by Brian Clark | DOTS LMS, learning management systems, LMS
This list is only a simple primer to help you cross check your Learning Management System selection process. We have developed a very detailed requirement analysis for undertaking a selection process for companies researching a new or replacement LMS.
Features are usually front of mind. It is easy to go for the LMS with the most features, however these features may not map to your requirements. Features that are poorly designed and lack usability will only bring frustration to your administrators and users. Be clear on the features and functions you require and then test them out with scenarios. I recommend you ask the potential LMS vendors about their product development roadmap. When you review the roadmap you will be able to identify current gaps (if any) as well as where the vendor is focusing their development resources.
Customer support has a great deal of variability in the LMS world. Most of the larger enterprise vendors have documented service level agreements as part of their licensing documents. There are some enterprise vendors that will also negotiate service level agreements and this may incur additional costs. On the other end of the spectrum are vendors that offer a standard level of customer support and more lengthy response and escalation times. The main point here is to ensure you will get the support level that makes sense for your business and its requirements.
Integration with your existing and future information systems may not be on your initial selection criteria, however it should be. Whether you wish to integrate as part of the initial roll-out or later on, you do not want to be restricted in the future when you need to share data with your payroll, HRIS, CRM or other type of platform. You may also want to integrate using LDAP, SAML, Active Directory etc. These integrations may make populating and keeping your users up to date much easier.
Pricing models in the LMS market are highly variable. For the most part they are based on user numbers but there are vendors that throw other variables in the mix such as number of administrators, number of courses, enrolments etc. You may discover at some point in the future that these extra variables may be restrictive from a cost point of view. If you need to scale your system, it is best to be very clear on what costs are going to be incurred.
Mobile friendly learning management systems are the norm now. A web based LMS should be accessible by learners using mobile phones and tablet devices. The differences here tend to be based on solutions that use apps or those that have an online portal or a responsive design. You want to make sure the user interface for the mobile user is still easy to navigate.
If you are considering your first LMS or seeking a replacement, we can help you out with our research and selection services. We have comprehensive documentation on system requirements, workflows and business case models. We have assisted a wide range of clients in a number of industries select and implement the right Learning Management solution.
- Mining
- Construction
- Banking and Finance
- Energy
- Healthcare
- Government
- Aviation
by Brian Clark | branding, leadership
Companies spend enormous resources to brand products and services to attract customers. As business owners, managers and employees we also need to brand ourselves to support our ongoing success. When you have developed an effective, compelling personal brand, you are helping others in and outside your company get to know your value and expertise. You are taking a major step that will strengthen your career and uncover new opportunities in work and other areas of your life.
Personal branding is describing who you are. When you are asked about what you do and what you have achieved, your reply is branding. Now we are going to spend some time considering how we respond to these questions to create a more impressive message delivered with confidence and spontaneity. Once your branding message is developed you can use it in presentations, interviews, social gatherings and network events. You never know who you will meet at any time so being prepared is worth the small effort to get your branding right.
We recommend you create two branding messages. The first one describes the work you do and the second one highlights your accomplishments and expertise. In this exercise, do not be tempted to accept the first messages that come to mind. Your goal is having refined and accurate responses to ensure they are understood and have impact.
Branding message 1: This is what I do. Create a statement that describes your job, the type of work you do and the results you deliver. Here are a few tips:
- describe what you achieve in your job.
- how do you contribute to your business, team or company on a daily basis. You may use another timeframe if more appropriate.
- try not to use your job title. Job titles may be specific to an organisation and not accurately reflect your real brand.
Branding message 2: This is what I have achieved. This message describes your projects, accomplishments and areas of speciality or expertise. Here are some tips:
- consider your entire work career when assessing your major accomplishments.
- look at your work in the perspective of projects. This can help define your achievements.
- do not discount any areas of expertise or speciality. People often discount the expertise they have developed and do not fall into this trap.
