COMPARISON OF THE BEST LMS PLATFORMS: HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT ONE
As a first-time LMS buyer or replacement LMS seeker, it’s important to ask yourself this question: How do LMS platforms compare? Also, how do you distinguish good LMS platforms from the best? The need to differentiate LMS platforms is very simple. As a first-time buyer, knowing which LMS features are important to supercharge your workforce is sometimes confusing. Identifying the characteristics that effectively discourage students from using the platform is even more important. Much of the confusion comes from the fact that LMS vendors market their products very well, and most buyers fall into marketing traps easily unless they know exactly what to look for in their new LMS.
- How to Compare LMS Platforms
- Based on Use-Case
- Based on Features
- Based on Pricing
- Based on Vendors
- Features that Make Good LMS Platforms Great
- Classroom Training and eLearning
- Virtual Instructor-Led Training
- Video-Based Training
- Certification Features
- Mobile Integration
- Gamification
- Course Integration with Legacy Software
- Reporting Features
HOW TO COMPARE LMS PLATFORMS?
There are a few surefire ways to distinguish good LMS platforms from great ones. A detailed study of an LMS based on the following touch points is a good way to start the identification process. Think of it as an LMS selection checklist!
BASED ON THE USE OF CASE
To compare LMS platforms, first describe your LMS use cases. Whether your organization’s needs are simple on boarding, compliance, or maintenance support, there’s no need to license an LMS with additional features. It can also be too complicated to understand and cost more than just a platform.
On the other hand, if sales training, employee soft skills training, or process training is the reason you need an LMS, select a platform with robust analytics and reporting capabilities, or one with good reporting. For sales training, it is very important to select an LMS with good mobile technology that runs smoothly across multiple devices.
Finally, if your organization’s goal is to empower external members, vendors, resellers, or other external entities, selecting an LMS with good multi-tenant functionality makes the most sense! After all, you don’t want third-party organizations to take over your LMS platform, but at the same time, empowering these partners is just as important.
FEATURE ON BASED
The next step in comparing LMS platforms is to understand which features are bloatware, outdated, and counterproductive to running your LMS. It’s important to know what these features are and avoid them, as they simply won’t add any benefit to your LMS. Rather, they could confuse your administrators, slow down your LMS, and discourage your students from accessing the platform. One of these features is related to e-commerce. Having it as part of your LMS is not bad, but it doesn’t add any value to an organization that has nothing to do with creating or selling eLearning content.
Another feature that most organizations don’t require, but are fooled by the false promise it contains, is the xAPI and LRS plug-in. Not only are these features expensive to have in your LMS, but they add no meaningful value to your learning activities unless and only if your organization needs in-depth analytics, data on behavior patterns, and learning trends of your students. These are used to analyze and improve the learning experience, which is too much for most normal L&D or HR organizations and, frankly, just not needed.
BASED ON PRICES
Price is probably a factor that plays the biggest role in selecting a platform. From the perspective of a small organization, tight budgets play a huge role in selecting platforms and the features they can offer. Therefore, it’s a good idea to be aware of the features you need (as mentioned above) and the type of pricing plan an organization offers. Whether a provider charges per active user or registered user, it’s important to know exactly what these terminologies are, what they stand for, and how they’re used. For a first-time buyer, getting stuck on a pricing plan that they aren’t clear on can lead to a poor experience with an LMS. In this article, Understanding Pricing Patterns, we’ve looked at the most common forms of LMS pricing that a vendor can present and how not to get confused during the buying process by knowing exactly what each vendor means when they use a specific term.
VENDOR BASED
Finally, an issue too easily overlooked by most buyers, but equally, if not more, important is supplier evaluation and selection. You’ve read about the product, seen the reviews, and determined that a vendor is a good fit – there could hardly be a problem with their platform or service as online reviews are good, right? Well, there might be some problems here as well. Some of the main points to focus on as a buyer when selecting a supplier should be:
- Are they providing a free trial, and how long is it?
- Is the vendor a huge entity, and is my organization too small compared to it?
- Is the vendor ready to provide good support during the initial set-up phase?
- Are they providing customer success team support?
But it’s not just limited to that, many other factors go into selecting the right supplier. Read our article on the supplier selection process.
To get an idea, it is very important to size your organization to that of the provider. Large vendors rarely provide enough support and help to smaller companies with limited billing, as they don’t provide much incentive for the vendor. Therefore, always give your supplier a good rating and make sure they are ready to provide you with good after-sales service.
While these factors play a huge role in determining good LMS platforms from the best, let’s take a look at some features a great LMS platform should have, and more specifically, some features your organization should have! This makes comparing LMS platforms much easier!
FEATURES THAT MAKE GOOD LMS PLATFORMS GREAT
CLASSROOM TRAINING AND E-LEARNING
The two main training modalities after on-the-job training are classroom training and e learning. An organization that doesn’t have a formal training department or that heavily relies on on-the-job training may want to start by turning the current on-the-job training into scheduled formal classroom sessions. Alternatively, they may choose to convert their on-the-job training programs to more formal programs and switch to eLearning. For those organizations that are already doing largely face-to-face classroom training, it may be important to transition to a self-paced eLearning program. However, eLearning is not always the perfect substitute for classroom training. So having an LMS that handles eLearning and helps organize classroom training is just about the minimum set of features any LMS buyer should choose. E learning can also assist in organizing classroom training across numerous plants or regional offices if your company has a small workforce at corporate headquarters and multiple locations.
