Synapsys Blog - July 2008

Selecting an LMS for your Business

What are the keys to successfully selecting a Learning Management System for your business?

I've just finished viewing an excellent webinar on this topic, courtesy of Bryan Chapman. In the webinar, Bryan talks with three senior managers at large corporates (NEC, Sharp and Valero Energy) about their process for selecting and implementing a Learning Management System.

There's a lot of really useful insights in this presentation, but the key messages that I took from it are:

• There are hundreds of potential LMSs to choose from. The challenge is to identify the one that's best for your organisation.


• Consult widely within your organisation to determine the requirements.


• Finding the right supplier is as important as finding the right system.


• Frequent communication with stakeholders, an organisational champion and leadership from senior management are all critical to the success of your implementation

Nothing terribly surprising, but it's always great when you see industry leaders agreeing with your approach. Synapsys has long been convinced of the importance of understanding your stakeholders, your audiences and their needs before making strategic decisions.

It's clear that an effective LMS implementation can have wide ranging effects on your business. The people interviewed during the webinar quoted shifts in online delivery of training from 10% pre-LMS to 90% in some cases. It was also fascinating to hear how NEC had turned their LMS into a revenue generation channel, using it to advertise and sell training packages to their dealer network. In this particular case, NEC achieved a 1300% (yes, 1300%) return on investment.

It's clearly a decision that can have wide ranging effects on your business, and making sure you have a clear understanding of what your users need is of paramount importance. And that's where we can help.