How to Implement a Learning Management System (LMS) in 2023

A properly integrated LMS can become one of the best changes you can make for your business, school, university, etc. It will structure the materials and give convenient access to them for your students.

Statista says 70% of learning and development departments used LMS in 2020. There are many types and many ways to get yourself such a system. But ProCoders says it’s worth the result if you follow some easy rules.

What are they? Read our LMS-themed guide and find out everything about learning management system implementation.

Key takeaways:

• An LMS is a program created to compile, organize, and deliver online education opportunities. 
• Businesses that want to improve the skills of their employees, companies that sell software, and educational establishments can all benefit from an LMS.
• The core features to consider when implementing an LMS are user profile, course catalog, progress-tracking, surveys for assessment, and others.
• The pros of LMS processes include opportunities for social learning, better progress tracking, having all materials in one place, etc. The cons, though, include the need for IT knowledge and longer transition time for teachers and/or managers.
• How to implement an LMS? Identify your goals, hire the right people to develop an LMS for you or choose the right provider, and complete other important steps you can find in this article.

What Is a Learning Management System (LMS)?

A Learning Management System or an LMS is a program used by businesses, physical and online educational establishments, etc. to deliver learning materials to employees and students.

Within the app, the latter can access the needed courses, learn, pass tests, get a higher proficiency label in the given competence, etc. 

So, how to implement a learning management system? And how to know for sure that you need it? Find out further in the article.

Who Needs an LMS Platform?

Businesses that want to educate their employees, companies that want to sell their custom systems, and universities/schools/etc. may benefit from the best practices of implementing LMS.

They all need various types with different features:

• Corporate LMS contain smoother learning curves and approaches to building teamwork skills.
• LMS for universities may have larger data capacities and multiple access levels for students of different specialties and their curators.

If you want to develop your own system to monetize it, you can choose either type and add the features you’ll find necessary. As to the list of those, follow to the next section!

Core Features of an LMS to Implement It Successfully

Here we overview the essential features you need for the strategy of implementing LMS.

MVP features

An MVP or a minimum viable product is the most basic version of any software. One of the potential LMS implementation steps is creating an MVP and testing it to see how it performs with your target audience.

Some features you may want to integrate here are:

• A basic user profile – includes one or two demographics, an ability for fast registration and login.
• List of courses – a couple of courses to see how they look and if it’s convenient to navigate the list.
• Course structure – update at least one course with a structure.
• Evaluation – create a test for at least one class of the course.
• Notifications – test the feature by adding a couple of notifications about upcoming tests or new classes.

Enhanced Features

When launching a ready-to-use system, you need to complete all of the previous features with data on all of your courses, more demographic info in profiles, progress-tracking, custom notification creation opportunities, a more detailed evaluation process with graphics, etc.

As to the stand-alone enhanced features, consider:

• Administrator accounts and roles – you may have roles for each demographic with various permissions and access levels to see reports.
• Different spaces for different audiences – some businesses choose to educate both employees and customers, which may require two different domains to provide space for learning without mixing the two course systems.
• Competencies – offer different competencies with several levels of proficiency to get a better idea of the expertise of your students.

With these features, your LMS should become efficient and easy to use. However, there are more considerations when implementing new LMS such as its advantages and disadvantages. To launch a successful system, you have to learn how to avoid the latter.

Pros and Cons of LMS to Keep in Mind to Succeed

This information will help you find out if you really need an LMS before you start looking for info on costs to hire a website developer for the system and other important questions.

LMS Pros

• All materials in one place – no need to run across departments to get the needed papers, make copies, store them, etc. Access the materials from your phone or PC.
• Lower learning costs – pre-compiled online courses save money on hiring several teachers, renting a place for classes, etc.
• Social learning – collaboration with other users encourages teamwork, which can be useful both for companies and educational establishments.
• Better progress tracking – software allows for more precise progress tracking through surveys at the end of a class or several classes. Visual representation also helps understand the failing points better.

LMS Cons

• Resources – you’ll need to allocate some funds for the development, implementation, and upgrades of the system. 
• Upgrades necessary – you will have to upgrade the system, update the courses, and improve the interface regularly to maintain the system’s proper operation and fulfillment of its purpose. 
• More manager labor – you’ll need to have managers learn how to use the system and motivate employees to actually use it. This may make them work additional hours, which you’ll have to pay them for. 

Just like you would look to hire Defi developers for your financial project, an educational one needs narrow-niche specialists with experience as well. Later in this LMS implementation guide, we’ll cover this topic as well.

But for now, let’s review some of the most well-known LMS at the moment.

