Beware Of Bad Choices: Does Your Learning Management System Selection Process Look Like Tinder?
There are more than 500 different Learning Management Systems on the market today. Needless to say, finding the right one for your organization can be a daunting task. The good news is there are a lot of great prospects to be your next LMS partner. The bad news is that on the surface, we all fill our websites and collateral with language that touts like-sounding product features and benefits – they can’t all be swipe rights!
Sure, you can swipe right on some good looking prospects and go on a series of speed dates. Or, as we more aptly describe it in the world of eLearning - attend DevLearn (hope to see you there!), and schedule a handful of follow-on demos. But it’s easy to get enamored with some fancy bells and whistles only to discover 6 months later that you made the wrong choice. So, how do you make sure you make the right choice? Like most major relationship decisions, the key is to understand yourself before you go seeking the right partner. Follow these 5 steps to find the LMS of your dreams:
1. Build The Right Team
Selecting and implementing an LMS is not something we suggest you take on without some help. You’ll likely need support to finalize budgets, secure resources, get input on needs, and champion the decision once it’s made.
Do: Take time to build the right team. This will include champions and stakeholders from IT, Corporate Comms, HR, Procurement, and others.
2. Identify Your Customers
While you may be tasked with selecting the LMS, you aren’t the end customer. That’s your employees, customers, or partners who will be using the platform. It’s these customers who will ultimately be the judge and jury of your selection, so make sure you clearly define them upfront, document their primary needs, and make them an integral part of the selection process.
Do: Identify key user groups and their key training initiatives.
3. Understand Your Environment (And Its Constraints)
In today’s HR Tech landscape, it’s rare for an LMS to be a stand-alone solution. You’ll likely want to integrate with other systems including HRIS, performance management, social platforms, virtual classroom technology, CRM, data warehouses, LRS’s, and more. These integrations typically require additional investment, and if either the LMS or one of your other systems doesn’t use a modern standard, this investment can rise quickly, or in some cases, make it cost-prohibitive to integrate all together.
Do: Document integration requirements, and pull in system owners, so they can share and review technical specifications to get an accurate understanding of the effort to integrate.
4. Prioritize
If you’ve followed steps 1-3, you probably are starting to paint a fairly complex picture for an LMS and its implementation. There’s not one LMS in the market that will magically morph to be a perfect fit for every user group and training initiative. You’ll need to make some tough decisions to meet key needs, and likely have less than optimal solutions for others. It’s important to be clear about which qualities are must haves, and which you flaws you can live with.
Do: Prioritize needs that you aren’t willing to compromise on as key criteria in your selection process.
5. Sketch Out User Stories
Everyone loves a good story, and the same applies when selecting a Learning Management System, or an LMS in short. Too often, organizations looking for an LMS come forward with a list of features, and it’s all too easy for most LMS companies to tick the box ("Yes, the LMS can meet this need"). And that may be true, but that response lacks context, and with context comes user and administrator experience. Just meeting a feature requirement isn’t enough. For your best match, features should be available in the flow of an intuitive User Experience. User stories will create great test demo scripts to provide to prospective LMS partners for your analysis.
Do: Write user stories that encapsulate key requirements. Identify the actors, specific examples of how they’ll use a feature, and your expectations for that experience. Ask prospective LMS partners to show you how their product will meet the need.
Just like your perfect match in the world, the right LMS for your organization is about more than a sexy list of clicks and feeds. More than anything, it’s about understanding your own needs, and then finding the right match. Documenting your top requirements and use cases, keeping your goals clearly in mind, and assessing how well each vendor fits your needs should lead you to making the right choice! Don’t get too tied up in traditional RFP formats; the RFP is yours, and you have the right to ask vendors to respond in the way that’s most useful to you.
Ready to start planning your next LMS selection? Check our LMS Planning Guide for even more insights on how to navigate the process successfully.
