How to choose a Learning Management System - Part 2 – Working out what you’ll need

This is our second blog post in a series of joint blog posts with Clint Smith from LearnWorks on choosing a Learning Management System (LMS). At the end of our ‘choosing an LMS’ blog post series we plan to release an eBook that will be based on the blog posts.

Working out what you’ll need

At this stage you will have some form of strategy or blueprint in place, so that you know where you’re heading. You will also have done enough homework to know that there is a new breed of LMS out there – LMSs that are able to integrate with social media and have more user-friendlier interfaces compared to the tools of the past. So which is the right one for you?

The approach we are suggesting is to begin with exploring the different types of eLearning your organisation wants and how they will be used, rather than investigating the different LMSs first.

At the starting point you should ask these questions:

1. What do you want to deliver?
2. What do you need self-paced learning for, and when would you use online facilitated learning? What’s the best fit?
3. What is the business case for each mode?

Get everyone on board

It is vitally important to have one or more workshops early in the process that include everyone involved in the LMS selection project. This seems obvious but doesn’t always happen. At the workshops, your L&D team should take the time to explain the vision. Representatives from management should have input regarding business goals and budget (and politics). IT should explain system compatibility, integration and security issues. And together you should devise an ongoing communications program to sing the praises of the new platform and programs.

We have often seen non-negotiable and critical technical requirements introduced very late in a request-for-quotation process, when minimum requirements should already have been addressed in the very early stages.

Developing a shared language

Agreeing on what you’re talking about in the area of learning technologies is the first big hurdle. It is not easy. These early workshops will help to develop a shared language. It is important to include:

• an overview of the main types of eLearning, with working labels for each
• some practical examples of successful eLearning programs which have delivered performance improvements and business results
• a quick guide to the different types of LMS in the market (self-paced platforms, corporate LMSs, education LMSs, virtual learning environments), their key function sets and typical add-ons
• a quick overview of the capabilities required to support eLearning effectively.

Although it is often challenging, sharing this kind of information early in the process with everyone involved in LMS selection will save a lot of time and prevent misunderstandings from arising.

Plan for the future, not just the present

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to wave a magic wand and immediately have the LMS of your choice there and ready to use?

It doesn’t work like that. Implementing an LMS takes time and it is important not only to focus on what you need now but what you might need in the near future. What are you going to be doing next year? Or in the next three years? What are your priorities? What does your program look like and what kinds of eLearning are you going to provide?

This is often an uncomfortable discussion for an organisation because everyone is expecting to talk mostly about the sexy new features they want from an LMS. Your organisation might be ready to pounce and know exactly what you want to use it for. That’s great – but most organisations are not ready.

Focus on some real, specific projects or courses

One approach we’ve found that works well is to choose the most important three to five learning programs that you want your new LMS to support and use them as your trial products or “exemplars” for the LMS you are looking at.

For the exemplars, try to pick learning challenges which address pressing business needs (your big impact items) and require a range of solutions, such as:

• a procedural skill (which suits self-paced delivery)
• something requiring cultural change (has to be collaborative and social)
• a more complex skill area (needs a facilitated online approach).

Develop short descriptions for each (business outcomes, content, scope, target learners) and spell out the preferred delivery solution or mix of solutions for each, such as self-paced, online, mobile, network or webinars.

To get clarity focus on some real, specific projects or courses.

You could use a simple planning grid like this:

Program	Goals, rationale	Delivery mix	Strategic fit
	why a priority, business outcomes, content, scope, target learners	self-paced, facilitated online, mobile, community of practice, coaching, webinars	how this fits the culture, the organisation’s priorities, supports the L&D vision, and will maximise uptake and impact
Exemplar 1
Exemplar 2
Exemplar 3
Exemplar 4

In this process your team will explore in detail what your future LMS needs to provide. As a bonus, you have some authentic use cases ready for your Request documents, and you’ve done the early work with a handful of programs so you can hit the ground running with compelling examples of what eLearning can do for the organisation. You have set the main focus on products and benefits, not on features and tools.

Often the implementation of new learning technologies can be used as a subtle way to introduce reforms and changes to learning approaches in your organisations. You can begin to show people that an LMS has a powerful role in enabling new learning possibilities and isn’t just a mysterious piece of software that lives somewhere in L&D or IT. Planning these exemplars means you are making the new opportunities visible, setting up early wins, and preparing the ground to measure and celebrate success.

This approach also means that staff and the whole organisation gain early ownership of the innovation. The process of exploring the repertoire of learning brings out new possibilities and puts them on the agenda. It gets an organisation thinking about learning in new ways, even before the LMS has been chosen, so the platform is the means and not the end. If the first three programs you come up with are all self-paced eLearning modules, your learning culture might need some serious rethinking.

Once you get your delivery repertoire clearer through the exemplars, the acquisition project can be broken down into the system requirements you need to provide the necessary functions and features to put them into practice. On the other hand, if you begin with the dreaded “shopping list” manifesto of all the desired LMS features, with appendices, the temptation and danger is to write down everything you think you need or want with no thought as to what you can actually use or achieve. Committees are exceptionally good (or bad) at this: there is the fear of missing something out. They are also prone to another technology ailment we call “feature fetish”.

Request documents for LMS purchases are becoming simpler, shorter and less technical. They are more about the delivery solutions that the LMS enables than about guessing the precise system features needed to underpin them. Most LMSs will have some strengths and weakness, some gaps, and will need some workarounds for your organisational context. You can never fully prescribe requirements for such a complex system in one hit. A good provider will present their service as an iterative customisation process over time that systematically shapes the platform to your organisation's needs.

In the next post we will look at tips for selecting the LMS itself.

You might also be interested the first post in this series, “Choosing a Learning Management System - Working out where you want to get to”.