A Tried-And-Tested Recipe For A Successful LMS Implementation

Ensuring Success In Your LMS Implementation Project

Whether it is for employee Learning and Development, HR onboarding, compliance training, or academic education, if you or your team are looking to implement your organization’s first (or the next) LMS, I would like to share my own tried-and-tested recipe for a successful LMS implementation project.

First things first, a quick review of what an LMS is. According to an EdTech book, Learning Management Systems: Choosing the Right Path For Your Organization, Learning Management Systems, referred to in short as LMSs, are platforms that assist the delivery of online content for learning purposes. If we want a technical definition, a Learning Management System (LMS) is a web-based software used to facilitate the delivery of online, face-to-face, and blended courses, whether in an academic setting or in the world of business.

From my professional experience, I had opportunities and delivered two LMS implementation projects—one for a for-profit business and another one for a non-profit organization, and both achieved success post-implementation. The success measures used were user adoption (month-by-month growth of active users), course completion rate, and how people rated the new platform. Here are the steps I used to ensure the LMS implementation project is on the right track right from the start.

A Step-By-Step Guide For A Successful LMS Implementation Project

Step 1: Business Objectives Identification And Technical Specifications Preparation

When an organization decides to implement an LMS, it should identify a primary business objective, along with several supporting objectives. Key business drivers typically include compliance training, employee onboarding, employee Learning and Development, leadership development, sales training, or partner channel training to name a few. This list can vary, but it is essential to clearly define the drivers to establish a credible business case that will secure buy-in and support from upper management. Additionally, the same business case will help demonstrate that the implementation has met its objectives once the LMS is in place.

Often, the training team who is tasked with the LMS implementation may lack technical background. However, this should not become a barrier, as having a detailed technical specifications document is crucial during the vendor selection process. According to the Standish Group’s Annual CHAOS 2020 report, 66% of technology projects (based on the analysis of 50,000 projects globally) end in partial or total failure.

In my experience with LMS implementation, a detailed and clearly defined technical specifications document ensures a clear understanding of our goals for end users. In the same technical document, I included all the essential features and additional nice-to-have (bonus) features, allowing the team to evaluate and challenge vendors to ensure that the selected solution can meet these requirements (see Step 2). The technical specifications document became a critical reference throughout the entire process, from initial vendor selection to post-implementation.

Step 2: Vendor Sourcing, Sandbox Testing, Comparison, And Selection

Generally speaking, you would need to shortlist three vendors who cover the key features you would like to achieve (refer back to the technical specification document in Step 1). It is important to request vendor demos and even a test system before commitment.

From the vendors’ demos, each vendor presented their strongest features and other additional features, including gamification, AI-suggested content, a mobile app, and learning on the go. Before getting excited by the nice add-ons, ask yourself and the team: are these features aligned with your organization’s essential requirements? A well-prepared technical specification document will keep the team focused and help in selecting the LMS that checks off your organization’s essential requirements first before being carried away by bonus features.

You can assign a points/weight percentage model to both essential and bonus features. Then for each vendor, apply points and see who the best overall winner is. But don’t be happy too early; don’t forget to double-check your budget and make sure you understand the LMS’s pricing model!

The active users pricing model is commonly adopted in the LMS industry but be careful with the definition of active users defined by your vendor. To give an example, an active user for a given period (per calendar month) is called a monthly active user (MAU). The count will reset at the beginning of the next month. The caveat with this pricing model is whether you have a lot of monthly recurrent users. Are your LMS users new or recurrent? Many LMSs do not adopt the recurrent users’ concept; in simple words, it means when the same user interacts with the system in multiple months, it will be counted as active in all these months.

Step 3: Set Up The Implementation Team, Work Plan, And Timeline

Once you have identified the winning LMS supplier, the next step is similar to any IT project implementation and project management: setting up the implementation team, with a detailed work plan and a timeline for launch.

