How To Select A Learning Management System
Selecting a Learning Management System (LMS) may be one of the most important decisions you make for your eLearning project. A Learning Management System is usually quite expensive, takes a lot of effort to implement and will be with you for quite a while. It will also affect everyone who will be using eLearning in your company, and we all know that keeping your users satisfied is one of the keys to success.
We tend to select a Learning Management System looking for features and innovations. We look at what is on top, and only after the purchase we realize that our platform is not what we were dreaming about. Here are some tips to select a Learning Management System; they will help you look at what is really important and necessary.
- Check the Learning Management System using scenarios, but not lengthy feature lists.
- Develop use case scenarios that are aligned with your eLearning goals and processes.
- Ask the vendor to live demonstrate you the Learning Management System using these scenarios.
- Remember that the longer is the feature list the more difficult it will be to check if everything is really working; you may end up having all boxes checked and a Learning Management System that doesn’t really suit you.
- Be sure that customization is possible.
- Can you customize the Learning Management System for your processes and tasks?
- Ask the vendor to show you the process of customization.
- When you will need to update, how easy it will be to upgrade your customized system? Be sure that all upgrades will be easy and will not require many additional resources.
- Do not buy “big names” in the client's list.
- A Learning Management System implementation in a large company doesn’t necessarily mean that the system is working and actively being used.
- Ask for real cases based on scenarios or business tasks, even if they are not from your business area.
- Every company is unique, so look for efficiency of your scenarios.
- History is important.
- How the Learning Management System you are looking at has evolved during the last couple of years? What new features have appeared, and how often?
- History can also tell you a lot about the future; a Learning Management System should always keep developing and adding new stuff.
- Look for the specialists.
- Are there any specialists working with this Learning Management System? How easy is to find them and get one of them to work for you?
- The more specialists there are around, the more the Learning Management System's implementations are on the market.
- Think about the future.
- In what direction you want to develop your Learning Management System? Are you thinking about knowledge management or talent management?
- Ask the vendor to show you some potential future scenarios; will it be possible for you to grow in the desired direction?
- Look for cases of upscaling in other companies using this Learning Management System.
- Join the Learning Management System’s community of users.
- Find the community of specialists who are using this Learning Management System and check what are they talking about.
- Ask how the Learning Management System really works, how the support is organized, and how it feels to be the client of this particular vendor.
- The users’ community itself is a good sign; it means that there are people who are using this Learning Management System.