Your message needs to have some attributes to make it effective and memorable. Here are some quick pointers to help you out:
- Be descriptive to avoid being bland. Try to paint a picture of what you do and what you have achieved. You can use locations, work environments, descriptions of clients or colleagues etc.
- Make sure your message will be understood by people outside your profession or industry.
- Use only enough words to achieve a great message and no more. Each message should take no longer than 30 seconds to deliver. Therefore both messages will take 60 seconds maximum to delier dn in a conversation that can seem like a long time. In a presentation, a 60 second bio is not uncommon.
- You must commit the time to make your messages interesting and if possible exciting. It may be easier to make your projects and accomplishments more exciting than your job. Avoid being too timid with your branding messages; they alway sound more ‘out there’ when you say them to yourself than they will when spoken to others.
- Focus on results. What happens when you work during the day? What impacts are you having? Are people getting trained? Are sales increasing? Is production more efficient? You can choose one to three, after that is becomes too much to communicate.
- As you write your messages, stop occasionally and rehearse each one. Do this individually but also rehearse with a friend or colleague who can offer constructive feedback and ideas. When you speak out loud your messages will sound different than when you read them to yourself. You will also increase your confidence to deliver your branding messages if you rehearse in this way.
Once you’ve got your branding statements written, practice saying them out loud a few times. The more you practice your statements, the more comfortable you will be with them. This will result in an increase in confidence as you share these statements with others.
Once you are confident in your branding messages, take the bold step of seeking opportunities to use them. You may want to do this with known colleagues and gradually extend that out in your company. You should consider external networking opportunities to use your branding messages once you are confident. If you do not seek out these opportunities, they may never come.
If you would like a personal branding worksheet or some help crafting your personal brand messages, please get in touch using the forms on this website.
by Brian Clark | e-learning, e-learning modules, sales training
Our new sales training e-learning toolkit is designed for modern sales managers and sales professionals who leverage technology to be more effective and productive. These e-learning course modules show you how to prepare and conduct effective online sales calls and demonstrations to build better relationships and close more sales. Conducting an online sales demonstration is never easy and our new sales training modules will show you how to plan your demonstrations to reduce the risks of poor delivery and bad impressions from your audience.
This e-learning toolkit focuses on planning and delivering online sales calls and demonstrations. This toolkit is part of our broad suite of e-learning modules for sales professionals and sales managers.
These online courses include video and audio content. The transcript is available to download and additional tips are offered as audio in the learner interface. Worksheets are also included in both Microsoft Word and .PDF formats for download from the learner interface.
These courses are perfect for individuals and teams. We offer an optional coaching program to help you and your team achieve fast results.
With territories getting larger and travel budgets tighter, conducting virtual sales calls and product demos is becoming more important, yet many people are uncomfortable selling in this environment. However, due to these changing business circumstances, it is critical sales professionals learn how to use technology to achieve the same goals as their face-to-face sales calls.
This sales training toolkit builds the skills sales people need to conduct effective and successful online demos and sales calls.
| Course Title |
Course Result |
| Introducing Online Sales Demos and Calls |
Understand the key factors differentiating remote sales demos and calls |
| Preparing for Online Sales Calls and Demos |
Know how to prepare for your remote sales demos and calls |
| Conducting Online Sales Calls and Demos |
Know how to present your remote sales demos and calls |
by Brian Clark | learning management systems, LMS
It is difficult to undertake a selection process for a software system that is as feature rich as an enterprise learning management system, (LMS). If you are an organisation that can get by with one of the many less capable LMS available you do not have as much at risk. Even with a fully considered and scoped out business requirements document, there are still some blind spots that can throw a spanner in an otherwise well planned LMS procurement process.
This is a list of the most common issues that often get discovered after an LMS has been implemented. In some cases these issues were not forecast or anticipated and in others the vendor committed them to a development roadmap that has not been met.
