The learning landscape has transformed immensely in the last two years, compared to previous years. The shift to digital learning is certainly unavoidable and employees have embraced this new learning platform, more so during the pandemic. It has also become a highly convenient and cost-effective training and learning solution for employers and employees.
However, the way people absorb knowledge and acquire new skills is not one-size-fits-all. As such, it is the company’s responsibility to be able to cater to a wide range of learners, learning needs, and topics.
Having the right tools and platform are imperative to becoming a successful learning organization. But how do you choose the best learning management system (LMS) for your company? With so many options now available, make sure that you’re able to choose the right one for your company’s training needs and budget.
Keep in mind that the cost of “hiring and training” is far more expensive than “upskilling and cross-skilling” your company’s existing workforce.
Here are key things that companies must keep in mind when choosing the best LMS for their training needs:
Inside-out – having a thorough understanding of your organization’s preparedness to adapt to today’s LMS enables you to better gauge what will work best for your training goals.
- Organizational maturity – be clear about where your organization is at now, what your training goals are, and how do you plan to achieve these, are absolutely crucial in adopting an effective LMS. Points to consider are what kind of learners are your employees, how comfortable they are with digital platforms, and your company’s learning goals.
- Value triad – to justify the investment that you are making in your LMS, it’s important that you are able to identify its value, both quantifiable and intangible. How will you get your ROI? How will training your employees reduce your usual operational costs and increase your profits? How long will it take to implement and take effect on your employees’ performance? Last, but definitely not least is, how will this improve your customers’ experience? All these factors – when successful, will lead to increased revenue for your company.
- Budget – being practical doesn’t always mean “cheap”. While you should have a realistic budget, it should also be able to cover all your LMS requirements. Scrimping on your LMS features will only end up being more costly for your organization in the future when you don’t achieve your training goals. Avoid overspending as well by listing down your priorities and refer to this when planning your budget and choosing your LMS.
Outside-in – LMS is integral in eLearning design and the development process, make sure to review and evaluate these LMS features.
- Open Source VS Propriety – combining cost efficiency and control, the Open Source system does not require any license fees, can be used in-house, and can be maintained by users. It has many advantages as you can easily customize and upgrade it whenever necessary. While this level of freedom and accessibility is a very attractive feature of Open Source systems, it does require more technical support. As such, your company must have the right infrastructure to support the LMS you choose to use. For it to be fully operational, you need to check your hosting servers, you need a team to run and maintain it, as well as a learning and development team that is knowledgeable about your LMS platform. Meanwhile, Proprietary eLearning platforms provide a highly comprehensive package for clients. All you need to do is pay for the service and they’ll manage all the upgrades and provide the technical support required.
- SaaS VS On-premise – SaaS solution is hosted and maintained by a third party, as such, you will not be able to get visibility of the backend as your vendor is merely a solutions provider. Meanwhile, On-premise solution is hosted in-house and typically supported by a third-party. While this could give you better insights into your learning system, there are other factors you need to consider. Will you assign a team to manage it? Do you have the technology to support it? Make sure to have these figured out as well.
- Support system of the LMS provider – it’s always better to be prepared than sorry. You never know what problems might arise like data migration issues and authentication errors. This is why it’s crucial that your LMS provider also offers excellent support services. Make sure that they are able to provide the following: phone support, email, online FAQs, knowledge base, user community, live chat and webinars. While some LMS providers also offer 1-on-1 support, it’s equally important that they are able to give you options that would be most beneficial to your organization’s in-house expertise and preparedness.
- Scalability – a scalable learning management system is able to evolve to your company’s training needs. It offers the flexibility of being optimized to taking on more users, more content, and even requests without negatively impacting your learning platform’s loading times. It’s important that your company’s LMS is scalable as you would need it to be able to grow with your business. Scalability enables you to integrate human resource information system (HRIS) tools, upgrade the technology, have an LMS reporting engine, and equally important, learning analytics. All these will give you a better understanding of your LMS and if it’s effective.
- Relevant experience – the kind of clients that your LMS provider has worked with says a lot about what they can do for your organization. Do they have a large client base? How are they able to address your queries? Having a large client base shows you how well your LMS provider works with their clients and the depth of their experience. This is another important factor as an experienced vendor will have better insights on how to best execute their proposed strategy. However, do make sure that their experience is relevant to your industry and company’s training goals. It’s a must that they have the industry knowledge that you require.
