LMS Buyer's Guide The right LMS is a powerful tool in delivering efficient and effective training.

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1 ASSERION Learning Management System LMS Buyer's Guide The right LMS is a powerful tool in delivering efficient and effective training.

2 The right LMS saves you money Training is an important element of maintaining your competitive edge with a motivated and skilled staff. Training is a valuable asset and the right LMS will help you increase it's effectiveness whilst cutting costs. An LMS will help those with responsibilities for training, HR, compliance and more, improve their organisation's performance and meet legal/ regulatory requirements. Key deliverables of an LMS: Easy to learn and use cutting costs and increasing efficiency Quick delivery of on-demand, from-anywhere interactive training Easy monitoring, advanced reporting and management information Secure data/ full transparency for audit trails and compliance

3 Which LMS is right for you? Finding the right Learning Management System for you and your organisation means cutting through the technical jargon and getting the answers to 3 simple questions does the system: 1. meet your day-to-day requirements of creating, delivering and managing training? 2. provide improved visibility on performance and competence? 3. increase the cost effectiveness of your training efforts? First and foremost an LMS must pack the right features so you can meet the training needs of your organisation. Then it must help you better identify training needs, progress and weaknesses in competency. Have you heard of MoSCoW? No, not the Russian city, but rather the handy method of visualising and prioritising your requirements. It will help you decide what features are important: Must have e.g. a totally secure system with robust backups Should have e.g. a smooth, intuitive and efficient workflow Could have e.g. author tool independence to handle any content Want e.g. fully customised to match your corporate branding The right LMS will meet all your 'must have' requirements and as many of your 'should have' requirements as possible. Meeting the 'could have' and 'want' requirements is a question of budget and ROI.

4 Meeting your requirements You would, quite rightly, expect any LMS worth its salt to have the features you need. Fundamentally you need the ability to: 1. create training initiatives that meet your organisation's training needs 2. deliver timely training with materials in the format you choose 3. effectively manage the entire process and monitor/ record progress Through these fundamental features your LMS must meet your current needs and have the flexibility to adapt to future needs. Make a list, in plain English, of what you need. This shouldn't be a list of software features features only meet needs. For example a need could be "Quickly deliver training to anyone, anywhere in the organisation". A feature that meets that would be " internet based". When looking for software it's sometimes hard not to be sucked into being led by features rather than needs. Starting with clearly defined needs will help prevent 'feature creep' which leads to paying more than necessary for an over-engineered and unnecessarily complex solution.

5 Giving you what you want Choosing the right LMS is more about what you want. And that's what will decide which is right for you. You've no doubt got your own ideas on what you want from an LMS but generally speaking, like any tool, an LMS should: 1. fit in with the way you want to work 2. be easy to implement, learn and use 3. not restrict what you want to do 4. save resources and time, not require them You don't want an unwieldy system with a steep learning curve that dictates the way you work and is as much a chore as not having an LMS. Make sure you're functional needs are met and then concentrate on what you want from the LMS rather than on just a list of what it does. Will it deliver what you want to achieve? What will it be like to use day in, day out? Is it really more efficient or does it merely replace one form of administration for another? With all your 'must have' requirements met it's a good idea to compare available features to refine your 'should have' and 'could have' requirements. For example: Is author tool independence something your LMS should do so you can easily upload any format of training content? Is a customised system that matches your corporate branding something you want or could need?

6 Everyone gets what they want Typically you will have several stakeholders other than training professionals (end-users, HR, compliance, management, IT ) each having different priorities. For example: It's important you know what everyone is looking for from an LMS so you can feed their requirements into your decision-making. This helps gain buy-in/ support and leads to better ROI across business functions. The right LMS will meet not only the wants of training professionals and administrators responsible for running the system, but of the other stakeholders who must use or sign-off on the system. End-users want convenient, easy-to-consume training delivered when and where they need it IT managers will prize a secure, easy-to-implement, fully-managed hosted system that doesn't require technical support Senior management will favour a low-cost/ high ROI solution that delivers visibility on training progress Compliance professionals will want a robust system that enables them to meet regulatory requirements HR will want an efficient way to ensure important material is delivered and read by staff across the organisation

7 ASSERION Learning Management System 5 top tips to take away When looking for the right LMS make sure: 1. you clearly define what you need it to do 2. it's easy-to-use/ implement and works the way you want 3. you know and get what every stakeholder is looking or from it 4. you're not getting complexity or paying for features you don't need or want 5. it will save you money and time, delivering maximum ROI