START 2020 BUILDING YOUR LMS IMPLEMENTATION PLAN WITH THIS CHECKLIST

The success of your eLearning programs not only comes from the part of the strategies you use with your users to accept and understand the training from a Learning Management System, but also from the way that you organize and plan the LMS implementation. To be clear about the route and avoid mistakes and waste money, you should think and build an LMS Implementation plan.

Choosing the right LMS is important but is only half of what you need to be successful in the eLearning world. To get the most out of a Learning Management system you need to learn how to run and integrate the LMS into your organization’s structure.

Not all companies use LMS for the same purpose. It could be for induction, skills training, updates training, service/product training, etc. The same thing happens with the consumer, they and their purpose may vary too. There can be internal employees, managers, or even channel partners.

Because of this, is essential that an LMS implementation plan is created around how exactly the Learning Management System will be used in your organization. Based on how you picture/plan on using the LMS to your company or employees, you could create a Request for Proposal (RFP) or a statement of work (SOW) that details the requirements pertaining to your use case and keeping in mind your employees. The clearer the use case, the clear the delivery is going to be. One of the best examples on use case can be to understand if an organization wants to use the LMS as Multi-Tenant or Single Tenant and include it in the use case so the implementation and training can happen accordingly.

Start an LMS implementation plan and ensure the success of your training programs

By following a specific route you will keep your users focused. It can be of great help to start searching for Learning and Development strategies to provide specific training to every user. 

Let’s go deep in what needs to be done in an LMS implementation plan: 

Set up an action plan:

Even before getting your favourite LMS onboard, you should start off with a strong plan towards implementation. When creating this plan, go back to the basics of SMART plan. Yes! It may sound childish but certainly accomplishes the task well. For people who are new to this, here’s a quick break up for a SMART action plan:

S = Specific

M = Measurable

A = achievable

R = Realistic  

T = Timely.

Bottom line is to be very clear about what you wish to achieve while you keep it time-bound.

The SPOC:

Once you are all set with your plan of action you will need somebody who can head this entire implementation project, a SPOC. This SPOC (specific point of contact) will make sure that the entire project runs smoothly. He/she will be responsible to liaise with the internal team and the LMS company to get all the needs/requirements delivered on time. This role doesn’t require any special technical knowledge, just the basics and to know-how will do just fine. Certainly, somebody who is technically sound will be a great advantage; even better if this SPOC is from your L&D or HR department.

Choose an LMS admin:

Before the LMS Implementation plan starts, it is important that you decide who the top administrator for the LMS is gonna be. You may wonder or be in a confused state too, as to why this is so important to make its way to the LMS implementation checklist. This is important because once the LMS administrator is decided this person will be a part of the entire LMS implementation plan from the start. So he/she will be aware of everything and will be able to handle queries/issues and clarifications once the implementation is done. Depending on the organization size, you have one or many admins too. 

Branding and Customization:

Before the implementation goes underway, be prepared with all the customization that needs to be implemented. This can be anything from the organization’s colour scheme to a logo update and any other integrations that you may want. The custom process is really important as this is what will define if the LMS platform will have the same aspect as the rest of your company’s software systems, making it a part of the company.

User creation and enrolment:

Having an LMS on-board means it needs users to succeed so this is the very first step to get the LMS started. For this, you need to be clear on how a user will be created within an LMS especially because the IT also will be involved here. 

There are many ways to achieve this but here are some popular ways to get this done: 

• SSO (From any external/existing mode, you may reduce the headache of getting user details transferred from one base to another)
• SSO – SAML
• SSO – LDAP
• SSO – Gmail
• SSO – from your HR database (Active Directory)
• Create user through token authentication via API (HRMS / Salesforce)
• Create user through LDAP

This check ensures that there are no later hiccups when you get down to create users in order to consume the LMS content.

Alternative Support:

We are 100% sure that every LMS provider has a support system in place, there is simply no doubt that but there are times where you wish that you don’t have to wait in long call queues to reach a technical agent that gets your issue resolved. Hence, it is essential that we have more alternatives to just phone calls or even emails where the turn around time (TAT) is longer. When getting an LMS on board check on these alternative support systems like community, chat, helpdesk, or even a knowledge base or a tool where your SPOC can raise a query with details like screenshots, videos etc. This will ensure that your issue can be solved or addressed by different channels like knowledgebase/community that can help in getting simple questions answered without any wait time.

Content:

Getting an LMS on-board is certainly a big achievement but to get the right content for the LMS is the top priority. While the talks are underway for the LMS, check on how the content will come in, will it be outsourced or taken from the LMS vendor itself? or you will get that created through an SME within the organization. Whatever it is, that needs to be clarified and put down on the plan as an important factor for the success of the LMS implementation.

Migration:

So it’s not your first time handling an LMS, that’s good, as you are thorough with all the steps mentioned because you already have a learning management system onboard. But this gives rise to another step – Migration. Here you will need to involve both the IT departments so that there is a smooth transition from one LMS to another without any loss of content.

Testing your LMS:

Now, we can’t emphasize enough on this step. Testing the entire system in this new environment is really important. Some of the major parameters that you need to check for are: 

• Is there any kind of bug that is getting produced post-implementation?
• Is there any data loss?
• And the most vital thing to check is if the Learning Management System is working like you imagined it would be working. 
• What are the processes, the steps which are something that you didn’t know about?

Get all of these issues creased out.

Bonus – Quality Post Test:

The job is not over once testing is done. You heard it right. Once testing is done and the bugs are fixed, you then work on the QA as the last step. Now many people confuse this step with testing which is already conducted in the previous step. So lets clear the air once in for all. Testers check everything from a developer perspective so that can be any kind of bugs but QA testers check everything through a layman perspective resulting a lot of bugs and issues as compared to a tester. Hence it is essential that QA is done thoroughly and this can be done by any end-user (employee) from the organization itself so that we can get some real perspective. This could also be your LnD execs so they could learn and train.

These instructions are a guide to help you get better results of your training programs but also make sure you count with a team of LMS experts ready to contribute with the implementation and setting up of the platform. In Paradiso Solutions, we are ready to get you a smoother, happier but most important really effective eLearning process.