Today, an organisation that wishes to train and educate its employees, partners, and customers will not do without a learning management system (LMS). But selecting the best LMS development partner is critical to implementing a successful platform that satisfies your unique business needs.
This process involves evaluating potential partners in terms of their capabilities, expertise and partnership approach that you want to be aligned with your goals, priorities and budget.
This article provides a comprehensive guide on the key factors to consider when selecting an LMS developer. It covers:
- Defining your LMS requirements
- Capabilities to look for in an LMS developer
- Questions to ask potential partners
- Methods to evaluate developers
- Warning signs when evaluating vendors
- Key factors that influence cost
- The importance of finding the right cultural fit
- Getting user buy-in during the vetting process
Only if you can properly set criteria, do proper diligence, and involve stakeholders, shall you make the right choice on the LMS development company that will help you bring your vision for workplace learning to life.
Defining Your LMS Requirements
The first step is outlining your specific business requirements for the LMS implementation. This gives you a baseline to evaluate vendors against and ensures the platform aligns with your organisation’s priorities, constraints, and growth strategies.
Key requirements to define include:
Goals and metrics
What business goals and metrics of success will the LMS support specifically? Some common goals may include increasing employee productivity, getting more revenue from upsells or renewals, maintaining high customer retention and satisfaction, improving workplace compliance, and reducing churn (turnover) by growing talent.
Audience and scale
Who are the learners and administrators? How many active users will need access per month this year and in the next three years? Outline both internal and external audiences.
Use cases
Specify different use cases for learning and training you want to enable. What do you need to onboard and support new hires, sell training, partner certify, educate customers, train in compliance, or something else entirely? Define what is a must-have, what is nice to have, and what are future use cases.
Features
Through administration, content management, course delivery, assessment building, communication capabilities, and integration needs, outline feature requirements, and then across analytics/reporting and integration needs. Prioritise by essential and optional.
Budget
Define both an initial and ongoing SaaS/cloud budget for the LMS over the next 3-5 years. Factor in costs for content development as well.
Implementation timeline
By what date do you need the initial LMS rollout completed? How long can you spend on evaluating vendors and customisations during implementation?
Gaining stakeholder input through surveys and requirement-gathering sessions will give you a comprehensive list. Turn this into an RFP document that outlines your organisation’s needs, sets requirements, and requests proposed solutions and pricing from vendors.
Key LMS Developer Capabilities
Once your LMS requirements are set, you can better evaluate potential partners against these needs. Key capabilities to look for in an LMS development company include:
Technical Expertise
The company should have significant experience building, implementing and supporting LMS platforms for organisations similar to yours. Review examples of past client work and LMS offerings to gauge technical competence.
- LMS platform. Is their platform robust, flexible, and built specifically for corporate training instead of academia? How many clients use updated versions of their technology?
- Integration capabilities. Can they seamlessly integrate your LMS with your existing HRIS, LRS, CMS, CRM, and collaboration tools?
- Customisation skills. Do they have proven experience customising system capabilities, interfaces and features to meet client needs? Can you see examples?
- Reporting and analytics. What standard and custom reporting capabilities come built-in? Can you request custom reports?
- Infrastructure and security. Switching should be led by your asking about their hosting infrastructure, reliability, security protocols, and disaster recovery safeguards.
Instructional Design Services
The LMS partner should also provide instructional design services to create engaging courses and programs.
- Instructional designers on staff. Do they have a team of instructional designers who understand concepts of adult education? Can you bring prospective team members?
- Course development samples. Request samples of courses they’ve built for previous clients to showcase their instructional design talents.
- Content libraries. Some may provide access to pre-built off-the-shelf content libraries, which can supplement custom course builds.
Project Management Skills
The partner should also have proven experience managing complex LMS implementations from planning through launch and support.
- Standard methodology. Ask about their implementation process. Do they follow an agile or waterfall methodology that works for your needs?
- Sample project plans. Ask for 2-3 sample project plans with timelines for custom LMS rollouts. This showcases their ability to scope efforts.
- Dedicated project manager. Ask if they assign a dedicated project manager to each client. Will you interface with an account manager long-term as well?
Training and Support
Ongoing training and timely support will be crucial for administering and adopting the new LMS.
- Admin/end-user training. Ask how they train both system administrators and end-users to use the platform. Is training included as standard or at an added cost?
- Support response time. What are their support response times and processes during implementation and long-term? Are online resources available as well?
- Upgrade process. Do they handle new system upgrades and feature rollouts smoothly for clients? How often do they issue upgrades?
Evaluating Potential LMS Development Partners
After defining what must be in an LMS for your organisation and making an RFP, it’s time to start reviewing and evaluating potential partners. Steps for properly vetting vendors include:
Cast a Wide Initial Net
Short List 3-5 Options
After initial research, make a list of 3-5 vendors that, based on your needs, seem best aligned to your needs. Try to come up with a combination of larger and smaller boutique firms. The firm will provide a wider platform but with less customisation and quick responsiveness. Specialised expertise but less out-of-the-box capability is provided by smaller boutique firms.
