10 Tips for a Successful LMS Launch

What is involved in successful LMS launch? Investment in time, cost, and energy for your organization are all aspects involved. To be successful, you need to consistently plan and be aware of every detail possible. Today, we will go through some of the best practices that will help you through a successful LMS launch.

1. Figure out your needs.

You have come to the point where your organization needs a learning management system (LMS), and you are ready to get in the trenches of choosing and building your system right away. Don’t be too hasty! Before you start looking at LMS choices and picking out features, form a group or committee of people within your company who can discuss and define what exactly you need from an LMS.This group could include upper management and low-level employees who would be most likely to use the system. It is important to document a clear set of operational needs that the LMS is meant to address. If you don’t take the time up front and prioritize needs, something may be overlooked and you’ll be too deep in the implementation process to make course corrections. The last thing you want is a fully developed LMS that does not actually fulfill your needs. The functionality you need from an LMS will depend on your operational needs and may depend on type, size, regulatory climate, etc. Clients with only a handful of employees will have very different operational needs from an enterprise user with 100,000 users. Know your operational needs before you begin the process and allow those needs to be your guide.

2. Know your budget and timeline

Once the committee has documented your operational needs, it’s important to determine what your company can afford. Remember your budget should include the LMS, content developers, and LMS administrators. In addition, some LMS providers charge an annual maintenance fee and/or charge for upgrades. Having the system up and running but lacking the necessary funds to fix it or add new features could hurt you.

Along with a budget, establishing a timeline will be beneficial in the long run. The process of launching an LMS—from initial researching, choosing features, inputting the various data needed, training staff on the system, etc.—is not a super-fast process. It can range from several days (if not importing historical data) to several months or more for more complex organizations. Before jumping in, make sure your organization is prepared to invest the necessary time to deploy a fully functional LMS the first time. Set checkpoints or milestones along the way and do what it takes to stick to those goals.

3. Build your team

Since there are many parts to the creation and ongoing maintenance of your LMS, it is important to decide who will be responsible for what. Knowing responsibilities in regard to the LMS will help guide work before, during and after implementation. Make sure everyone knows when their role comes into play and what timeframe they have to complete their task. Establish who can input data into the system in the beginning, who will have access to administrative functions down the road, and business processes that are simple yet effective. Assigning specific roles and responsibilities, along with key business processes, will yield a successful launch.

4. Pick the best functions for you—take small bites

When you officially start researching LMS options, your list of needs should be right at your side for quick reference. Let these needs and priorities focus your search efforts and guide your choices. Because an LMS can be tailored to a wide variety of applications, they tend to offer many different functions. However, not all of these functions will be necessary for your particular need, and certainly not on day one. Choosing functions that sound interesting but that are not necessary for your system will only cause unneeded work. Too many functions will add time to your launch and could potentially make the system harder for users or administrators to navigate and use. Bottom line is buy what you need, and then enable the functionality only as quickly as your organization can handle it.

5. Choose an LMS that can evolve

Your current operational needs won’t be the same as your needs down the road – guaranteed. During the selection phase, remember that you are not only picking an LMS that fits your company today. You want to select a system that can easily expand to accommodate future growth. In addition, be sure your LMS vendor is a flexible business partner, i.e., one that listens to changing client needs and provides customer-driven upgrades. Just as the LMS needs to evolve, be sure the provider is prepared to evolve. If your company is at a point that growth is not an option or goal, then perhaps it doesn’t matter. But if expansion is an intention for you, the LMS you select must evolve with your company. Don’t get stuck with an LMS that can’t t accommodate your needs in a year or two. A system that becomes quickly outdated is not a sustainable choice.

6. Be flexible

Since you documented and prioritized your needs at the beginning of this process, focus on the critical items while you build the LMS. Find the right balance between which needs are truly mandatory—such as meeting certain federal requirements—and those that are not as critical or even counter-productive, such as being compatible with obsolete browsers! You already know your operational needs, but good LMS vendors can shed some interesting insight regarding industry best practices. Let them do their job and help get you the best system possible.

7. Remember the user

It’s not uncommon for LMS procurement to focus highly on administrator (i.e., super user) requirements. That’s important, but remember why you are launching an LMS in the first place: for the end user, i.e., the learner. The LMS is your tool to effectively deploy blended learning.  So if you choose an LMS with all the bells and whistles for the administrator, make sure it’s also easy for the general user.  Remember the “Learning” part of LMS and work to make it easy for the user. Some aspects to consider are: Does the vendor have experience with a broad/diverse set of learners? Are GUI upgrades driven by end users? How often are they available?  Make sure your vendor is focused on end users and they provide a sandbox environment dedicated to your operation to gather user feedback. If learning is the main goal of the system, tailor the system to make learning easy.

8. Don’t bite off more than you can chew

Once you have selected your LMS, be sure to consider an appropriate deployment strategy. Rolling out your full content library to your entire organization on day one may be quite a challenge. You’re usually much better off starting with a small set of training items deployed to a few groups of users. Be sure that your LMS administrator – and your LMS vendor – are genuinely listening to end users. Let a controlled group of users find issues before the entire employee pool is online using the system.

9. Aim for success not perfection

Your LMS is meant to teach and train users. Yet in some organizations, the user base can be quite diverse, with widely varying learning environments. Invariably, you will have several users (or user groups) with highly unique needs, e.g., users working in a remote geographic area with poor internet access.  Be sure to understand all user needs, but don’t spend 80% of your time or budget on 1% of your users.

10. Don’t get caught up

LMS offerings usually provide clients with so many features, functions, and deployment options. From selecting your branding to designing a curriculum mapping to importing large historical transcript, it can be easy to get overwhelmed by the process. Don’t get hung up and stressed at every step. Set goals throughout the process. Tackle one step and piece at a time. Remember there is a definite goal and end in sight.  

About Noverant: Noverant is a leader in web-based information, training and compliance management applications, serving regulated and training-intensive clients on six continents.