If you have taken the wise decision to have a Learning Management System (LMS) to support the Training and Development function within your organization, you have begun well. But while well begun is half done, it is still only half done. It is one thing to choose and purchase; its implementation is an entirely different ball game. Not to worry, Gyrus Systems can help you with this. This article lists 10 points that you must consider to ensure a seamless implementation of the LMS within the company.
1. Check your IT infrastructure for compatibility
Now that you have decided to implement this within your organization, it is important to ensure that the different IT systems and architecture that the company possesses has the requisite specifications to facilitate the seamless deployment. To ensure this, it is important to make the IT team a part of all the deliberations that you have with the vendor with respect to getting the LMS designed for your organization. If necessary, you would have to upgrade your existing infrastructure to ensure that it supports the implementation process.
2. Determine the mode of training
Most LMS products support different training modes such as Instructor-Led Training and pre-recorded online courses, and so on. Before implementing, it is essential to determine which training modes suit the company’s training and development needs the best. If you wish to go for a blended approach, you need to determine what modules would be administered by what training mode.
3. Devise the necessary courses
A gun is useless without bullets. Similarly, an LMS is just a platform to facilitate the training exercise. And therefore, before you decide to implement it in your organization, you should create enough courses so that they can be deployed. While creating the courses, you also get to test out the various course-creation tools that the LMS offers, and if necessary, you can get more such tools added on.
4. Ensure scalability of the LMS
An LMS is a business software, but as the business expands, your learning management system should be able to support the increase in number of users. Also, a company may get into mergers, joint ventures, and acquisitions with other companies. The company’s LMS should be able to support such changes that the organization goes through, while being able to meet the changing requirements pertaining to training and development.
5. Ensure employee involvement right from the start
The end-users of the company’s LMS are going to be the employees (be it in the role of trainers or trainees). As such, it is essential to involve them during the product-testing phase so as to ensure that every user is able to use the necessary product features without encountering any technical glitches. In case any such glitches are detected, it is important to get them troubleshooted before full-scale deployment of the system.
6. Evaluate the scope and need for customization of LMS
Once you know exactly what all you require within an LMS, it would be easy to evaluate different available products in the market. Once you choose the best-suited product, you might need to still customize its interface and other features to tune it for your company’s requirements. For this, you need to confirm with the vendor to what extent the LMS can be customized, and what would be the additional fees that the vendor would charge for such customization.
7. Devise an LMS Implementation Plan
When it comes to implementing the LMS, you need to treat it like a project and involve the whole team in it. For this, you need to set different time-bound milestones that you should strive to achieve, and delegate different tasks pertaining to the implementation to different employees. The implementation project plan and the different milestones along the project execution path should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound).
8. Create an LMS administration team
Before the learning system goes live, you would need to create a administration team. Typically, this would be a cross-functional team that would comprise of project managers, team leads, eLearning experts, HR personnel, IT administrators, etc. If you do not have people with the necessary skill-set, you might have to recruit the necessary talent. After you have formed a team, you would have to fix roles and responsibilities for each team member.
9. Train the LMS Administration Team
Even if you have people who have the necessary skills within your administration team, it is essential to train them, especially the fresh recruits, so that they could manage the administration in accordance with the business requirements. This would involve explaining the different training objectives that are being sought to be achieved through the LMS, training the team to effectively provide tech support and issue resolution for intended users.
10. Conduct a Pilot Launch
Before deploying, it would be wise to do a pilot roll-out first. During the pilot launch, you would be able to understand the different issues that may be faced, and plan strategies to work around the same. What this would also mean is the administrators, trainers, and trainees would be at ease when it comes to managing and using the learning management system once it goes live. The pilot launch would also offer the opportunity to detect and rectify any eleventh-hour technical issues.
Following the above 10-point LMS implementation checklist will ensure a niggle-free implementation within your business organization. This LMS implementation guide would also help your organization evolve a culture of continuous learning.
