How to Avoid Getting Burned When Purchasing a New LMS

Investing in learning technology can be expensive and time-consuming. Whether you’re replacing an established learning platform or implementing an LMS for the first time to take your learning program to the next level, the effort will consume your team, so you need to make the right decision. 

Software acquisition initiatives take hundreds of hours (or even thousands) to define requirements, needs, and objectives that you want the system to accomplish. Once you have all of these details nailed down and you have made your selection, you still have to implement the new system and potentially sunset an old system, all while keeping the training program moving forward. After it is up and running, you need to continually work to fine-tune the program that you have created for maximum impact. 

All of this time, energy, and expense will be in vain if you make the wrong selection. You could be wasting precious resources and burning business capital if you don’t make the right choice in the LMS that you want to support your extended enterprise. 

Regardless of the business impact, this decision extends beyond your organization’s bottom line and impacts your people, business prospects, and partner networks. If your system is redundant, difficult to navigate, or doesn’t support the capabilities needed to track training and competency appropriately, your partners won’t use it, prospects will look for business relationships elsewhere, and your people won’t support it. You will lose business and still lack the functionality to track the training of your network members. 

Here’s a key tip to selecting the right system for your enterprise learning platform — the bright shiny object with all of the bells and whistles will not always be the best decision. 

How To Avoid Getting Burned

There are many choices to filter through when you are making your decision about the learning management system that will be the best choice for your organization. How do you ensure that you’re not going to get burned by a system that claims to solve all of your problems but actually lacks the differentiation that you need?

Don’t Make Your Selection Solely On Functionality

Most LMS platforms will have the functionality you are looking for to create and deliver training content. You must approach your decision from the perspective of differentiation. What are the top 5 or 10 things that your organization needs out of your LMS? 

Based on the operations of your organization, the structure of your partner networks, the number of items you sell or service, and the geographic distribution of these items, you will need very specific features in your LMS to make sure that your partners are getting the right training at the right time and that they are not inundated with training that does not apply to them.

For instance, your resellers will not need your service training, and your service centers will not need sales training. However, your dealerships will need both types of training. If your LMS isn’t set up to differentiate the delivery of training based on the type of partner and items sold and serviced, you will deliver an overload of irrelevant content to some of your partners, which will reflect poorly in their engagement with your training program. 

Make sure that the LMS you select can handle the complexity of your partner networks and organization structures. Can it model how you are currently operating your business? Will it be able to support your organization’s complexities effectively?

Can It Support The Impact You Need?

A training program should extend beyond the focus of just delivering training. You are looking to accomplish a goal with your training program, and your LMS needs to be able to get you closer to achieving that goal, not further away from it. 

You need an LMS that will support the skills-based training and competency of your service technicians. Competency in any discipline is a dynamic process – parameters are constantly shifting to accommodate the evolving market and technology. Your LMS needs to be able to flex with that shift in a way that makes it simple for you to identify which technicians are accredited and which ones aren’t so you can plan training sessions accordingly. 

Not only do you need a system that can adapt to the changing learning requirements, but you also need one that can measure training against performance outcomes. How can you ensure that your training program is driving the performance of your partners? You can’t if your LMS isn’t helping you gather that data in a way that makes it easy to understand. You need an LMS that supplies you with the metrics, reports, and integration with other systems to show you how your training program is impacting your key performance indicators (KPIs). 

If your LMS isn’t able to accommodate these complexities, you will be stuck exporting data from one system and comparing it with data from a different system – nobody has time for that. 

Take It For A Spin 

The best way to understand if a potential LMS provider will be able to meet your differentiating factors and organizational complexities is to get a feel for it yourself. Instead of handing a list of your top 10 LMS needs and trusting that they can, in fact, deliver on them – request a demo with the LMS provider and see for yourself if the system is going to be able to provide the bang for the buck that you are looking for. 

Many LMS providers offer a demo of their systems. If they don’t, you’re looking at a red flag. Most systems will be able to meet the functionality that you’re looking for in your training program, but the complexity of your operation and the intricacies of your training, accreditation needs, and partner network relationships will set the ideal LMS apart from the other contenders. 

The Best Fit For Your Extended Enterprise

Finding the best option to meet the needs of your extended enterprise can feel like an overwhelming task. But there is an option out there that can meet all of your differentiating needs and handle the complexity of your organization.

LatitudeLearning specializes in serving extended enterprises and the complexities that these types of businesses bring along with them. More than just a platform to deliver your training, LatitudeLearning’s sole focus is using skills-based training to drive your business outcomes.

We ask the question, “What are you trying to achieve with your platform?” instead of “What do you need out of a platform?” We already know what you need as an extended enterprise – we want to help you leverage the platform to achieve your business goals. 

Let LatitudeLearning put your mind at ease with a free demo! With this demo, you will see that our platform was designed with the complexities of the extended enterprise in mind to help you drive your business forward with the help of your training program. 

Visit our website today to learn more about LatitudeLearning and request a free demo. Once you try it on for size, we know you’ll love it!