Investing in Your LMS
Investing in a learning management system can help save hours of work and tracking efforts. However, investing in an LMS is only part of the equation. Aside from understanding the functionality, it is integral to know what LMS features maximize your ROI.
Seven out of ten employees reported training and development opportunities influenced their decision to stay with a company or move on, LMS.org reports. On the educational side, investing in students’ learning is fundamental in today’s ever-changing technological landscape.
Multi-Language Support
Neglecting to present a learning management system without multi-language support severely limits the reach of potential employees or students. The Center for Immigration Studies states 67.3 million in the United States spoke a foreign language at home in 2018. Outside the United States, 56 percent of Europeans are at least bilingual as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Presenting your LMS with multi-language support in mind engages employees and furthers their learning experience. Organizations continue to expand their global market, not just in sales, but employing workers in various regions of the world. The added influx of remote work since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic has further solidified the need for multi-language options when training employees.
English language learners or ELLs have continued to increase for decades in the United States. According to the National Education Association, an estimated 25 percent of public school students will be ELLs by the year 2025. Therefore, this increases the need for a multi-language supported LMS for students and teachers. Additionally, proper training to instruct those who speak more than one language.
eCommerce Capabilities
When it comes to LMS features that maximize your ROI, implementing an eCommerce solution should always be a top priority. Moreover, monetizing your learning management system can create an additional stream of revenue for your company or educational institution. Also, it should be noted that in order for your LMS to offer eCommerce capabilities, you will need to install an add-on feature that can handle the selling functionality.
Some routes you can take to leverage your LMS’s eCommerce platform:
- Offer fun, elective courses to employees or students
- Create courses which can be offered to company partners or other educational instituions
- Develop course content based on your company’s industry or educational subject matter which can be sold to the public
- Offer memberships and subscription courses to generate a recurring income stream
- Hold webinars and speaking presentations where you can sell admission to the event
There are also options for selling different types of products. Easy Digital Downloads are best suited for selling digital products while platforms such as WooCommerce are known for selling physical products.
Intuitive User Experience
When an employee or student opens their LMS, it should be easy to navigate and obvious whose company or the school the LMS works with. As of 2016, 90 percent of companies are looking to improve their user experience according to a Brandon Hall group study. Secondly, that statistic has only grown with the increase in remote workers and remote learning. Therefore, an organization cannot facilitate engagement from learners if the LMS design is complicated and hard to understand.
A major advantage of using an LMS is mobile accessibility. When offering the ability to complete course material online, completion rates rise and engagement is naturally higher from people already being on their phones. Laying out a user-friendly, intuitive LMS design, along with convenient accessibility features can greatly maximize ROI.
Reporting and Analytics
An LMS feature you can’t pass up is reporting and analytical functionality. How can you measure the success of your learning management system if you don’t know the statistics? LMS reporting eliminates the time it takes to record scores and input them into a spreadsheet or other database. Along with analytics, you can maximize ROI through both saving and money while observing what areas to improve.
eLearning Industry offers four ways to use LMS reporting to boost learner engagement:
- You can create a personalized learning experience based off feedback
- Involve learners in their own progress by giving employees access to their training reports or students feedback on their course progress
- Reporting and analytics allow instructors to provide real-time feedback on course progress so they can make immediate improvements
- Foster learning habits proven to show postive results like the Hook Model of behavioral design
With 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies utilizing LMS to stay competitive, not taking advantage of reporting and analytic features drastically puts one at a disadvantage.
Integrations with Other Plugins
Many popular learning management systems come with powerful features out of the box. While going this route is an option, you may hurting your bottom line in the long run. You want to be sure your learning management system can integrate seamlessly with popular LMS plugins to ensure you get the most return on investment.
As mentioned above, if you desire to integrate eCommerce into your LMS and wish to sell subscriptions, you will need the necessary plugin(s) to handle that functionality. Payment options and customer relationship management tools are just some of the integrations you can utilize to reduce manual work and spend more time perfecting your LMS.
The Importance of Maximizing ROI
There are many options when choosing an LMS. Any investment you make in your learning management system, be sure you’re getting the investment back and more! The value of your ROI is not limited to how much money is saved or made, but the success of your learners and the overall image of your organization.
To see how Honors WP can help maximize your ROI visit our School Store today!
