Let's be frank: Your learning management system could probably be running more efficiently, delivering improved learning insight for less expense and with less frustration for those unlucky folks tasked with LMS administration.
The good news is, there indeed almost certainly are opportunities for your organization to improve the alignment of people, processes, and technology to operate the LMS more effectively. Most learning and development organizations feel pain with their LMS, and the frequent response is to hire a designated LMS administrator to solve their problems.
But before throwing more financial resources at the LMS, it's prudent to first diagnose the root cause of your learning management system challenges. To that point, here are the five most common LMS pain points we deal with on a regular basis:
1. Unclear Responsibility
Governance of the LMS is loosely defined across multiple functional areas and departments. No true owner exists, therefore a strategy and vision for the LMS are difficult to develop and execute. Decisions made by one area adversely affect another, and no commonality exists across the organization. Diminished learner experience with the LMS is often the end result.
2. Runaway Costs
The LMS becomes another area where cost containment is not monitored and controlled. LMS costs include licensing, hardware, and administration. When there is nobody to take responsibility for managing these costs, the entire organization ultimately pays for it.
3. Lack of Standards and Procedures
Poorly defined processes and standards result in redundant work, inconsistent learning experiences, and additional resource labor costs. This can include inconsistent approaches to authoring, publishing, and testing courseware, all of which further diminishes the learner’s experiences.
4. Technical Skill Gaps
Learning and development professionals often lack the technical skills, experience, and expertise to effectively administer the LMS. Since LMS administration is typically not their passion, they may struggle to stay current with changing technologies like authoring tools, publishing standards, and needed upgrades. Often, training team members are distracted from delivering business value by learning solutions and are forced to play the de facto role of LMS administrator.
5. Sub-Optimal Reporting Capabilities
A key benefit of the LMS is its ability to provide reports that help business leaders make better decisions about the learning needs and capabilities of their workers. It’s all too common to see a regular reporting cadence that lacks push reports and fails to make self-service reports easily accessible. Business stakeholders are often dissatisfied because they can’t access the data they need
You really can realize business benefits from your LMS.
Download our free on-demand webinar, Maximize the Business Value of Your LMS, where we discuss how to get real business value out of your learning management system and eliminate common LMS pain points.
Topics: Learning Technologies, Learning Strategy