What to look for when choosing a Learning Management System for external audiences

There are some criteria that will always hold true when selecting a Learning Management System (LMS) for external audiences.

LMSs have come on leaps and bounds in the past few years and are developing all the time. But, despite the number of systems on the market and the bewildering buzzwords that swirl around them, the criteria you use to choose between them should be fairly straightforward.

First of all, are you investing in an LMS for your internal use or for your external audience e.g. customers, partners and resellers, or even a mix of both? This will make a world of difference.

When choosing a new LMS for external audiences, here are five factors to consider:  

1. Your external audiences

Remember, these are the most important people to you and, whether they are millennials or older, they are much more likely to engage with an LMS if it provides great user expereinces design, including an intuitive interface that is quick and easy to use.

2. Your brand

Your external audiences may access your service on a regular basis for a long time. It’s vital therefore that your LMS should reflect your brand and its values. That means that, as well as having all your corporate logos, images and fonts in place etc, the learning content should be written and designed in a style and tone that is in keeping with your brand.

Make sure your provider understands that and can convey your strengths and core values to your audiences.

3. Stay connected

Make sure your new LMS has a modern set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that can (if desired) integrate to your CRM or other external systems.

NB. Some integrations will require technical support, so make sure your supplier can do this for you.

4. External LMS v Internal LMS

If you already have an internal LMS, there’s a good chance that you may not want your external audiences to access it for security, administrative or functional reasons. In this instance, find a supplier who is ISO 27001 certified (or equivalent) and talk to them about such concerns.

If you think a single LMS cannot satisfy the requirements of both internal and external audiences, you may require a separate LMS implementation.

5. Functionality

Understandably, new systems tend to make use of the new technologies they employ, but that doesn’t mean the older models are automatically rendered senile.

Indeed, older systems tend to be mature products with long feature lists that cover many traditional requirements. Though, for historical reasons, these tend to be mainly targeted towards internal audiences.

Before jumping into a demo or review of different systems, time spent on deciding the functionality needed to provide the best possible learning experiences for your external audiences will pay big dividends.