What Does an LMS Consultant Do?
Every organisation over a certain size needs to deliver, track, and manage training. That might be an L&D team needing to train their organisation’s internal staff, or it might involve delivering training to external audiences such as training providers selling training to their customers, membership organisations providing professional development to their members, or software companies training their customers how to use their products. It could also include franchised brands offering onboarding and ongoing support to their franchisees, or large complex organisations (such as manufacturers) educating their extended ecosystem such as suppliers, partners, or distributors.
The essential technology platform needed to deliver, track, and manage their training programs is a Learning Management Systems (LMS). Selecting and procuring the right learning platform or LMS can be a big investment but will be a vital aspect of an organisation’s strategy, whether that’s to improve your training offer, add more value to your audiences, or even generate more income via new training products. An LMS consultant can play a pivotal role in ensuring an LMS aligns with an organisation's strategic goals and operational needs.
But what exactly does an LMS consultant do, and how can their expertise be leveraged for optimal results?
Understanding the Role of an LMS Consultant
An LMS consultant is a skilled professional who helps guide organisations through the selection, implementation, and optimisation of their learning management systems. Their expertise ensures that the chosen LMS not only meets current training requirements but also scales with the organisation's future growth.
Key Responsibilities of an LMS Consultant
Needs Assessment: Collaborating with an organisation’s stakeholders to identify their training objectives, audience demographics, and technical requirements. This foundational step ensures that the LMS aligns with the organisation's learning culture and goals.
Market Analysis and Vendor Selection: Researching and evaluating various LMS platforms to recommend solutions that best fit the organisation's needs. This involves cutting through industry jargon and presenting clear options.
Implementation and Integration: Overseeing the deployment of the LMS, ensuring seamless integration with any existing systems such as HR software or content management platforms. This phase often includes configuring courses, setting up user permissions, and customising the user interface.
Content Strategy Development: Advising on the creation or curation of training materials that are engaging and effective. This may involve developing learning paths, designing curricula, and incorporating multimedia elements.
LMS Optimisation and UX Design: An LMS Consultant typically has a combination of technical expertise with learning design experience, to help you get the best of your Learning Management System. Providing support to empower administrators and end-users to maximise the LMS's potential.
Performance Monitoring and Benchmarking: Analysing user engagement and training outcomes to identify areas for improvement. This data-driven approach helps in refining content, enhancing user experience, and demonstrating the LMS's return on investment.
Why Engage an LMS Consultant?
Implementing an LMS is a significant investment for any organisation. An LMS Consultant can provide you with expert help to clarify your needs and functional requirements, screen the market and identify suitable platforms, and manage the end-to-end procurement process of choosing your preferred vendor to partner with.
An LMS consultant brings specialist knowledge that can:
Clarify Objectives: Ensuring that the LMS aligns with the organisation's strategic goals and that it addresses specific training needs.
Identify Requirements: An LMS Consultant can conduct stakeholder interviews and focus groups to understand the needs of the segmented audiences creating user personas and user stories to represent these. Using their extensive knowledge of LMS functionality they can then map the user stories to detailed functional, technical and administrative requirements and help you prioritise which are a ‘must have’ for the business.
Current Market Knowledge: The ability to quickly assess the market identifying platforms appropriate for your needs and use case. There are over 800 platforms on the market and a good LMS Consultant will be able to cut through the marketing hype and help you navigate a crowded market, saving you time, money, and a big headache in the process.
Procurement Management: An experienced LMS Consultant can manage your full procurement, creating RFP documentation for vendors, inviting vendors and managing submissions, identifying key user journeys to be demonstrated by bidding vendors, and establishing an evaluation panel and creating evaluation scorecards.
Personalise Training: Developing tailored learning experiences and pathways that engage learners and deliver the content in the most appropriate way making the most of the learning platform and learning tools available.
Monitor Performance: Establishing metrics to track training effectiveness and making data-informed recommendations for improvement.
Evaluate ROI: Assessing the financial impact of the LMS on the organisation and identifying opportunities to maximise value.
Provide Ongoing Support: Offering expertise during and after implementation to ensure the LMS evolves with the organisation's needs.
Learn Fox: Your Partner in Digital Learning Transformation
At Learn Fox, we specialise in demystifying digital learning and empowering organisations to enhance their training delivery. Our services include:
Digital Learning Strategy: Collaborating with you to help develop a clear vision for your training programs, ensuring they add value to learners and contribute to organisational growth.
LMS Selection: Assisting in navigating the complex landscape of learning platforms to identify and implement the system that best fits your unique requirements.
Learn Fox Labs: Facilitating workshops that bring clarity to your digital learning initiatives, providing an actionable roadmap, understanding on your challenges, and insight into the programme of work to move forwards with your digital learning transformation.
LMS Consultant: Learn Fox in Action
We’ve helped dozens of organisations, from those with 500 learners to those with160,000 learners, to find the right LMS or optimise their existing one to get the best out of it. Some of these organisations are training internal staff, and many of them are training external audiences. Every organisation is different, from a different industry, and training people on different content. What they all have in common is a difficulty in knowing where to start to identify their needs and navigating the crowded LMS market. They also all share a desire to deliver, track and, manage impactful training, providing value to their audiences and achieving a good ROI.