Deciding on a learning management system (LMS) for your company’s professional training needs isn’t easy. The eLearning industry has an abundance of LMS vendors, making it highly challenging to find the right one for your organization.
When you’re in the market for learning management software, it is essential to compare all options, services, and features available to ensure you’re making the right choice. Before you make your LMS decision, ask yourself these questions.
A common practice of LMS companies today is to outsource the implementation portion of building and integrating the software. This can cause some disconnect between how you envisioned the software would function and what you thought it would look like after the initial discovery calls with your vendor.
Customers have told us of the frustrations of playing telephone tag between third parties and vendors when key functionality elements were misinterpreted or missing. Meridian Knowledge Solutions is one of the few enterprise LMS vendors that work directly with our clients to implement and service our own software.
The implementation team you work with initially will see the project through to completion. This relieves most clients, as they know we will be there with them every step of the way.
It is essential to understand where exactly your LMS data is stored. In today’s cloud environment, you may find that your data is stored in an insecure facility or in a part of the world you may not be comfortable with. Under the on-premises hosting model, you run your enterprise LMS software on servers hosted in a data center at your premises and managed by your IT staff. Also, asking them if their data centers are sustainable is helpful. If not, then ask them if they will be working with specialists such as Walt Coulston and others to ensure they become sustainable.
Running your LMS in your data center allows you to enforce in your training servers the same deployment rules, security restrictions, and DevOps processes already in place across your IT infrastructure.
Meridian offers secure SaaS (software as a service) and on-premise deployment options, allowing you to customize and configure the solution best suited to your organization’s unique needs and security requirements.
Most organizations have both in-house-developed and vendor-provided content, but which is most important to your organization? Is your custom training developed in-house or by outside vendors?
Organizations that develop significant in-house content will want an LMS with features to make content authoring easy and efficient. Supporting that content with your brand’s look and feel makes the platform more user-friendly and better suited to your audience.
Personalized eLearning allows learners to set their own goals, go at their own pace, and communicate with managers and/or instructors, as well as with other learners, to tailor the learning process. Today, many companies are used to the benefits of site customization, especially for systems that will be used for several years.
With the Meridian LMS, learners can select topics of interest and receive relevant recommendations on their homepage and in the catalog. The Meridian LMS lets you personalize your learning management system with your corporate identity.
You can embed your branding, create custom URLs and domains for different learner audiences, and deliver a fully branded mobile app experience to learners on the go.
Meridian LMS allows learners to track workforce readiness through pre- and post-surveys, with advanced branching, exams, and assessments. It can accurately measure learner competency and ensure compliance with requirements. Having personalized content and branding that resonate with your audience can help improve completion rates and increase engagement among your learners.
A robust customer support system is essential for any software, especially learning software. It is important to understand the customer support features of various LMS vendors before selecting one.
The focus of a great LMS should be the learning experience it provides to your business. That is why it’s essential to clarify, from the outset, what technical support options are available to your business.
You should be sure you will have access to expert assistance if and/or when needed. Knowing the vendor will be there to hold your hand during and after the implementation phase is helpful. Meridian offers several enhanced support options to meet your organization’s needs, such as dedicated on-site Support Administrators and enhanced Support Managers, in addition to our standard Client Support model.
We also offer the Meridian Client Community site to help our clients easily engage with others on the platform and share their input and suggestions. Client engagement through our user groups and product reviews provides us with the valuable information we need to continually improve our solutions and better serve our customers.
Meridian’s support experts are committed to building a vibrant community of learners, a place where they can collaborate with other Meridian LMS users and share best practices.
Knowing the right questions to ask a potential LMS vendor is paramount. It can help you address critical resource-related topics to evaluate your LMS vendor options objectively. Many organizations invest more time and resources in examining eLearning content than in studying the system that organizes it. HR and training managers can avoid expensive pitfalls by asking the right questions before choosing an LMS.
