Our Expert Approach to Selecting the Ideal LMS for Online Programs
Our team of education technologists and learning designers get a lot of questions about how to select the right Learning Management System (LMS) from nonprofits. The truth is, selecting the right LMS is a time consuming but oh so necessary process. We have seen firsthand how rushing the process can result in an inadequate system with limited features and poor user experience, leading to frustration, disengagement and reduced impact of learning programs. The wrong LMS can also lead to scalability issues, integration challenges, limited support, and costly fixes if a replacement is needed. By taking the time to evaluate and select the right LMS, you can avoid these pitfalls, maximize learning and community-building opportunities, and ensure a seamless learning experience for your participants.
We recommend program managers reserve about 12 to 20 weeks to select an LMS and plan its implementation. This LMS procurement process typically involves several steps to ensure that the chosen LMS aligns with the organization's needs and requirements. While the specific steps in the process vary based on your organization's size, complexity, and procurement policies, this is a general outline of the LMS procurement steps that we take with our clients.
Our hope in sharing this process with you, including best practices, misconceptions and common mistakes is that you can navigate the LMS procurement process effectively, making informed decisions that support your organization's learning objectives and maximize the benefits of your chosen LMS.
Follow this
10-step process
by Pure & Applied
1. Assess Needs
Start by conducting a thorough needs assessment to identify the specific requirements and objectives for implementing an LMS. Determine the desired features, functionality, scalability, and integration capabilities needed to support your organization's learning, community-building and reporting goals.
Involve key stakeholders, including administrators, developers, program managers, instructors, course-authors, and learners to gather diverse perspectives and ensure all needs are considered. Anyone that is critical for the setup, delivery and long term success of your online program. Please do this regardless of the age of your learners. We have consulted with youth as young as age 8.
Prioritize the most critical requirements based on your organization's learning goals, impact goals and other strategic objectives.
It's essential to conduct a thorough needs assessment to understand your organization's unique requirements. A common misconception is assuming that all LMSs offer the same features with similar functionalities or that more features automatically translate to a better solution. It's important to focus on identifying specific needs and prioritize functionality that aligns with your organization's learning goals. We recommend testing for limitations.
2. Define Requirements
Based on the needs assessment, create a comprehensive list of requirements that the LMS must meet. This includes technical specifications, front-end and back-end user experience (ie. including the learners, instructors, authors, and administrators), administrative capabilities, reporting, system integration needs, and any specific compliance or regulatory requirements.
Keep your requirements flexible to allow for future growth and adaptability.
Clearly differentiate between "must-have" and "nice-to-have" features to prioritize essential functionalities. You can discuss workarounds for missing essential functionalities with LMS providers after Step 3.
When defining requirements, it's crucial to involve key stakeholders and consider different perspectives. One common mistake is creating an overly rigid list of requirements that may limit flexibility or overlook potential innovative solutions. Keep the requirements balanced and adaptable to accommodate future growth and changing needs.
3. Request for Information (RFI)
Prepare an RFI document outlining your organization's goals and requirements (technical and learning) and ask LMS providers to share information about their solutions. This step helps in shortlisting potential providers and gathering initial information about their offerings, pricing models, support, and implementation processes.
Conduct independent research to verify LMS provider information and claims.
Seek recommendations from peers, industry experts like us, or professional networks to gather insights about potential vendors.
While the RFI helps gather information from LMS vendors, a common mistake is relying solely on vendor-provided information without conducting additional research. Do not over-value awards and testimonials on websites. Make sure to independently verify vendor claims, check references, and explore online reviews to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the vendor's reputation and the suitability of their solution.
4. Request for Proposal (RFP)
Select a shortlist of potential LMS vendors and send them an RFP. The RFP includes detailed information about your requirements, budget, timeline, and expectations. Ask vendors to provide a detailed proposal addressing how their LMS meets your needs, including features, technical and training support, implementation plan, pricing, references and case studies that match your organization’s use case.
Provide clear and detailed information about your organization's requirements to vendors.
Consider the overall value and alignment with your organization's goals rather than making a decision solely based on price.
When evaluating proposals, a common mistake is solely focusing on price and overlooking other important factors such as implementation support, user experience, or long-term scalability. Make sure to consider the overall value and alignment with your organization's specific needs instead of making a decision based solely on cost.
5. Evaluate and Select LMS Vendors
Evaluate the proposals received from vendors based on the alignment with your requirements, budget, implementation timeline, vendor credibility, and customer references. Consider factors like the LMS's ease of use, scalability, customization options, customer support, and compatibility with your existing systems.
Conduct thorough evaluations by assessing vendor expertise, customer support, and responsiveness.
Request and check references to gain insights into the vendor's track record and customer satisfaction.
A common misconception is assuming that the most popular or widely-known LMS is always the best fit for your organization. It's important to thoroughly evaluate each vendor's offering against your requirements and prioritize a vendor's expertise, customer support, and responsiveness, in addition to the features of the LMS.