VIRTUAL INSTRUCTOR-LED TRAINING
This LMS feature works exactly like a traditional classroom. The only difference is that trainers and students participate in training activities from different regions, sometimes from the comfort of their homes. It combines video conferencing and online learning, with periodic assessments and tests coming after the instructor’s training. The need to hire a fitness trainer, pay transportation costs, training fees, and the venue is eliminated. As a company looking to instill a culture of development, where workforce training is an absolute must, having this feature makes employee training an effective practice. When it’s impractical for employees to travel to corporate headquarters, this feature is essential for businesses with a distributed workforce or remote workers. Large software companies that need to train their customers, resellers, or even their sales teams use virtual ILT or virtual classrooms very effectively.
VIDEO-BASED TRAINING
Trainers can now record lecture videos and upload them to the LMS. This allows employees to access course material at their convenience and helps them learn at their own pace. Video training allows L&D directors/managers to break complex lectures into smaller formats, increasing the training retention rate and making the LMS learning process more engaging for employees. Video-based courses offer an additional dimension of visual learning that boosts training effectiveness by more than 60% in organizations where complexity is the norm. Trainers can also confirm their training for maximum precision and efficacy with video courses.
CERTIFICATION FEATURES
For organizations that are highly regulated or have a high-risk profile, compliance courses are often just as comprehensive as induction or onboarding courses. Safety training can be a high priority in the oil and gas, manufacturing, and chemical industries. Food safety is an important issue in the food and beverage industry. Employees must be certified before they can be operational. For such companies, having an LMS that handles certification and recertification is a key feature. Having the ability to set expiration dates and set reminders for recertification is very important, especially in organizations with thousands of people who receive compliance training each year. An added benefit is the ability to print certificates, and even import previously purchased certificates into the system if the industry has a professional body that certifies specialists in that industry. So if someone joins your organization in the middle of the year with a certificate that’s going to last another year and a half, it makes sense to be able to import that certificate instead of asking the person to recertify. If your organization has high certification needs, specific attention should be paid to how the LMS will handle these requirements.
MOBILE INTEGRATION
Employees rarely have time to balance work and personal lives, which is why an LMS is a practical approach to training. And now, LMSs can deliver training when it’s needed, where it’s needed, even while you’re on the go. Statista research shows that the number of smartphone users has increased from 2.1 billion (2016) to 2.53 billion (2018). This number is said to increase by 100% by 2020. Currently, 223 million smartphones are used in the US alone. The UK has 53 million users, and Western Europe has 271 million users. With numbers like these, any corporate LMS should have the ability to integrate with a smartphone to power your training initiatives. This also opens up a new avenue where learning is no longer a tedious and time-consuming activity. Mobile could mean tablets or smart phones. Tablets were thought to be the ultimate training device between 2010 and 2014, but with the demand for tablets and larger smartphones declining, there is a need for regular smart phones to also support the LMS.
GAMIFICATION
Training can be made enjoyable and effective by incorporating elements of classic games into training initiatives, such as earning rewards, competing with peers, and scoring points. According to Gartner, more than 60% of organizations that manage innovations will use some form of gamification to increase their productivity. This goes to show that the future of gamification-based learning will only get better. As students interact with the LMS, complete courses by earning badges, points, and secure leaderboard positions, a social learning environment is created. People’s internal competitive nature is enhanced by their colleagues’ success in training activities, which inspires them to compete and train harder. Employers of younger or millennial workers ought to pay close attention to these traits as well. In addition to certification, promoting learning and fostering a culture of learning within your organization requires recognition through badges or rankings.
COURSE INTEGRATION WITH LEGACY SOFTWARE
Many organizations have course materials designed using legacy software. These courses may still be relevant, and as the organization implements an LMS, they need them to integrate with the system. Hence, it is important to select an LMS that allows for the seamless integration of legacy courses while saving cost, time, and effort. This is true when organizations have an archive of courses that can be reused. The ability to reuse courses is future proofing the system. As old courses lose their relevance, they can be archived for future use.
REPORTING FUNCTIONS
The core of an LMS is its ability to track, record, and maintain employee progress. The L&D and HR teams can keep thorough records of employee performance regarding the training that has been offered across the organization as a result. Authorities can identify skill gaps, employee competence in specific tasks, the capacity to comprehend novel procedures, and the simplicity of putting what has been learned into practice through reporting capabilities. The enterprise LMS must have comprehensive reporting capabilities. A function can monitor training program performance at the micro level for individual employees and managers, at the macro level for division/subsidiary level performance, and compare them.
At Green LMS, we put a lot of focus on matching customers’ needs with our products to form the best solution. Our LMS is a top-notch platform that has been named one of the top LMS platforms by numerous reviewers and independent websites. We provide the best assistance your organization needs during the implementation of your first LMS platform, and we allow you to test our system for 30 days! Go ahead and click the link to sign up for a thirty-day trial and start your learning journey. You can even compare LMS platforms! Also, visit Green LMS for all your custom eLearning development needs.
The Green LMS has solutions for all major e-learning sectors: Green LMS for K-20, K-12 for school, and Corporate LMS for Entrepreneurs. For more information, please visit www.thegreenlms.com
