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LMS implementations can range from being very complex to relatively simple, depending on the details of your learning objectives and how you intend to use the LMS to satisfy these objectives. In almost any scenario, a successful LMS implementation will require a solid plan that should consider addressing the following issues:
Are you replacing an existing LMS? If so, you will most likely want to preserve all of your historical data and migrate it to your new system. A thorough plan on how to export the existing data and map it into the new LMS will be critical to ensure the overall success of your implementation.
In many cases, you will want your LMS to be integrated with your other systems; this can be handled automatically as a nightly data push of your employee profile information from a payroll system, HRS, or any other system used in your organization. To configure this automation, part of your implementation plan will be to identify what data is to be pushed to the LMS and how the LMS should handle the data. Another form of integration can be pulling records or data from the LMS to your other systems; this is usually performed by either nightly file transfers or done dynamically using the LMS API. The latter allows the LMS to communicate with other web applications.
A good LMS allows you to automate much of the backend workflow within the system itself. For example, group assignments, permissions, course enrollments, etc., can and should all be automated to the fullest extent possible. Setting up these automations will require thought and planning for how employee information (their user profile) will drive the LMS automation/behavior. In the long-run, researching these capabilities and effectively utilizing them can save a lot of time and expense.
Identifying your training needs, and associated curriculum is a big and ongoing task. Your curriculum within the LMS requires upfront planning for determining the best conventions related to course names, course codes, tagging, descriptions, etc. Planning this out in advance will ensure consistency and will support meaningful search results by your users.
Your LMS is an extension of your enterprise and it should fit with your company branding. In simple cases, this is just a matter of uploading the company logo and other basic branding elements. Some systems can support more extensive branding, usually with CSS or customizations by the vendor, essentially creating a new skin for the LMS that designed specifically for you.
You need to think through all of the email notifications your LMS will be sending out; these can be generic messages or specific to each course and trigger event.
More and more Learning Management Systems are offered as SaaS hosted solutions - essentially putting the hosting environment in the hands of your LMS vendor. However, if you are purchasing a software license that needs to be hosted, either by you or the vendor, upfront planning is required to ensure that the hosting environment meets your needs and can gracefully grow if your server requirements change.
In our experience, we’ve found that if your plan has properly addressed each of the above topics then you are going in extremely well-prepared and should not be derailed by unanticipated problems. Needless to say, make sure to have open lines of communication between the vendor (experts on the LMS) and your training team (experts on your individual needs) as this LMS implementation process usually requires continued evaluation and refinement.