- Your users, contractors, temporary personnel and employees need to upload files as proof of skills or competence. You want to make this a self service capability but file uploads and validity periods are not included in your LMS. This is a real problem when you have large contracting workforces who arrive at work with various credentials to undertake work. You do not want to devote your precious L & D and administration resources to uploading files if you can avoid it.
- The LMS does not have extensive integration capabilities. The API may be limited or not be as pervasive in the LMS as first thought. You may discover this when you upgrade other systems or simply want to share data with a data warehouse, payroll or rostering software.
- Your people move around a bit and you want an easy way to move people into different business units, departments and job roles without losing historical data or jumping through hoops to adjust your organisational structure due to promotions, contract changes, relocations, terminations, acquisitions etc.
- Your compliance requirements are complex and this impacts workflows, pre-requesites, co-requesites, validity periods, gap analysis reporting, notifications, alerts and many other features you need to ensure you are minimising risk from compliance issues. This is an area that requires very careful consideration and scenario testing. If your business has multiple sites, can you filter reports to run against specific user populations?
- The learning experience needs to be as seamless and automated as possible to reduce administration tasks maintaining your LMS. Learning and activity sequencing is critical to this. At some point you will want to set up a series of ‘if this, then that’ sequences for learning pathways and programs.
- To maximise productivity you want to decentralise some administrative and reporting to those closest to the workforce. You want to ensure permissions, access, reporting and other administrative tasks can be cascaded down the organisation as opposed to having it all being done centrally.
- Learning plans may be mandatory for a particular job role, voluntary or part of a development plan. Ideally you can assign multiple learning plans to a person that can operate concurrently. You may have a graduate intake, induction and learning plans for a particular job role all assigned to a person.
If you need some advice or a business requirements checklist, please get in touch. We are happy to share our collective knowledge without trying to push you into one LMS or another.
by Brian Clark | learning and development, learning management systems, LMS
Do you have a sense that interest and engagement with your LMS is in decline? Is it only a sense or have you been confronted with metrics showing declining enrolments, logins and participation? These are some ideas on how you can reverse the decline trend and ignite interest and engagement with your elearning programs.
These ideas vary in complexity and cost to implement. I suggest you consider these ideas in the context of both your target audiences and the resources you have available. 
- Add social to your elearning. This may be in your LMS, using social platforms or a mixture of both. You might be surprised to find that a Facebook Group focused on a learning topic or general subject matter will prompt higher participation rates and interest. In both a social platform and your LMS make sure you encourage question and answer, forums, course ratings and surveys. Some organisations have been successful encouraging social collaboration by rating questions, answers and published content and offering awards.
- Mobile learning is no longer an option. You will compromise your participation rates without enabling people to access learning on mobile and tablet devices. Make sure your learning is always available with fast access and mobile is the way to achieve this. Make sure there is learning available that does not require an enrolment process or other barrier to entry.
- People do not have the time or attention span to endure long online learning modules. Make sure your learning content is short and to the point. Short modules can be combined to create longer courses. I recommend modules of 5 to 10 minutes duration. If you go much beyond this a person will lose focus and attention. Your people may be accessing learning on their mobile devices in all sorts of environments so you want to make it easy for them to start and complete a module with the greatest chance for success.
- You can ‘gamify’ your elearning. This does not have to be overly complicated. You simply determine what the parameters of the game are and then implement measurement and tracking. It can be assigning points to courses and people accumulate points as they complete courses. You can award points for participation in social collaboration and sharing. There are many ways to do this. Remember you are not wanting to encourage a toxic competitive culture, you want to make learning fun.
- Case studies are a good way to capture interest. Case studies are great for learning concepts since people can relate to them. You can add coaching and social collaboration to case study learning for even more impact.
If you are facing declining participation rates in your organisation’s elearning you may have reached a fork in the road. You have the choice of the carrot or the stick. The carrot is always more effective to create change and encouraging people to participate in learning is no different. I hope these five ideas will help you out.
