After all the difficulties you faced in your employee training, you must have decided to opt for an LMS that can fix some of your training problems. But, there is a high chance that you get overwhelmed by seeing a plethora of options to choose from. With so many LMS vendors around with glossy features and affordable prices, you cannot choose an LMS unless you have absolute clarity of what you want.
If you compare every LMS one by one, it takes a hell lot of time and it’s impossible to go through even the top learning management systems as there are many. Thus, in this article, we have decided to list down a few things that you need to keep in mind before you opt for an LMS.
Table of Contents
1)Do a thorough need analysis:
The first and foremost thing you need to do is to set up a meeting with all the stakeholders involved. These can be from the human resource, IT, and the L&D department. Because they hold a vital stake, they can give their valuable insights and share their needs on the same. Your leadership team may be looking to expand the trainees in the next season, so they need an LMS that can support the growth, the L&D department might look for a highly adaptable LMS, and the IT team may look for accessibility and security regulations in the LMS. Likewise, each department can bring in their perspectives and help you to choose the best LMS.
2)List the requirements:
Now that you have gathered all the information from your stakeholders, you can now formulate a list of must-have requirements for your LMS. Categorize your requirements into three types, the first one is the must-have, the second is nice to have and the third one is optional. If you have this clarity, you can pick the LMS from the vendors without much hassle.
You need to ensure the LMS has the majority of the features from the first type; the rest of the two types depend on your requirement and budget. This process makes it easier for you to filter out vendors that don’t fit your requirement,
3)Know about different LMS platforms:
Your learning management systems come in different formats like cloud-based, on-premise, and open source. So, you need to choose the ones that fit your requirements. In a cloud-based LMS, the vendor hosts the software in a remote server where your learners can access the training content anywhere in the world. For an on-premise LMS, your IT staff looks after everything right from the installation to any other issues. With an open-source LMS, anyone can code and configure the LMS to their needs.
4)Know about your vendors:
Know about your LMS vendors and find out whether your feature requirement matches theirs. Compare features and prices of different LMS and finalize the one that fits your budget and needs. Check the customer feedback, find out whether their customer support team is active or not, and try to find out about the overall credibility of the LMS vendor.
5)Make use of free trials:
Free trails help you to use the tool, experience its functionality, user-interface and use most of its features before you pay a single penny. Many learning management systems like 360Learning offer free trials, which can help you make an informed decision. During the demo with the vendor, you can also invite your stakeholders so that their questions can be answered by an expert during the trial period itself.
Conclusion:
Before you opt for an LMS, you must evaluate your needs and check various learning management systems so that you get a better idea of what you need. We hope this article gives you an insight into how to conduct a comprehensive LMS evaluation.