Very often the training team is relatively small, but don’t be daunted to set up a full team with everyone working full-time. The project team includes a project manager, a graphics designer for the platform UI/UX, an Instructional Designer for content and preparing the eLearning packages (SCORM, xAPI packages), an IT specialist for system/database-related support (custom domain, Single Sign-On, cookie policy). An experienced project manager will coordinate and keep all the team members updated on the progress and when their expertise is required.

As the captain of the ship, the project manager needs to be hands-on to closely monitor the progress on a regular (weekly/biweekly) basis. The challenge of the implementation is building a functional shell container that is scalable and adaptable. Key tasks include graphics and colors for logo and branding, hierarchy branches and subsequent groups/business units’ setup for your end users, additional useful information to categorize users and groups (it will come in handy for future enrolment and automation rules), pages and menus, course library and catalogs, certificates, and badges design and selection.

To tie the above tasks together, I found it beneficial to have a road map simulating the pages and clicks users need to go through to get to the training content, completion, and certificate. There are other tasks that require IT expertise, such as system integration with SSO, HR, or other relevant business systems (CRM) integration, migration of data from a previous system, and website cookies to name a few. At the same time, the project manager will work with the Instructional Designer to prepare all the eLearning packages to populate the content.

The list goes on and more can be added depending on your unique business objectives. To summarize, a good LMS implementation project manager, may not have all the technical expertise, but must be a good communicator to coordinate team members; be ready to roll up your sleeves to tackle issues to ensure the timeline is respected.

Step 4: Communication And Change Management With Key Stakeholders

To ensure the success of an LMS implementation, you need to get the buy-in and support from all the stakeholder teams, including HR, corporate marketing/communications, IT, legal and privacy teams (for external users and even the sales/partners teams). Develop an ally relationship with all of your stakeholders, because the more people have heard, know, and are on board with the project implementation, the higher the chance the LMS project will be successful. It is also important to inform and update frequently your general users regarding the progress of the launch at each milestone (color schemes, User Interface, library and catalogs, etc.). The best way is to use a few minutes at the company town hall or inter-department meetings for a quick update.

Step 5: Testing (As Much As Possible), Soft Launch, And User Support At The Launch (Go Live!)

User testing is the most important and time-consuming step to guarantee project success and user adoption. If your LMS is targeted for multiple users (use cases), then it is best to recruit a few volunteers who represent each group to do the testing to further validate the process.

For each group of users, prepare the scenarios/tasks for them to test rather than just give an open-ended question to openly explore. This approach ensures the users follow the procedure, achieve the end results, and provide you with specific comments to address. Some important scenarios/tasks are: account registration, logging into the system, selecting and enrolling in relevant training content, completing the training and receiving points and certificates, and generating specific reports for administrators.

Based on your user’s comments, be ready for some extra time and effort for iterations to make sure the process is as smooth as possible. When the testing volunteer can complete all the steps without any further instructions, it assures you the platform setup is self-explanatory and intuitive enough for the end users.

For any new system launch and adoption, you would like to reassure users that there is help and support available when needed. Prepare a frequently asked questions (FAQ) document and make it available for the end users to refer to. If the selected vendor supports integration with a third-party help desk support system and your budget allows, consider integration with support tools for both instructional articles on frequently asked questions and user tickets support system. It is not difficult to imagine that when end users struggle without support for a new system, they are likely to give up.

Step 6: Post-Launch Continuous Improvement

Your organization’s business needs change, and so will your LMS strategy. Take small steps and continue to improve. As your training offerings grow, an improved and better-organized menu interface to better direct the end users is a great improvement and not daunting to achieve.

A good LMS vendor also evolves with the latest trends. Make sure to leverage a broader range of LMS features, including reporting and data analytics, resource hubs, and communication tools (newsletters) to continue to drive value to the end users.

Final Thoughts

Lastly, there are a lot of general resources available from LMS vendors and consulting companies that provide LMS implementation services. Just keep in mind that the key to success is to be sure to align the above list with your own organization’s goals, requirements, stakeholders’ expectations, implementation plan, and success measures (such as ROI).

 

Editor’s Note: Ready to get your LMS implementation project off the ground? Take a look at eLI’s Learning Management System directory of vendors to find the perfect fit for your business needs.