When It’s Time To Move On To A New LMS
Software always looks nice on its parent company's website, ads, or print brochures. That's what those things are for, after all: to make a product look good so that people will buy it.
Time-limited feature-restricted demos, the kind that only allows a shallow glimpse of the full product to potential buyers, can also be quite misleading. That's especially true for multifaceted business software such as an LMS platform.
Fortunately, you don't have to remain stuck with the wrong LMS for all eternity.
Used to be that you had to pay good money upfront for enterprise software in general and for an LMS in particular, but today's popular rent-a-software business model allows you to just cancel an unsatisfactory old subscription and switch to another one at little or no cost (one of the benefits of Cloud computing).
Besides, even if you did pay good money for some boxed LMS software, it makes little sense to stick to a platform that you find unproductive. You would be committing what economists call a "sunk cost fallacy". Just cut your losses, and switch to a better product.
In this article, we're going to discuss all those subtle and not-so-subtle signs that tell you that you should switch to a new LMS for your business.
1. Your LMS Is Hard To Use
Your LMS might be powerful, but that's of no real value if it's so complex that it takes a computer engineering degree to use it (and even if you have such a degree, what about your learners?).
You know the kind of software that we're talking about: non-intuitive, badly designed UX, complex settings, a heavy configuration process, everything you want to achieve requires a few steps too many.
Used to be that such software was par for the course when it came to the enterprise (that's how software consultants used to make money: helping businesses configure complex enterprise platforms).
Fortunately, the advent of Cloud computing and SaaS (Software as a Service) saw a marked improvement in intuitiveness and a renewed respect for the role of the UX designer. Still, not all LMS vendors got that memo, so you should keep ease of use and overall flexibility in mind when evaluating your new LMS.
2. It’s Not Built To Fit Your Needs
eLearning covers many niches and use cases, and not all of them are served equally well with the same piece of software.
Some businesses, for example, discover, a little too late, that the LMS platform that they've invested in is hardly any good for corporate use, and lacks the features and integration options required for enterprise software.
It's not because said LMS are necessarily bad -- it might just be that they're designed with a different target market in mind (e.g. academic use), and are not meant as learning management systems for business.
If you are a business, don't just settle for a "jack of all trades" LMS, or some LMS that's fit for an entirely different use case to employee training.
Drop it, and invest in a good corporate training oriented LMS -- which will not only offer features suited to your use cases but will also be written and supported by people who understand your needs.
3. Its Reporting Is Limited
We live in the era of Big Data for a good reason: data, when appropriately aggregated and digested, are the best tools to help businesses make informed decisions on all aspects of their operation. Or, as they used to say even before we had an internet: information is power.
Your corporate training is no exception to the above rule.
LMS platforms with poor reporting options make it hard to evaluate your learner's progress (test scores alone won't do) and don't offer you the kind of actionable insight that will help your instructors improve your training material either.
If you're stuck with such a piece of software, maybe it's time to move on and look for a new LMS that doesn't skimp on its reporting functionality.
4. It Is Not Mobile Optimized
One of the biggest benefits of an online training system is that it frees your learners from a strict classroom-based training regime, allowing them to study at their own pace.
To fully exploit this newfound freedom, however, your LMS needs to be mobile optimized ― so that your learners can study anytime and at any place. This includes their morning commute, while flying to meet a client, on the corporate cafeteria, and so on.
Sure, most LMS platform does offer mobile access. The problem is that it usually involves a slower-performing rudimentary version of their desktop portal.
Or worse, an unusable, full-featured but impossibly cluttered one (you know, the kind that tries to cram everything from their desktop app into a 5-inch smartphone screen).
What you should look for instead in a new LMS is that it offers a mobile native application optimized for the smaller screen and streamlined for microlearning.
5. There Is A Lack Of Support
You know what's worse for getting stuck with a difficult to use enterprise application? Getting stuck with a difficult to use enterprise application and no support. Or bad support, which is a good as none.
Some enterprise vendors are renowned for their poor customer support. Others insist on outsourcing their customer services to remote customer support "specialists" that are unfamiliar with the product and can only recite from a canned call center script.
If you're stuck with a vendor that won't reply to your support tickets, or whose customer support team seems to know even less about the product that you do, it's probably time to jump ship to a new LMS. One from a vendor that insists on quality after-sales service, and whose support team can delve into your specific problems ― and help you fix them.
6. It Is Too Expensive For What It Offers
The enterprise market is the land of overpriced software. It might be because those who decide the purchases don't pay out of their own pockets, or because the bureaucratic procurement-by-committee procedures don’t help much in determining which software is best for the company.
Whatever the size of your company, it still makes sense to pay closer attention to the kind of software you buy, as a bad decision won’t only cost you the price of said software, but might also negatively affect your overall productivity.
Besides, whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or a small startup shop, getting a better value for your money never hurt anyone.
If your LMS platform costs too much (either as a subscription or in a periodic update and/or support costs), then it's maybe time to evaluate alternative options. If your current LMS is overpriced, there might be new LMS for you that might not only be cheaper but better too.
Conclusion
In this article, we had a look at some of the ways that your corporate LMS is failing your business. It might be so hard to use that your employees despise using it, or are constantly in the fear of breaking something by clicking around (or worse, are constantly actually breaking something). Or it might be unfit for corporate learning, having been designed for another use case such as academic training. Which would be fine, if your employees haven’t left school a long time ago.
Poor reporting options would also qualify an LMS as unfit for corporate use, as would the lack of a native mobile application for it (what is this, 2012?).
Last, but not least, a bad customer support experience and a price tag that doesn’t match the feature set on offer, are also a pretty common pair of enterprise LMS sins -- the atonement which will only come from picking your next LMS more carefully.
So, if you decided that it’s time you picked another LMS to implement your training programs, make sure to choose wisely. TalentLMS’ latest cheat sheet on "How to choose an LMS" is armed with all the wisdom, so you really can’t go wrong!