Send RFPs and Review Proposals
Send your LMS requirements RFP document to the 3-5 firms on your shortlist. Provide 2-3 weeks for responses.
Side by side, review written proposals and score the vendors based on your defined must-have criteria. Is this proposal different from the others? If any vendor misses requirements, follow up with them to allow a chance to explain their capabilities.
Interview Finalists
Book online demos for 2-3 finalists to demo their platform, the custom features they offer, and the implementation services. Be prepared with a list of questions based on what you need.
Questions to consider asking include:
- Can our requirements be solved within their platform, or do we need to heavily customise the platform?
- What specific features must we have when it comes to analytics, assessments, integrations, etc.? Can you show me examples?
- What specific expertise does your team have in our industry?
- Walk me through your exact implementation process and timeline.
- What is your support and training process?
- What existing content do you have that may meet our needs?
- Can I speak to an existing client using your platform for a similar use case?
Evaluate Cultural Fit
Beyond functional requirements, you want an LMS partner that feels like the right cultural fit.
Key factors to assess include:
- Do they respond promptly to questions and requests through the sales process? If not now, likely not in the future.
- Are they truly listening and responding to your needs, versus just pitching?
- Do they explain what is included versus what would be an add-on cost? Do they admit functionality gaps?
- Is their aim to create the right solution with combined endeavours, or is it all about attractive hard sells?
- Do they have experience serving organisations like yours? Industry experience matters.
- Have they been around for many years, demonstrating stability?
- Client retention, What is their client retention rate? Can you talk to long-term clients?
Getting Stakeholder Buy-In
Rather than solely relying on your assessment, involve business stakeholders from IT, operations, sales, support and end-user groups in reviewing shortlist options through demos and discussions.
This serves several purposes:
- Gain insight from their unique needs perspectives
- Build their buy-in early in the process
- Set expectations on how the new LMS will benefit their teams
- Get input on preferences between partners
Get feedback through stakeholder interviews, surveys, and team evaluation discussions. Use the ratings and preferences to compile the best choice overall.
Defining LMS Project Success Criteria
Define project success criteria clearly before you sign a contract with the partner you’ve chosen, which should align with your business goals of implementing an LMS.
Measurable outcomes make it easier to evaluate results and to make sure the partner delivers on what’s expected in every project phase.
Sample success metrics include:
- Completing implementation by [date]
- Achieving [x]% adoption across learners in first year
- Demonstrating [y]% proficiency for training completion
- Increasing customer retention [z]% within first year
- Earning [$ or %] ROI within first 2 years
Build performance against these measurable targets into the contract. This incentivises your chosen technology partner to drive results, not just deliver a generic solution.
Warning Signs When Evaluating LMS Vendors
While many vendors may seem well-qualified on the surface, a few red flags during discussions should give you pause:
- They seem unclear or confused about your requirements
- They avoid answering specific questions directly
- They don’t have expertise in your particular industry
- Timelines seem overly aggressive based on scope
- Few clients stay with them long-term
- Negative reviews outnumber positive online
- They push you to sign quickly without due diligence
Before moving on to the vetting process, dig more deeply into any concerns. Take enough time to evaluate misgivings before you partner long-term to protect your organisation.
How LMS Costs Are Calculated
Pricing models differ among LMS development firms. Understanding how costs are calculated helps you accurately compare options. Be sure to consider both upfront and ongoing costs.
Common pricing models include:
- Per active user pricing for cloud/SaaS-based solutions. Scales costs based on learner usage.
- The package includes one-time licensing fees and annual support fees per organisation or per learner. Includes hosted software.
- Custom development costs based on complexity, features required, and timeline needs
- Content development costs may be included or separate based on source
- Support fees, priced per tier based on response times
- Additional fees for extensive integrations, branding or analytics needs
You should also clarify what level of training and support is included versus add-on costs. Avoid vendors that nickel and dime you on extras instead of transparency.
There are things to consider, such as examining the budget after and also about scalability in terms of whether you can accommodate how much business you expect to grow or have grown over the next several years.
Key Takeaways
Algorithms to win are a way of selecting the right LMS development partner, but you need to take an objective approach and align the platform capabilities, service expertise, and cultural fit with what your organisation needs and priorities.
Impetuous decision-making or lack of vendor due diligence increases the chances of implementation slippages, cost blows, and adoption problems.
While sufficient time spent beforehand to discover the right lasting business partner generates dividends in terms of improved training effects, faster value delivery, and greater learner pleasure. It breeds a set of working cultures of continuous learning and talent development for continued success.
