Not your father’s Learning Management System – LMS’ aren’t just for your employees anymore

Learning Management Systems have evolved since first development in London during the 1970’s. Later that decade, LMS’ were adapted to adult learning in corporate employee training.

Today, Learning Management Systems provide training solutions for customers as well as vendors.

What types of training makes sense for customers? Software (and SAAS) companies provide an excellent example of how a LMS can add increasing value to a client’s software choice. While different clients each have their own unique customer needs, some general categories have proven valuable for customer end-user training.

Customer-side ROI:

In today’s economy, business software (and SAAS) vendors have a tough sell. Often, it’s all about ROI. As corporate IT budgets have come under greater scrutiny, ROI has an increasing influence on a client’s decision process between competing vendors. In addition, demonstration of increased ROI may be necessary to surpass current client finance department internal hurdle rates for capital investment.

End user e-learning is often offered by software vendors, but what does a Learning Management System add? e-Learning on its own can be a cost-effective delivery method, which is why many software vendors provide some sort of web based training. Can a software/SAAS vendor develop additional value adds to build competitive advantages through a Learning Management System?

Software vendors who deliver training through a LMS platform can provide additional ROI to their clients. Savvy business application development companies can deliver additional ROI to clients through tracking/reporting completion, knowledge gains, basic competency, retraining schedules, and training on new software features. Software/SAAS vendors can allow their clients to schedule training notification emails, reminders, and management reporting by adding a learning Management System to the customer experience.

Well designed web training delivered through a modern LMS can increase compatibility with client LMS systems, providing the client an integrated experience (look for SCORM compliant systems).

Once Software/SAAS vendors estimate the ROI added by the LMS, they can then determine how they want to deliver that value. This value can be realized by offering as an additional free service to clients, utilizing as a feature to close client on the cusp of a decision, or by monetizing it through additional fees or subscriptions.

Software application vendor-side ROI:

Well designed and deployed Learning Management Systems can actually save hard dollar costs for application development companies. Better trained client users make fewer technical support calls.

Software vendors who make LMS provided training information available to technical support staff can gain insight to end-user proficiency, which may decrease call times. In addition, technical support staff noting high number of user error generated support calls can notify client management of productivity increase opportunities by providing retraining feedback. Since retraining is typically more efficient than gaining education through repeat technical support calls, the vendor can reduce costs, as well as the client.

Think about that for a moment … A well designed LMS with built in feedback loops can reduce vendor-side costs by making the client happier.

Some might call that the holy grail of training … would you?

Readers, please share your comments below about how you’ve applied e-learning or Learning Management Systems to drive customer ROI.

Choosing the right LMS for your organization isn't easy.

There are numerous choices, from vendor systems, to open source, proprietary systems, even "free" learning management systems.  There are many stakeholders whose needs should be considered. Worse, much of the information is conflicting, and product information from competing competitors starts to look all pretty much the same.

Organizations invest significant time to investigate providers of eLearning content.

Choosing a LMS can be just as critical of a decision, significantly affecting organizational benefits, ROI, and effectiveness of an organization's training strategy and goals.

To make a better decision, answer these questions before you choose a learning management system.

Knowledge Management Software Overview:

1. What are your training goals?  Typical goals include regulatory compliance (OSHA, EEOC, other), risk avoidance (harassment, diversity, safety), quality/efficiency (ISO, Lean, or Six Sigma initiatives), increased sales (sales techniques, CRM), customer service (corporate procedure, handling difficult customers, issue tracking software),  manufacturing processes, new hire training, software/equipment training, corporate policy training, and customer product training.  Are your goals to increase learning retention?  Cut learning costs?  Develop future management?  Increase sales?  Cut manufacturing/service/delivery costs?


2. How many students do you expect now and five years from now?  How many courses?  There's a big difference in the amount of complexity a mid-sized organization will need (up to around 5,000  students) vs a large organization (tens of thousands of students).  Number of courses will also have a direct impact on the amount of complexity your LMS will need.  There's no need to purchase an "atomic fly swatter", when there are simpler, more cost effective, easier to deploy and manage solutions available on the market.


3. How much will your content change?  Are you a fast growing young business whose needs will likely change within the next 5 years?  Or are you more a stable organization where your needs and size may change more slowly?  If you expect your content to change, you'll want a LMS that can manage content changes easily.  If you expect your business to significantly change within the next 5 years, you'll want a LMS that can be easily modified as your needs change.

Learning Management Constraints:

4. How much budget and time do you have? Do you have the time and budget needed to create and support a fully customized solution - do you have significant support of your in-house IT staff, or a budget to hire teams of consultants?  Unless your organization has made training a priority over most other projects, you may not get as much IT implementation and service support as you need.  If you see a risk that your IT support may be insufficient or may shrink, a hosted solution can take some of these risks off your shoulders.