Don't skip this step
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Don't skip this step ~
6. Conduct Product Demonstrations and Trials
Request product demonstrations from shortlisted vendors to assess the usability, user experience, and features of the LMS. Some vendors may offer a trial period or a sandbox environment where you can test the LMS with a subset of users or sample courses to evaluate its suitability. It is our strongest recommendation that you do your own testing. Before getting into the sandboxing phase, set up 2-3 calls with LMS agents / specialists to ask all your questions. You will definitely have follow-up questions, do not hesitate to ask for a second or third call after the first demo. This can help you narrow down the number of LMSs to test at the beginning. Ask for an extension to play around with it, if you need one if they only start with 1-2 weeks.
Prepare realistic scenarios and use cases to assess how well the LMS aligns with your organization's specific workflows and needs. Build a sandbox to test your material in.
Involve a diverse group of users, including administrators, instructors, and learners, in the evaluation process to gather varied feedback. If the backend is too complex for your administrators with less technical expertise, training may be needed or a different LMS with a highly simplified backend for reporting and monitoring might be a better solution to cut costs and maximize efficiency. If course authoring tools for your learning design team are too time consuming or don't support all media types, you will want their input and not want to assume anything. For learners, it's really important to have a learning experience that they enjoy and can navigate easily. If learners spend more time trying to understand your platform than actually learning, you will not get the outcomes you want.
Ask LMS providers what they have in their roadmap for the next 1-2 years. Transparency is really important when starting any partnership.
Ask LMS providers what their shortcomings are. No LMS will be a perfect fit for your organization, but discussing workarounds can help your organization get to the best-fit solution.
During product demonstrations or trials, it's common to focus only on the features showcased by the vendor. However, it's important to also evaluate usability, user experience, and customization options that align with your organization's branding, workflows and learning design. It’s a good idea to test for how much automation can be added to alleviate manual tasks for your team as much as possible. You can do this by engaging with real-life scenarios to better understand how the LMS will function in your specific context.
7. Negotiate a Contract
Once you have identified the preferred vendor, engage in contract negotiations. Discuss licensing, pricing models, support and maintenance terms, implementation services, training, data security, and any specific legal or contractual requirements.
Pay close attention to important terms and conditions such as support, data security, ownership, consumer protection, cancellation, and scalability.
Seek legal advice if necessary to ensure the contract protects your organization's interests.
Ensure all aspects of the contract, including pricing, implementation timeline, support, and data ownership, are thoroughly discussed internally and with the LMS provider. Seek legal advice if needed to avoid potential issues down the road.
8. Implement and Deploy LMS
You can work with the vendor or with your learning design team (hint hint Pure & Applied) to plan and execute the implementation of the LMS. This involves tasks such as system setup, configuration, data migration, customization, integration with other systems, and testing. Allocate resources and establish a timeline for the implementation process.
Establish a detailed implementation plan with realistic timelines and allocate sufficient resources.
Involve stakeholders from different departments to ensure a smooth deployment and seamless integration with existing systems.
One common mistake during implementation is underestimating the time and resources required for a successful rollout. Plan for a realistic timeline, allocate sufficient resources, and involve key stakeholders in the implementation process to ensure a smooth deployment.
9. Train and Onboard LMS Users
Conduct comprehensive user training sessions to ensure that administrators, instructors, and learners are familiar with the LMS's features, functionality, and best practices. Provide training materials, documentation, and ongoing support to help users make the most of the LMS.
Provide comprehensive user training sessions to ensure users understand the LMS's features and functionalities.
Develop user-friendly documentation and resources to support ongoing learning and adoption.
If the training provided by LMS vendors is too basic, feel free to ask for a custom training better suited for your organization and team capabilities. They tend to provide training in batches. If you already learned a lot with sandboxing, come with more specific questions for your context.
A common misconception is assuming that users will intuitively know how to navigate the LMS without proper training. Neglecting comprehensive user training can lead to frustration and hinder user adoption. Invest in user training, provide ongoing support, and create user-friendly documentation to maximize the LMS's benefits.
10. Evaluate LMS Post-Implementation
Regularly evaluate the LMS's performance, user satisfaction of all key stakeholders, and achievement of learning and organizationals objectives. We typically conduct our first evaluation about 3 months after a program launches.
Monitor the LMS's performance, user satisfaction, and alignment with your organization's goals over the year. Produce and review an annual report to determine if the LMS requires any changes for next year.
Gather feedback from administrators, instructors, and learners to identify areas for improvement and refine your usage of the LMS.
A common mistake is considering the LMS implementation as a one-time event rather than an ongoing process. It's important to regularly evaluate the LMS's performance, gather feedback, and make necessary adjustments to continually improve the learning experience for users. Make sure you have a budget or the capacity to maintain and monitor your LMS.
The procurement process may involve additional steps or variations based on your specific requirements, procurement policies, and the complexity of the implementation. Consulting with specialists like us or engaging relevant stakeholders throughout the process can ensure a comprehensive and effective LMS procurement journey. 🙂
Want support through your LMS process? Book a call with us here.
