Does this sound familiar: I ve done my due diligence. Why is our LMS more pain than gain?

Transcription

1 ? SIMPLICITY SAVES THE LMS Does this sound familiar: I ve done my due diligence. Why is our LMS more pain than gain? You are not alone in asking this question. Since 1998, the consultants at Michaels & Associates have partnered with clients just like you who experience the same frustration with their Learning Management System (LMS). Trouble is, it s hard to get by without one. LMS applications and Learning Content Management System (LCMS) applications have grown in popularity for the last decade. In a 2003 study on current and upcoming uses for an LMS, Bersin & Associates partnered with LTI Research and reported these key findings: Widespread LMS adoption Lengthy LMS implementation times High LMS implementation costs Primarily onsite LMS installation with in-house support Fragmented LMS market with complex product selection This research confirms the typical complex LMS challenges that organizations face. To make things even more confusing, a plethora of course authoring tools, adoption of either AICC/SCORM 1.2/SCORM 2004 standards, fragmentation of learner platforms from PCs to smartphones and tablets, explosion of the Cloud and the slow rebound from the late-2000s recession have done little to solve the problems faced by early LMS adopters. CASE STUDIES EXPOSE SHORTFALLS IN TRACKING LEARNING In the 2011 LMS Buying Trends Report, Brandon Hall reported that over 72% of organizations that responded to a survey had an LMS currently in place, and 79% of those organizations were either not satisfied or only somewhat satisfied with their current LMS solution provider. The following three LMS case studies clearly expose several reasons for such low satisfaction. 79% WERE EITHER OF THOSE ORGANIZATIONS THAT USED AN LMS, NOT SATISFIED OR ONLY SOMEWHAT SATISFIED Percolate LMS It s just that simple.

2 CASE #1 MASSIVE DELAYS AND COST INCREASES DUE TO LMS COMPLEXITY The Defense Company has a learner population of 10,000 employees and contractors. While most learners are located within three states across the US, the company has learners around the world. In an effort to save training costs, the Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) division of the Defense Company recently converted all of their yearly OSHA classroom certifications to web-based training (WBT). Concurrently, the Chief Human Resources and Administrator Officer spearheaded an effort to extend the enterprise-wide human resource management systems (HRMS) with an LMS component for tracking new hire orientation, supervisor training and the newly converted WBTs. During the requirements phase of the HRMS extension, it is discovered that the LMS component would need some customization to allow for the reporting required by the Executive Team of the Defense Company. The customizations to the LMS component require consulting and programming that increase the budget by 15% and the timeline for implementation by at least six months. Human Resources continues to offer and track the new hire orientation and supervisory training in classrooms during the delay. The same option is not available for the EHS WBTs since the WBTs were created using the financial resources that would have been available to host EHS classroom training. Consequently, employees are now forced to navigate to a shared drive on the network, complete the WBT, print a certificate and send it by company courier to the EHS department. An employee at the EHS department is responsible for updating an Excel workbook with learner information and generating weekly learner reports. When the LMS component finally goes live, the EHS employee will also need to manually update each learner s transcript with all WBT completion data. Unless the HRMS Company adopts the LMS customizations as a standard feature, the Defense Company will have to pay for the reporting customizations each time there is a new release of the HRMS. At this point, the Chief Human Resources and Administrator Officer has concluded that an LMS extension to the HRMS is more pain than it is worth. CASE #2 INFLEXIBLE LMS RESULTS IN LIMITED ACCESS AND INACCURATE REPORTING The Industrial Services Company has spent the last eight months preparing for a huge training effort that is slated to encompass several potential audiences: employees, franchisees and clients. The go live date for the training must coincide with the launch of the software systems upgrade, which is scheduled to occur company-wide within six weeks. Up to this point, the Industrial Services Company planned to use their LMS for the entire learner population. An Integrated Product Team (IPT) came up with a strategy that allows users without an employee login to access the LMS, which is located on the corporate intranet. During a routine review of Percolate LMS It s just that simple.