5. How much of your content is developed in-house?  Most organizations have both in house developed and vendor provided content, but which is the most important to yours?  Is your custom training developed in-house or by outside vendors?    Organizations that develop significant in-house content themselves will want a LMS with features to make content authoring easy and efficient.


6. What's more important, ease of implementation, or really cool features?  Bells and whistles catch our attention when selecting a product, but ask yourself - how often will features be actually used?  Will specific features better engage students and result in greater usage and retention?  Will specific features provide information that is actually used to manage employees or help you make decisions on your training programs?  Be careful of being drawn to attractive features that will be seldom used by your organization.

Additional eLearning Strategy Details:

7. Is customization important, or is off the shelf ok?  Most organizations want the ability to tweak the system, especially if it will be used for a number of years.  Today, many companies are used to the benefits of site customization, especially for systems that will be used for a number of years.


8. How detailed do management reports need to be?  Will you publish summary or granular training information to other parts of the organization?  Organizations having a complex organizational or cost structure are more likely to require more granular information.  While many companies may only need summary information, organizations that allocate every expense into product costs, who have a matrix organizational structure, or who have many departments based on products/functions/regions may need very granular information.


9. How easily will an LMS work with your existing training content?  If you've already purchased content, consider how well it will integrate with your LMS.  Ask potential e-learning vendors for sample course that you can test on a demo of an LMS that you are considering to make sure it works.


10. Does your LMS need to be SCORM compliant?  If your training needs to be SCORM compliant, your LMS needs to be able to work with SCORM compliant training.


11. How important is security around your training systems?  How much of your training contains trade secrets?  Would the risk of even minimal training downtime significantly impact your company?  Most organizations find that training, while important, won't contain the secret recipe to Coca-Cola and isn't so mission critical that investing in 100% uptime provides a strong ROI.  For most organizations, security, while important, isn't the central deciding factor when choosing a LMS.


12. Who is the company behind the LMS?  Have they been around for awhile?  Do they have a track record?  Will they still be here in 5 years to support my investment?  Do research beyond the website and product literature to find out how long the company has been in the LMS market, talk to customers, and research the web for customer reviews.

The best computer based training content in the world can fail to deliver intended benefits if paired with a learning management system that doesn't meet your organization's needs.  Many organizations invest more time and resources to examine eLearning content than to study the system that organizes that content, as content typically carries a steeper initial investment.  HR and training managers can avoid expensive pitfalls by asking the right questions before choosing a LMS.

Learning Management Systems (LMS) have increased in popularity and become within reach of more organizations over the past few years.

Corporate demand for knowledge management software is growing because it represents a good deal for the company, as well as for the employees being trained.

It’s easy to see why employees like training management software. Employees can train whenever they want (even in PJs), they don’t have to sit through boring classes, and they are engaged by the interactive nature of online training.

Typical corporate reasons for implementing e-learning systems are the initial cost savings easily seen in the hard costs of instructor fees, room fees, and travel expense.

However, organizations won’t enjoy the full advantages and savings of computer based training without a Learning Management System.

1. Training Consistency - Because a LMS is centralized delivery of training, it's consistent. While the quality of instructor-led training can vary based on how well the instructor engages students (as well as instructor knowledge base), employee training (elearning as well as instructor led) through a Learning Management System delivers a consistent level of training quality to all employees by providing a single source for content, related materials and instructions.


2. Reporting and Tracking - A Learning Management System allows an organization to easily produce training reports on an overall or an employee level basis. A well-designed LMS will allow the organization to easily track utilization, goal progress, knowledge gains, and ROI. An LMS allows the organization to clearly demonstrate cost savings for individual training initiatives and strategies.


3. Measurement of Knowledge Gains - Pre and post testing gives an organization the ability to measure knowledge gained through the LMS.


4. Ability to quickly change and update training materials - A Learning Management System allows the organization to change employee training to quickly respond to client feedback. Organizations can easily release training for new products and features.


5. Compliance - A Learning Management System provides training reporting and evidence to satisfy legal and regulatory requirements.


6. Personalized Learning - A well designed LMS allows training to be tailored for each employee.


7. Training Time Management - Learning Management Systems can monitor training time, giving insight for training improvement opportunities.


8. Administration Automation - A LMS can reduce learning administration costs by automating enrollments, registration, payments, student recordkeeping, syllabus, course assignments, course content reviews and updating, assessments, certification, surveys, course evaluations, student communication, reporting, education analysis, development and analysis of training costs.


9. Build training feedback systems - Learning Management Systems can track employee course satisfaction, and knowledge differentials. These measurements can uncover opportunities to change course content for increased effectiveness.


10. Demonstrates organization's training priority - Organizations that commit resources and internal projects to LMS implementation signal the importance of training to employees.

Organizations that invest in employee training can leverage savings by adding a well designed Learning Management System to corporate elearning strategies.

Whether training is driven by increased performance strategies or regulatory compliance, a well planned LMS can affect additional organizational savings.

Source: www.ziiva.com