There is no better time to improve your organization’s training and development programs than now. As the bottom line of your business grows, training your employees and customers becomes increasingly important. It is important to choose a training solution that is specifically intended for SMBs, no matter what their needs are.
And for this, Learning Management System (LMS) is what you need. Now, if you want to invest in a great learning management system, you’ll need to do some research. Starting with, you may not have an unlimited budget to test LMS platforms as a large organization does. Your company may also not have an unlimited amount of time. Therefore, this article aims to clear up any confusion regarding the matter. You can choose the right LMS for your small and medium business by understanding these 5 things:
Course Content Development
An excellent first step in finding the right learning management system is to determine the type of content your platform will contain.
For a quick start, ask yourself the following questions:
Who is your Audience?
Which groups of people are you training: staff, clients, partners, or all? You need to know who your audience is – and what types of content they will need or expect?
What will be your Training Style?
Are you planning to offer live training via webinars? Or do you plan to make on-demand courses available 24/7? Your training style will determine what features you will need in your LMS.
LMS Features
You can choose an LMS with the necessary features according to your audience and training style. The best platform for developing any type of learning will support SCORM and have a powerful course creation tool. For example, you can use LMS Latitude Learning for Channel Training, Compliance Training, Employee Training, and many other things. The LMS allows SCORM-based eLearning courses to be quickly set up and deployed.
Additionally, your LMS should also include some features that are relevant to all industries and use cases:
- Integrations: Integrate third-party applications to provide high-quality learning environments.
- User management: Enroll users into multiple courses at the same time, give them access to different areas depending on their roles (e.g. educators, learners, admins), and control their access to the platform.
- Easily customize certificates: Take advantage of templates, upload your own design, and send them automatically after completion.
Customer support
Is your internal IT department capable of hosting the LMS and maintaining your servers? Open-source platforms might be a good choice if so.
In contrast, if more automation and scalability are what you’re looking for, you can opt for a SaaS LMS. These types of LMSs, also called cloud-based LMSs, are great because you are primarily responsible for content creation and onboarding users. A lot of companies indeed offer great software, but as long as their client support team neglects them, that’s a half-baked solution.
An LMS you select should offer a great deal of customer support. There could be technical difficulties for learners, educators, or administrators. For instance, what if your customer is using his login credentials but is still unable to log in, or how about the updates bugs and other fixes. To handle these issues, you will need an LMS with good customer support.
Customizing the platform
Your organization will always benefit from having a customizable LMS for four primary reasons:
- No matter what the content, features, integrations, and design of your platform are, it’s never going to restrict you.
- You can edit and revise the content at any time, day or night.
- You can make brand-specific learning environments available to learners.
- Create custom reports for analysis and measurement of metrics that are of importance to your business.
There is something else to consider when it comes to customization – what level of customization is allowed? Are there developers on the LMS provider’s team that can assist you with more complex customizations?
Future needs
Make sure the LMS you choose will be a part of your business for years to come. Are the developers constantly updating the software? What kind of recognition does it have in your industry? Is it considering new business learning trends, such as social learning and gamification?
The idea of building your own learning management system is appealing, but may not be suitable for small businesses. So, consider your future business requirements and pick an LMS that will grow with you.
Conclusion
With your knowledge of what features should be included in an LMS, you know what customizations and support you would need. In a small company, learning management systems with a larger number of features will not be the best fit. The tool should match the organization’s culture to become the best fit. You should find a company that can provide you with solutions that are cost-effective and suitable for your business size and type.
I’m is an owner of Venostech.com, blogger, Android and technology enthusiast. Individual who are educated in the IT and like to write according my scope.
