How to Set Up a Learning Management System (LMS) for Your Business

If you're looking for ways to create a Learning Management System (LMS) for your business, hiring a professional development company is the best way forward. Learn more about how an LMS can benefit your business.

How to Set Up a Learning Management System (LMS) for Your Business

If you're looking to create a learning management system (LMS) for your business, the best way to do so is to hire a professional LMS development company. This will ensure that the process is done correctly and efficiently, and that you get the most out of your investment. The development process typically includes business analysis, the creation of a technical specification, cost estimation, and project planning. Before beginning the actual development, it's important to create an application development workflow, decide on the main functions of the application, and design the concept of the application.An LMS may seem like a large expense for a company just starting out with e-learning, but it's an important investment.

You don't need a dedicated learning and development (L&D) department to benefit from an LMS. A good LMS, especially one with collaborative learning capabilities, makes it easy for any member of the company to create and share courses. An LMS is by far the most efficient way to run an online learning program, both for administrators and students.Ad hoc solutions such as video tutorials on YouTube, educational documents, and webinars can only take you so far. While these methods can be used to share some information, without the tools provided by an LMS you can never create an organized learning program.

Moving from face-to-face or informal online learning programs to a comprehensive online learning system can give your learning programs a huge boost in efficiency and effectiveness.With an LMS, learning administrators can quickly create complete courses without needing help from a developer. All important information is stored in one place so that employees can easily find what they need. It's easy for an e-learning program to scale up with the company since there's no limit to how many times you can reuse and update each course. A collaborative learning platform takes this one step further by democratizing the learning process, reducing some of the pressure on learning managers, and increasing employee responsibility when requesting and creating courses.It's also easier to conduct an efficient analysis of training needs since employees can directly indicate what they need to learn.

An LMS makes courses more impactful and easier to consume since employees can access their learning materials from anywhere at any time. The easier it is for employees to complete online training courses, the more likely they are to do so.At the same time, managers can monitor completion rates to make sure employees are taking advantage of available resources. Background analysis and employee feedback help ensure that courses are useful and of good quality. This allows you to make informed decisions about whether to expand successful courses or eliminate or rework those that aren't effective.

All of this leads to more efficient use of resources and better return on investment in learning programs.Online learning also helps preserve valuable internal knowledge within the company. If employees share their experience in an online course, it stays there even after they've left the company. This is different from a Learning Experience Platform (LXP), which is used to discover content rather than store it. Learning management teams use their LMS to store, organize, and distribute courses as needed.According to TalentLMS' gamification study, staff feel more motivated, productive, and happy when gamification is used in e-learning.

These steps for implementing a new system are based on best practices commonly employed by both learning professionals and project managers. Loop has a data analysis feature that provides instant information about courses presented and allows you to receive direct feedback from students on the effectiveness of your learning programs.If your company doesn't have unique processes or sensitive data in its learning materials, it might be better to opt for a Software as a Service (SaaS) LMS since it will be cheaper and easier to implement. Digital learning is defined as “any educational practice that uses technology effectively to strengthen a student's learning experience” and encompasses a wide range of tools and practices.By implementing a community function in your LMS you can speed up the overall learning process while motivating students through real-time collaboration mode. When searching for an LMS or LXP for your business, focus on features, functions, and flexibility options that best fit your company's needs.

While LMSs and LXPs offer more traditional top-down approaches from leader to employee, collaborative learning platforms are bottom-up.The LMS helps schools maintain the integrity of their educational programs by allowing educators to develop courses effectively and efficiently; deliver instruction; facilitate communication; encourage collaboration among students; evaluate student success; and provide other learning resources as support.We found that these best practices for implementing an LMS are very helpful for newcomers to online learning when they finally decide to have their own system. They are essential tools for any company wanting to run a comprehensive e-learning program. Adopting an online learning curriculum doesn't mean you have to shut down all existing in-person training programs either; as technology has evolved around online learning several other types of online learning systems have emerged.

Jake Chamberlin
Jake Chamberlin

Experienced LMS professional with over a decade of experience in the field. I've worked with various learning management systems and have a wealth of knowledge to share. My website is all about helping people like you make the most of their LMS.