Constant professional growth and learning are important for employees not only for themselves but for the company as well. With the right training program, they not only hone their skills but also add value to their organization and contribute to the business goals. Be it, partners, employees, or customers, training and learning programs are the best initiatives that any business can take. Hence, comes a Learning Management System that helps you impart education and training to the workforce.
In addition, phases like pandemic makes elearning software development even more essential to keep things going on. We never know things that were unexpected would become a new normal someday, like the trend of elearning and WFH has become.
As far as developing an LMS is concerned, it is first required to have a few things in mind very clear like the type of software it should be, the functionalities you want to see in it, etc.
There are a plethora of options available when it comes to choosing the right custom LMS development for your business and you must have read several articles about making the right choice. However, choosing the LMS software keeping 6 things in mind itself is just half the battle and you need more to be successful in your objective.
Moreover the result and effect of elearning software solutions are not only restricted to strategies and the right software but how you decide to implement it also plays a crucial role. The system centralizes your training, saves you time, cost & effort, and enhances the skills and productivity of your employees.
No doubt that you have to get it right because your implementation plan can make a big difference to the outcome. Once you are done with storing course content data, training materials in one place, and streamlining the strategy, next comes implementation.
We have prepared a checklist that will help you with running and integrating LMS software or LCMS software into your organization. Have a look:
Develop a Plan of Action
There is nothing that you can achieve without a proper plan of action. You need to define your goals, strategize your every step, prepare yourself for unforeseen circumstances, set guidelines, and gather all resources.
The same goes true for LMS implementation where you must set clear and specific goals and expectations with your software. Of course, you can never be sure of long-term goals but you must know what you want to achieve as this will determine the best solution suited for your needs.
Why do you intend to integrate the learning system? To offer mobile learning solutions to your employees, sell the courses online, measure the global workforce, etc. This will help you find the right direction. Make sure that your plan and goal is specific, measurable, realistic, and timely.
Set the KPIs
Once you have set your goals, you need to know how you can measure the performance of your software. You surely cannot keep a check on every step or review the system every now and then. There has to be a certain method to ensure that, hence KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). As the name suggests, they are indicators that help you find the performance of any software.
In your elearning software too, you can set KPIs to assess the performance, measure the results, and take corrective actions to improve it over time. However, setting KPIs is not easy, especially when there is no previous data for reference. Thus, discuss with your customer success manager to set these indicators and they can help you bring clarity.
Be sure what you want your LMS to attain, such as a 100% course completion rate, enhance engagement rate, etc.
Appointing an L&D administrator would rather help in ensuring the organizational goals within the product and the service it will be going to render. Moreover, if the LMS platform exists, the one should be parallelly connected with the elearning software development team so that easy communication and effective or immediate changes are possible.
Get the Team Together
Considering the complexity of LMS software development, you need to build a team to ensure smooth implementation. It is a long process and you alone cannot make it possible. A qualified team with assigned duties must be put together to look after each step and help make the implementation successful.
Include 5–8 employees depending on the scope of the system and size of your company. If you think that a skilled person can manage two tasks or cover several areas, go ahead. There will be admin, managers, instructors, e-learning specialists, etc., in the team. Also, you will need a SPOC (specific point of contact) who supervises the entire project. The person will be responsible for the team and deliver all the necessary resources.
Be prepared for Data Migration
This would be the case if you are switching onto another LMS from the pre-existing one. It still has two cases. One of getting the LMS hosted and the other to get the LMS installed within the server.
However, the hosting expert would better tell the time it will take, but the in-house server implementation takes more time than the hosted one.
SCORM complaint is a thing that we should take care of meanwhile migrating the pre-existing LMS into the new one as it asks to work on the courses to work with the new system.
Read more: 6 Advancements in E-learning technology
Test It Out
No one wants unwelcome surprises, especially when it is about implementing a new system in your company. You want to avoid all the loopholes in the process and make it as smooth as possible. Therefore, it is important that you test LMS before you finally launch it. As soon as you are done with KPIs, team, structure, you must start consulting with managed qa services to see if everything is working right or not.
Imagine if you launch a learning experience platform without testing and realize that learners can’t enroll themselves in the right courses, or the content is not responsive. Your entire effort and resources will be in vain. Hence, pre-launch testing brings all the loopholes in your notice and prevents any technical issues. You can have a group of learners or hire professional qa and testing services to review the system and highlight any problems they come across.
Follow Up
Although this step is after the implementation process, you must mention it in your checklist. Testing cannot catch every mistake or error, so it is important to get regular feedback from the users and the experts of the e-learning software development team.
This will ensure further improvement and make the LMS more efficient. With constant follow up, you can offer a positive experience to your employees which is your ultimate goal. Make sure to check on the essential features to be in an LMS and take corrective action whenever you find any problem and fix it instantly for better results.
Also To Keep In Mind
Usually, there are stakeholders associated with the software and the entire business, who deserves to be notified if the migration of LMS is implemented. E-mails and pre-launch notifications are some probable ways to do so. This step will let things smoothly run as far as business is concerned.
Conclusion
The journey to launch LMS can be complicated and stressful but with the well-planned process and steps, you can make it smooth and successful. Make sure that you have a reliable LMS development solution provider by your side throughout to get the best out of this integration.
Also it is quintessential to enquire everything about the implementation process from the developer you are hiring for this purpose. Ask every possible question you have in the mind regarding any complexity you often face, any sensitive point you want to be kept in mind while developing the software, etc.
We hope that these steps would help you and guide you to attain your goals.
