The LMS market is full of options. Selecting from them can be a daunting task. In this post, I’ll talk about how to select the right LMS for your customer training program.
Varieties of LMSs
First of all, despite sharing a name, there are several different types of LMSs and they aren’t interchangeable. Vendors that sell a particular type of LMS tend to specialize in functionality that is important for their use case. For example, an internal training LMS needs to have a robust HRIS integration so that new hires are automatically provisioned to the LMS and assigned training based on their role.
Probably the three most common LMS types in the SaaS world are the customer training LMS, the internal training LMS, and the sales training LMS. Customer-facing LMSs are for training your customer base on how to use your platform and important concepts pertaining to your product. They require a different set of integrations than internal and sales training LMSs. One of the most important components of a customer training LMS is user provisioning. Unless you want your customers to have to create a username and password for both your platform and your LMS, you’ll probably want them to be able to single-sign on with their platform credentials. Ideally, you’ll be able to remove the sense that they’ve gone to a different website altogether, either through a headless LMS or branding and site design that imitates your platform well enough to create the illusion that the user hasn’t gone anywhere.
If you haven’t gotten this question yet, you will. Why not just use one LMS for internal training, customer training, and sales training? While there are vendors that position themselves as a ubiquitous solution for all of these use cases, the majority of them fail at being viable for all three categories. What you’ll end up with is a partial solution that misses a crucial requirement of one or more of your training needs. And yes, a partial solution with a lot of workarounds for an internal training LMS is unacceptable. But let’s face it, a customer-facing LMS is part of your product. Any flaws will absolutely be noticed and someone will pay for it. That’s why it’s vital to understand the risks of attempting to implement an LMS for multiple use cases. Until we come up with new acronyms, be prepared to explain to accounting why your company needs two different LMSs.
Before Vendor Selection
Before you begin talking to vendors, you want a few things already in place. You’ll need to identify the major stakeholders for the LMS outside of the L&D team. You’ll also need to create technical requirements for your LMS and prioritize them in terms of their relative importance. If you are attempting to address multiple use cases, make sure the teams responsible create separate technical requirements documents. You’ll need to work out your content strategy during this time period as well. After all, there’s no point in purchasing an expensive piece of software if you don’t have anything to do with it. Ideally, you or your team members will already have a sense of what your customer-facing curriculum will look like. This is also important for completing your technical requirements. Lastly, you’ll need to estimate how many users will access your LMS every month. You can start with your monthly active users for your platform, but don’t expect every active user to access the LMS.
Identify Major Stakeholders
Create Technical Requirements
Estimate How Many Users will Access the LMS
Vendor Selection
Begin by creating a list of vendors to choose from. You can try running a search for “top customer LMS”, but be wary of the results. Canvas and Blackboard are excellent LMSs, but they are mainly used in academia. If you see these vendors on a list, that list probably wasn’t made with your use case in mind. I’ve run across this problem on fairly well-regarded eLearning review sites. You can also look on G2 or Capterra, but again, they will return LMSs that aren’t built for customer training. In order to be sure you’re looking at the right results, look for the names Thought Industries, Northpass, and Skilljar. These are all customer training LMSs. Docebo markets itself as a swiss army knife, but it began as an internal training LMS and took steps to support the integrations it needed to function as a customer training LMS.
Integrations Tell a Story
Once you have a list, start by visiting their integrations page on their company website. It’s the fastest way of crossing out non-contenders. If they don’t mention a Salesforce integration, they might be new to the customer training world, so even if a Salesforce integration isn’t a dealbreaker for you, regard them with suspicion. After looking at a few integrations pages, you’ll get a sense of what technologies the big LMSs are integrating with, and you’ll be able to spot an amateur. Although depending on what you need, that might not cross them off your list. Just because they don’t advertise a certain integration doesn’t mean they don’t support it. As long as they check most of your boxes, reach out for a demo.
The Discovery Call & Demo
Share your technical requirements during the discovery call. Explain your content strategy and ask if they can share LMSs that other companies have implemented through them. If they seem like a good fit (and you seem like a serious buyer), they’ll send you an NDA to sign and set up a demo. You can also ask for a sandbox to play in so your LMS admin can get a sense of how easy it is to manage. During your demo, be sure to ask how to perform specific functionality. Look at their analytics. Look at how to set up your integrations. If live classes are a requirement, look at how to schedule an event as well.
Next Steps
After the demo, you’ll start to talk about pricing plans. If you haven’t already, you’ll need to give them an estimate of your MAUs. Ask them for a price sheet that explains their pricing model and estimates cost based on your user size. With a purchase of this size, you’ll probably need executive sponsorship to get budget approval. Having a price sheet ready for them makes everything easier.
Next, ask them what their implementation process looks like. Implementing a customer training LMS takes longer than everyone expects it to. It will take much longer if you go with a vendor that has poor professional services and project management. You can gauge the quality of their professional services by the responsiveness of your account executive. They should show you a timeline with milestones and a hard go-live date.
After you’ve eliminated most of the contenders, ask the remaining vendors if you can speak to customer references. By now, your account executive will probably have asked you to share which other vendors you’re considering. A smart account executive will pair you with a customer reference that also considered, or even worked with the other vendor you’re talking to. That’s why when you speak to their customer reference, ask them what vendors they’ve used and why they made their selection. Also ask them about their use case. If they have a similar content strategy, that’s a good indication that this vendor has done their homework and isn’t hiding anything about their functionality. Take notes to support your argument for your selection later.
The Final Decision
You’ve viewed a demo, you’ve seen their pricing, you have an implementation timeline, and you’ve spoken to a customer who emphatically thinks you are in good hands. It’s time to make the decision. At this point, there should be one frontrunner that your whole team agrees is the best selection. If you’re still encountering disagreements, revisit your technical requirements and your notes from your customer reference calls. State your case to all of the major stakeholders and your executive sponsor. Provided they are in agreement, it’s time to apply for budget approval. If everything goes well, congratulations. You’re officially finished with the easy part. Now it’s time to implement.
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