In the past year it was remarkable that the vast majority of our (new) customers changed their learning strategy.
Unfortunately, the reason was an external factor (which we would rather not talk about in this blog). This external factor meant that our customers were more or less obliged to think about how they want to implement and optimize digital learning in their business.
Even more remarkable: even if the need for a digital strategy was higher in 2020, it did not cause customers to make hasty decisions. On the contrary! We have never given so many “How To Choose Your Learning Management System” workshops as we did last year. Where most of our customers used to take care of the pre-process (for the effective choice of a Learning Management System (LMS)) themselves, we noticed that in 2020 they relied more on our expertise for this and even questioned their own analysis work.
There is an increasing demand for this type of service and therefore we decided to share some tips & tricks with you when you’re considering implementing an LMS.
An LMS can do much more than solely providing online learning content.
Depending on the system you choose, you can add tracks towards for example Competency Management (defining learning tracks, setting up competency frameworks, implementing a 360 follow-up, …) and HR Management (onboarding, staff policies, …).
Get started
First of all, it will be essential to map your reasons on why you would like to implement an LMS.
- What is the goal and the scope?
- What should such a system be able to do? What are the must-haves and nice-to-haves?
- When doing this exercise, it is best to take enough time and do it thoroughly, so that afterwards you don’t get any surprises on the functionalities of the system you have chosen.
- Do this exercise company-wide, to get as much input as possible from different departments and fields of expertise.
Blueprint
When you’ve got this blueprint mapped out, you are ready to get started and explore the LMS market.
Let us take you on a tour on how we shape this process at The Learning Hub!
Co-creation for the win!
At The Learning Hub, co-creation is an essential element of our success and our customers’ satisfaction. By working closely together from the start, we’re able to implement the right LMS for our clients, who all have different needs and expectations.
When we set up an LMS implementation track, we organize a workshop called How to choose your LMS. Within this workshop, we define your must-haves and nice-to-haves through a detailed Requirement Analysis. Not every company is looking for the exact same features. You may only want to map learning progress; or you may also want to link this to competencies. Maybe you see it even bigger and you’re also thinking about implementing e-commerce into the platform?
In the Requirement Analysis, we focus on specific criteria and subjects. We have defined main categories such as: Supplier, Software package and structure, Pricing and others, and have added sub-questions to each category. When this process is finished, you can easily define which functionalities are a must.
Mapping out possible solutions
The LMS market offers something for everyone, but unfortunately you will not always easily find an LMS that ticks all the boxes. Does that mean that you have to let go of your dreams and ambitions? Absolutely not. During and after the workshops we can help you map out what is possible within the most suitable LMS, what may need to be customized and what possible complications may be. This can be used as the basis to send out your Request for Information to multiple interesting vendors.
Analyzing and thinking about the features is one thing, using and maintaining them is another. Therefore it is important to start using the platform yourself. In the workshops, we show you high-level specific features of the platforms we partner with. You can also request a demo of other LMS deliveries that we consider suitable for your needs.
In other workshops, we give you a clear overview of existing vendors and the solutions they offer, so that afterwards you can start comparing them with each other. We form the link between your company and the vendor and help you with this comparison and final decision making.
Agile configuration
When you decide which LMS you would like to implement, we can assist you in every step of setting up this framework, tailored to the needs of your company. Together we define the must-haves and nice-to-haves and plan our sprints accordingly. Every week we prepare a part of the LMS and demonstrate it to you at the end of the week. We prefer to shift this demonstration approach to a teaching & coaching approach as soon as possible. The goal is to configure the chosen platform according to your wishes and make you confident so that you can effectively work with it on your own after the implementation phase.
In the past year, we’ve delivered a wide range of How to choose your LMS workshops for our clients, all remote and online. The difference between the online and onsite workshops is that we bring our own coffee and cookies, but other than that our content and the outcome stays the same: an LMS which is a 100% fit for the needs of your company.
Did this information trigger you to learn more? Then we recommend you definitely check out some of our most implemented LMS systems such as Totara, Moodle or Cornerstone. If you’d like to know more on how we could help you in the decision of choosing the right LMS for your company, feel free to reach out to us!