs:
Step 1: Develop a learning strategy
Devising a learning strategy can take as little as 2-3 weeks and is a critical step that should never be overlooked. You already know your business and the goals it’s trying to achieve. Your learning strategy should support that goal. For example, if the business goal is to achieve 5% growth, the learning strategy has to identify the capabilities needed at every level in the organization to achieve that growth and what paths employees should take
Step 2: Create use cases
Understanding how your employees are trained today and the learning processes utilized is essential in understanding what you need to implement for the future. By creating use cases based on employee profiles and the types of learning programs and development opportunities you wish to implement both today and tomorrow ensures that the LMS contributes to future business goals.
Step 3: Define your business and IT requirements
Some people confuse use cases for requirements. Requirements are a list of features and functions that are essential in the LMS platform based on the use cases and the company’s technical infrastructure. It’s critical to provide the expectations for what you want the system to contain (e.g. user experience, content, reporting, administration, communication and collaboration). IT can define a list of technical requirements to ensure the LMS can be deployed within the company’s existing infrastructure (e.g. single sign-on).
Step 4: Do your homework
This step will take some time but don’t assume that any top LMS provider will have all the key requirements and will be the right fit. My rule of thumb is to do an initial evaluation with at least 5-6 vendors, choosing a large, medium, and a small LMS provider. Take the time to see their product, ask key questions on the most critical requirements and then narrow it down 3-4 vendors to include in an RFP process.
Step 5: Take your time
Once you receive responses to the RFP, evaluate the submissions, write down questions and ensure they meet the use cases and requirements. Schedule a 2-3 hour demo with each vendor ensuring the key decision makers are able to attend. Ask the vendor to demo the platform based on the use cases, including access to a sandbox environment. This is critical to evaluate the user experience. Make sure all your evaluators are experimenting with all the sandboxes and score the requirements for each LMS provider. This will ultimately provide the transparency you need to make the best decision.
Choosing the best provider isn’t simple but with the right process and the person to guide it, a company can implement the best LMS designed for business growth and employee needs.
Startup Learning guides companies with learning strategy, LMS selection and implementation. Working with both businesses and startups, companies rely on us for the big picture strategy to the nuts-and-bolts implementation. Reach out to us to find out how we can start up your learning organization.