3 the courseware, the Legal and Compliance department determines that the courses cannot be launched from the LMS for anyone other than employees due to LMS licensing restrictions. The reviewers also find that while the LMS launches the courseware on desktops or mobile devices, the LMS does not track learner data when using an ipad or Android smartphone. CASE #3 INCREASED COSTS FROM A COMPLICATED & CLOSED LCMS ARCHITECTURE For the last 30 years, the Healthcare Company has met their internal and external training needs with onsite classroom training, presentations at an annual user s conference and weekly web conferencing events. Training content has historically been developed by the training and documentation team, using Microsoft Office, Cisco WebEx or Adobe authoring tools. Other departments also purchased training content when they needed help with specific commercial off the shelf (COTS) products. Although there is no centralized automated tracking and reporting of learning activity, the Healthcare Company does have the freedom to choose the most appropriate tool for each training need. Three years ago, the Healthcare Company initially shopped for an LMS to prepare for the additional training required to respond to the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act that was enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of During implementation, the Healthcare Company discovered that to fully access all the reporting capabilities, they would need to upgrade to an LCMS. While this was initially seen as an additional cost, the Learning Director hoped to offset the costs by reusing course components between audiences and eliminating licenses for Adobe authoring tools. All employees at the Healthcare Company initially completed a compliance certification on a new healthcare regulation; however, the addition of new training content available to employees in the LCMS has slowed considerably. The LCMS interface for creating content is not similar to Microsoft or Adobe, and only two members of the training and documentation team have been able to travel and attend the expensive training provided by the LCMS vendor. Some training content purchased by other departments cannot be placed into the LCMS because it does not meet the vendor-specific interoperability standards and there is no budget to modify the training content to fit the LCMS. Without the significant addition of new or relevant content, LCMS use has declined even though the Healthcare Company has grown tremendously in the last three years. The chosen LMS solutions resulted in increased complexity and cost while sacrificing the ability to quickly respond to business and learner needs Percolate LMS It s just that simple.

4 LOOKING FOR YOUR NEXT (OR FIRST) LMS Whether you are a new or experienced LMS shopper, the LMS selection process can be quite daunting. To assist with this, the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) published A Field Guild to Learning Management Systems, which recommends the following LMS functional requirements: Integration with HR systems Assessment capabilities Administration tools Adherence to standards Content access Configurability Content development Security Content integration Appropriate pricing model Skills management (hosted vs. installed) The three companies profiled in the previous case studies used LMS procurement and implementation best practices and a list similar to the ASTD field guide. They still ended up with a solution that did not meet their business needs. Their experience is not unique; according to another recent Brandon Hall study, over 30% of organizations plan to replace their existing learning tracking solution. The LMS market continually strives for one-upmanship by encouraging integrated talent management suites, social learning platforms and niche solutions. This complexity has not brought satisfaction to end-users. It is notable that Bersin s LMS research in 2011 confirms that LMS buyers are still frustrated and advises that LMS purchasers should look for easy-to-use and easyto-maintain systems. In other words, when it comes to an LMS, think simple. Simplicity works. Ask Apple. Their first ipod started the digital music revolution in 2001, according to Wired magazine. In an interview with Newsweek, Steve Jobs had this to say about the design lesson of the ipod, Percolate LMS It s just that simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions.

5 LMS providers need to apply this lesson to evolve past complex solutions. They need to apply the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 Rule, advocated by 37signals and Six Sigma organizations worldwide. In a paper called Rethinking LMS Features, Dr. William D. Baker recommends the application of the 80/20 Rule in these three areas: 80% 20% Which 20% of the usual LMS features offer you 80% of the value? Which 80% of the usual LMS features offer only 20% of the value? 3. What 80% of functionality can be produced for 20% of the cost? In short, which LMS has the right set of features that offer the most value to your business? CHOOSE THE BEST VALUE IT S JUST THAT SIMPLE Michaels & Associates understands that defining, buying, implementing and maintaining an LMS has been painful at best and filled with hidden costs and unforeseen delays at worst. The current LMS market does not follow the Pareto Principle. We do. We believe that we offer the simple and elegant solution. Meet Percolate LMS Percolate LMS It s just that simple.

6 PERCOLATE LMS FEATURES Quickly add users and courses to the LMS. Continue using your favorite course development tools or e-learning vendors with confidence. Instantly create and view reports for courses and users. Dashboards, tags and context-sensitive links make reporting quick and easy. Easily categorize and manage your courses or users with your own custom tagging system. No need to pay or wait for costly LMS customizations. Confidently host mobile courses knowing that your LMS won t get in the way. Your learners will access courses anywhere, anytime. Immediately try our software-as-a-service (SaaS) with a 30-day sandbox that you can continue to use with a hassle-free monthly subscription plan. Simply import your SCORM courses. Use helpful debugging tools to save your learning dollars for training, not troubleshooting. Easily upload any digital media, any time. + documents, COURSES CAN INCLUDE, but are not limited to, PowerPoint presentations, recorded webinars, videos, audio files, Flash, SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 compliant modules. In pursuit of simple elegance, we are not trying to pursue every LMS feature possible. Instead, we strongly believe in providing the best value LMS coupled with top-notch support so you can try, buy and succeed in days, not months. Set up your free, no-hassle sandbox today. You ll be pleasantly surprised at how simple tracking learning can be. We are Michaels & Associates and we've earned our stripes building e-learning for our clients' LMSs since We'd love to hear from you Percolate LMS It s just that simple. Contact us: PercolateLMS.com