One of the main challenges when starting to invest in corporate education is choosing an LMS platform, a Learning Management System.
In addition to the technical operating criteria, it’s necessary to analyze your educational objectives, target audience, and the subjects that will be covered.
So how can you choose an LMS that fits in your budget, caters to your needs, and ensures optimal results?
We’ve prepared 5 tips on how to choose the most appropriate LMS for your business.
Define your objectives, needs, expectations and limitations
Begin by answering a few questions:
- What are your strategic objectives with the training program?
- What needs do your teams have?
- What expectations do your employees have for the program?
- What type of learning do you need to deliver?
- When and where will learning take place?
- Which technologies and devices are going to be used?
- What is the investment available?
This clear view of objectives, needs, expectations, and limitations allows you to make more informed decisions, objective decisions based on facts.
Define the managerial tools required
With a clear view of the motivations of your program, move on to performance analysis. Answer these questions:
- What data and indicators do you expect to have?
- How is each area going to use these data?
- How must the data be structured?
- How often do the data need to be made available?
- What are the skills required to extract this information?
Ask your supplier for explanations, detailed examples and demos of the features that you’ve identified as necessary.
Require flexibility
Get to know your target audience and the subjects that will be covered well. That way, you can understand clearly which formats will have better results and optimize your investments.
In some situations, a fully on-line, on-demand training program is required. In other situations, a training with on-line lessons and live mediation by facilitators is required. Perhaps you need a combination of both formats.
Also, analyze the supported devices (notebooks, smartphones, and tablets), possible multimedia formats (text, audio, and video), and interactivity resources available (integration with social networks, corporate communication systems, management tools, etc.).
The focus here is to understand if the LMS can deliver all of these requirements. Perhaps it will be necessary to customize the platform, and that can include additional investments.
Assess the technical capabilities of the LMS
Behind the simple and friendly interface of an LMS lies a complex, highly technological system. It’s what supports all the resources used on the platform.
Determine if your LMS supplier has the technical capabilities to resolve technical issues that may come up. To be functional, a platform must be able to handle access traffic, perform updates, allow the management of resources, and generate performance data.
So make sure you can receive quality technical support when you need it and that when necessary the platform will receive specialized technical maintenance quickly and safely.
Involve your team in the exploration process
Ask for a demo to explore the resources and features of the LMS that you’re considering and invite your teams to participate in this process.
This is a way for you to analyze jointly if what’s being offered caters to each area’s needs and objectives. The contributions from those areas may help you design a more effective training program and optimize your investments.
Additionally, ask for a trial period so that you and your team can explore the system, its limitations, advantages and disadvantages in depth. Use concrete, objective information to make an informed decision.
Did you know that Kaptiva offers a complete LMS solution with development, customization, and support?
Click here and discover Lumina: the LMS by Kaptiva.