Managing “traditional” training in a large company is quite complex, so when it comes to support training with blended and e-learning activities it is very important  to choose the best tools and workflows to help HR staff reduce complexity. Technology must serve to simplify and automate the job, in particular the repetitive tasks: wich are the main focus points to consider when implementing digital tools to enforce and simplify training management?

In this article we will analyze some selection criteria and some critical aspects to evaluate.

User Management

The first aspect is, of course, bringing your users in your digital training environment.

Import and organize users

In most cases, administrators have to deal with large numbers of users, starting from a few hundred up to tens of thousands of students. First of all, users must be registered on the platform (we assume that they are already present in a database or in a company application). In this scenario, the administrator can import users manually, i.e. via a csv file
integrate the platform database with your company applications.

The most advanced and business-oriented platforms allow you to easily perform both operations. In some cases, such as in the case of Forma Lms, it is possible to replicate the structure of the company organization chart, above all by keeping it synchronized between the company database and the platform.

Custom user data

It is also useful that user profiles contain additional information, in addition to simple personal information (custom fields, course enrollments, skills ...) and that users can be grouped by groups, roles, or other types of organizational structures.

Still in this scenario, the administrator will certainly want to be able to create reports of various types, with different information and filters, and will want to be able to enroll users in courses with the least possible number of clicks.

Organizing your training courses

In a business setting, several categories of courses are likely to exist. Typically, you will want to be able to articulate by topic, by recipients, by role within the company, by company seniority (new hires), you will want to distinguish between internal courses and external collaborators….

Only an application organized with a hierarchical registry, or that allows you to categorize users in a very granular way, allows you to satisfy this type of needs.

Automation

Automating everything possible is one of the needs we most frequently hear from businesses and - not surprisingly - it is one of the main features of Forma Lms.

Many activities can be automated: obtaining certificates, displaying certain course catalogs only to certain users and not others, showing a certain graphic template (and logo) to certain users and not to others, assigning users who self-register to certain organization chart nodes *, enroll each new user who responds to certain characteristics to certain courses (enrollment policies), automatically enroll those who have passed a test with a certain score to another course ...

These are just some examples of the features made possible by the "engine" and the logical architecture of Forma.

Reporting, monitoring, tracking

It is essential for an administrator to have customizable, filterable and searchable reports in real time. For example, you may want to see the redemption of an absolute course, or just for some user groups. Or a report of the scores obtained by users in a test, perhaps filtering the results according to different departments or divisions of the company.

By tracking we mean the typical functionality of elearning platforms: the ability to track user behavior with respect not only to a course, but also to every single teaching material present in the course itself.

Tracking can include these aspects:

• whether the object was seen or not
• how long it has been used
• if it contained interactions including a score (test), the score acquired by the user
• in some cases, the system may show the administrator the actual right or wrong answers given by the user

Integration, customization, API

Whether the application you are evaluating is open-source or proprietary, it is necessary to check whether public APIs are available (to allow the supplier or your IT to easily connect your company applications to the platform) and whether it is possible to customize its functions.

Obviously, open source applications are customizable by nature, but commercial ones are often too. The assessment is how simple it is to customize without losing the possibility of updating the application to subsequent versions.

In conclusion

This post certainly does not claim to exhaustiveness, and among other things, the web is full of articles with "The 5 criteria for choosing an LMS platform" or "How to choose your next elearning platform": we did not want to add the yet another.

Beyond SEO, what we were interested in was to highlight some aspects that are often not adequately considered when choosing such an impactful application in an organization.

If we have forgotten something important, add it in the comments!