Top-Rated Examples of a Learning Management System

Here are some of the most efficient LMS examples to date, according to Forbes:

• Cypher Learning LMS – the easiest to use, includes gamification and certification. Pricing isn’t disclosed.
• TalentLMS – great for small businesses, also has gamification elements and licensing. There’s a free version and a paid one for $69 a month.
• Absorb – a good choice for enterprises, includes gamification and certification. The pricing isn’t disclosed, unfortunately.
• D2L Brightspace LMS – a decent choice for educators. The pricing isn’t disclosed, gamification elements are present, as well as licensing.
• Blackboard Learn LMS – a good pick for higher education institutions. Gamification and certification are included, and the pricing starts at $9,500 per year.

ProCoders has also had experience with LMS implementation strategy and building such a system from scratch. Many people interested in learning English must have heard about a service called Lingoda.

Several years ago, we worked on a complex service for learning the language. Its main advantage was that all of the materials were already prepared, structured, and uploaded on the server. So, you basically would have full access to the whole English-learning journey in one place by subscribing to Lingoda.

How To Implement an LMS: Steps and Advice

The main topic of our LMS guide is how to use the best practices for implementation and succeed.

Step 1. Determine your goals

Always start with goal identification. What features and capabilities do you consider for the new LMS?

Here are some goals you may have 

• Retention improvement
• Leadership learning
• Risk management
• Easier employee onboarding
• Engagement increase, etc.

You may have one or several objectives. A professional team will ensure the implementation process goes smoothly.

Step 2. Hire the right developers and/or find a provider

Now, this LMS step depends on your time, budget, and goals. If you want to use an existing system, you’ll have to choose a provider. For that, you can use networking and research online. Each platform has its own website with information on the features, as well as contact information if you want to find out more and create a custom plan.

You may also want to optimize LMS-connected processes your own way and build a custom system from scratch. For that, you’ll need a development team. You can hire one in-house, but this will cost you more. It’s also possible to use hiring agencies or freelancers, but there’s no result guarantee.

The optimal choice is to find an outstaffing company like ProCoders where we can gather a special team for your projects in a couple of days!

Step 3. Assign managers to be involved in the project

Start educating managers as soon as possible with LMS guides to make sure that by the time of launch you have people fluent with the system specifications. A project manager you choose for the ‘mission’ can become the bridge between the technical aspects of the system and your administrators.

Step 4. Develop an MVP (optional)

If needed you can develop an MVP. This will help you:

• Find out if the system will work with your teams or students
• Test features and eliminate unnecessary ones
• Get funding when needed through the presentation of the MVP

ProCoders can build an MVP for you, including all your key considerations for implementation. We have people on board who know perfectly how to approach LMS building and usage.

At this stage, you can detect how the new system aligns with other corporate processes, for example, HR. 

Step 5. Develop the final version, launch, and gather feedback

While your team will take up the last stages of development and implementation, softly prepare your team(s) for the transfer. Make sure everyone completed learning, provide additional information about the system, consider a set of rules, and create a supportive atmosphere.

As you launch the LMS, make sure to gather as much feedback as possible. This will show you where the learning system may use some changes and improvements. Such an approach will help you optimize the processes connected to LMS as soon as possible and release an even better version later.Another important link between you and a successful LMS is a proper dev shop where you can find engineers for a learning system, hire Web3 developers, etc. But what is a Dev shop? Let us explain it to you using ProCoders’ example.

How Can ProCoders Help You with Implementing an LMS?

ProCoders, as a staff augmentation company, can help you choose and implement learning management system by:

• Providing Discovery Phase services.
  ProCoders Discovery Phase services suit you if you have an idea but need a professional opinion on the time, budget, number of developers you need, and how to approach that idea at all. Our analysis and tech specialists will research your needs and expectations, aligning them with the real time, money, and staff requirements for the project.
  As a result, you get those estimates plus a clear plan on what to do next.
  
• Providing highly skilled developers to complement your team.
  If you already have a tech team but need some help, we may have the right developers waiting for you on the bench. This is usually the case. They are ready to take up the project at any stage, so you can start in 2 days or even less.
  
• Providing a fully dedicated team to create a project from scratch.
  In case you need a whole team that knows LMS implementation best practices, we can team up the right people for you in a couple of weeks. You can then interview them to see if they are a perfect fit, and the work can start.

There may be more ways ProCoders can help you achieve business goals. Everything depends on the case, and we always look into details first because an individual approach is one of our superpowers.

Conclusion

A learning management system can offer its best practices to improve your corporate culture, employee proficiency level, and revenue. And if you own an educational establishment, learning will become easier for your students.

An LMS has lots of advantages, including social learning, retention and engagement improvement, and learning cost reduction.

Whenever you want to implement an LMS into your business or create a custom one, ProCoders developers are always here, ready to study your corporate goals and build a perfect system.