Introducing a corporate learning management system is, for many, an incredible way to nurture growth within the organization. But comparing different corporate LMS’s, features, benefits, prices etc. can quickly become chaotic, luckily, there are ways to quickly evaluate without compromising.
Reverse thinking to find the right corporate LMS
Start your journey by establishing what you would like your desired end-goal to be, and then work you way to the start. Think, funnel.
1. What is your desired outcome from using the LMS?
To establish a performance culture within the organization?
Is it to enable your employees through education in various forms?
Or is it a combination of securing compliance and promoting personal growth?
2. Which challenges could cause implementation / usage to be an issue?
Employees not engaging with the LMS or just clicking through assigned learning?
Multiple users and habits: different devices, platforms, languages, countries etc.
Difficult implementation and a steep learning curve
3. Evaluating the various Corporate LMS solutions:
Comparing the many providers with each other can be quite time-consuming, if you haven’t seen this particular article.
Using review databases is a great way of seeing how other people rank the product, and how using it affects their day to day.
Finding your new LMS – made easy!
Since you have just established what your needs and possible challenges are, you now know what you are looking for and thus can easily exclude systems that do not have the necessary features or benefits.
Real world examples
Let’s talk through a common scenario. Jane has been tasked by her board of directors to ensure that every employee in their 200 stores in different countries, are compliant with the new laws. Also, she sees this as an opportunity to educate and help her colleagues in the stores, increasing their confidence with selling and ultimately leading to increased revenue, and happier employees.
Jane’s desired outcome from the corporate LMS is: To educate 2,000 employees speaking multiple languages, and to set goals & do performance reviews without it being time-consuming.
Potential challenges
Jane knows, that some of her challenges could be, that people speak different languages, and that the new laws will have to be fully known by everyone within 1 month. Also, they have very little time to do performance appraisals, so it needs to have some sort of automation.
Jane now knows, what she needs: A corporate LMS that includes performance management, and supports multiple languages. She also knows, that it needs to have performance review templates and a way to track if everyone saw the new set of laws. Since she wants to ensure that they understand it, she also needs to be able to create a test.
– Everything has to be able, to be done 1 time and then pushed to everyone.
– Lastly, it needs to be cloud-based so there is no IT setup needed and it can be up and running fast.
Finding & evaluating corporate learning management systems
Since Jane knows exactly what she needs, she quickly goes through the various corporate LMS’s she found, and finds 3 that suits her.
She then schedules a demo of the solution and makes sure to ask how they would handle each of the possible challenges she has.
Spending 20 minutes on a demonstration of the platform where you are able to ask questions, ishighly advisable as it puts you in a position of both power and learning. This gives you various ideas and insights you can bring with you when evaluating learning management systems.
