Whenever we talk about buying a Learning Management System, there are tons of factors which needs to be taken into consideration.
These factors are subjective to the organizations as each organization has its own specific requirement.
An Organization should thoroughly make sure that the platform they are choosing should gratify their business needs, improves the company’s ROI, helps in delivering the strategies for analyzing the data and also is able to scale itself with the growth of the company.
However, most of the organizations go for replicating what other organizations have bought. This looks like the practical and easiest approach of buying the LMS and not falling into the whirlpool of choosing the LMS. This might suits the organization initially. But ultimately the organization ends up being unsatisfied and frustrated as the requirements of every organization are different.
So, it becomes very essential to single out the equitable LMS for any organization.
Thus, to simplify the dilemma here we have mentioned the top 6 factors which will help you choose your most appropriate LMS.
Considering learning requisites
First Things First
The most important factor about this entire buying thing is to take into account what are the learning requirements of that particular organization and that has to be intuitive.
Before jumping into buying the LMS you should have a clear idea about what you are delivering to your students/employees or what they are supposed to expect at the end of the day.
Say, for instance, the organization provides the training courses of programming for trainee employees. There could be Trainees from across the globe. For this, you would require to have functionalities like user registration, course navigation, a compiler for checking the code, lessons, videos, quiz, timer, certificate generation, display course progress, forums for asking questions or posting codes, live interaction session, video and audio compatibility, and offline download facility.
Thus, it becomes the primary requisite of listing down the basic functionalities which we need in our LMS.
Thus it becomes very important to see whether LMS which you are choosing has the content compatibility according to the requirements of the company or not.
Requirements can vary from a word document to PDF, XML to powerpoint presentations and audio streaming to video streaming.
Analyzing and report
A comprehensive analysis and reporting solution is again an important factor in choosing LMS.
The tool which monitors the background is required by every organization because you can’t just create the course content and expect the students to learn on their own and not monitor what they are doing. This would be considered as a drawback from the organization’s side.
Thus a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly reports are required to be made by the LMS. This reports can be categorized as course reports, user reports, organization training reports, and custom reports.
Selecting the vendor
You will find several LMS vendors in the market who will show you plenty of choices to choose from. There you have to go structure-wise and narrow down the vast from which the final decision can be made.
Consider the prospects like:
Level of experience with e-learning
Company size
Testimonials
Case studies
Also, you can differentiate various LMS in terms of the features provided by them.
You cannot ignore the price as well, choose the one which gives maximum features with minimum price just like LoveMySkool provides almost all features which any organization would need at the lowest prices in the market.
Security and reliability
We are living in the era of the Internet where security and privacy is the primary concern and we cannot afford to overlook this factor of security in our learning management system.
Thus, it becomes your right to know what encryption and security protocols are implemented in the LMS along with what Web services it is hosted upon. Firewall Usage and SSL play an important role in tightening security.
The system should be reliable as well. It just cannot hang in the middle of some crucial learning point which tends the students to lose focus and patience if the system goes down very frequently.
Pricing and effectiveness
Last but not Least your expenditure and budget also play an important role in choosing the right one.
Some of the pricing layouts include:-
Monthly or annual subscription
Lifetime licensing
Batch Discounts
Pricing per head
Also, make sure you go through the subscription cancellation policy before buying any Learning Management System.
If you are still confused about the whole buying thing, I would personally recommend you to go for LoveMySkool which provides more than everything you would need in a learning management system in possibly the lowest prices in the market.
