What to look for in a learning management platform?

Our rundown of all the key things you need to look for in a learning management platform.

Choosing a learning management platform for your organisation isn’t a straightforward decision. The sheer amount of choice in the e-learning space means it can be quite overwhelming.

Sometimes it’s helpful to take a step back and think about what you’re really looking for. It’s a bit like buying a home or a car in that respect — what do you want from your e-learning platform to be able to do? That can help narrow down your search.

Here are what we consider to be the key things to look for in a learning management platform based on our experience of working in learning technology since 2005.

Flexibility

The last thing you need is a rigid platform that you continually have to adapt your plans to fit into. What you want is the opposite: a flexible learning management platform that adapts to achieve your plans, now and in the future.

The ability to customise, integrate and change over time should never be underestimated in an e-learning platform.

Scalability

You also need a platform that can grow — or shrink — as needed without causing enormous upheaval to your business and its L&D programme. If your organisation experiences huge growth over the next 12 months, the LMS you’re using today should be able to expand with it.

Equally, if your organisation takes on a large number of temporary workers for a specific project or downsizes for any reason, the learning platform should scale down so that you’re not paying for capacity you no longer need.

User-friendliness

A learning management platform should offer an engaging user experience, high standards of accessibility and — following our point about flexibility — the opportunity to tailor experiences to your audiences.

You need to be able to customise the user interface, navigation, user journey and UX design to create learning experiences that are intuitive, accessible and on brand.

Security

To protect your LMS, data, people and reputation, you need a safe and secure platform. Check that any platform you’re considering meets your organisation’s required security standards.

Dig into the security measures that are in place to protect your organisation at the time of purchase, but also on an ongoing basis. How regularly are bug fixes and security updates released? Will you be able to update your learning platform to benefit from security patches quickly and without disruption of expense?

Value

We could easily have said ‘affordability’ — and certainly you will need to look for a learning management platform within your budget. But there is an element of false economy at play so we’re going with value. You want a platform that achieves the best results, creates the greatest efficiencies and delivers the most value relative to the outlay.

Learning tools

Aside from the flexibility to put in place the learning experiences you need, a learning management platform should have a suite of tools to manage and streamline key aspects of your L&D programme. This includes the functionality to deliver, assess and report on learning within your organisation. 

Support

What support is available if you encounter a problem with your learning management platform? How quick will the response be? This is a good way of deciding whether a particular platform has been built with the needs of an organisation like yours in mind.

Find the best learning management platform for your needs

If you’d like advice on finding the right learning management platform for your organisation, fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch soon.

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