Building an LMS business case isn’t always as straightforward as it seems. While you know that a learning management system is an essential workplace asset, convincing stakeholders requires a more considered, strategic approach. In this blog, we’ll give you the rundown of everything you need to know for building and presenting a successful business case for a new LMS.
So, where to begin? If you’re not au fait with learning management systems, the first step to building a successful LMS business case is to know your stuff.
Before you do anything else you should know the answers to the following questions:
- What is an LMS and what does it do?
- What are the benefits of an LMS?
- What’s the average cost of an LMS?
- What is the current process in your organization and why isn’t it working?
- Who is involved in the decision-making process?
Knowing the above will support your case to go the distance. The more you know, the better equipped you will be to answer any questions and effectively appeal to the different stakeholders involved in the approval process. Knowledge is power!
Structuring Your LMS Business Case
A business case is first and foremost a rationale of why you think an LMS is the best solution. It should also cover how the system going to be acquired and rolled out, and who will be involved in the process.
The complexity of your business case will depend on the size of your organization and the processes within it. You might already have a template or outline for forming one, but if you don’t here’s what it should loosely cover:
- A brief summary of your proposal
- The process that’s currently in place
- The problem
- The reasons why you think a change is needed
- Options available to you
- Timescales
- Costs
- Expected ROI
- Risks
Now we know the areas you need to cover for your lms business case, let’s dive a little deeper and help you thrash out the particulars.
What’s Your Problem?
The why of your LMS business case takes many forms, but before you get too bogged down in the minutiae, ask yourself: “Why do we actually need an LMS?”
When you’ve brainstormed your reasons, narrow them down to 2 or 3 main points. Common reasons why you need a learning management system include:
- The current strategy isn’t working
- Training costs are too high
- Staff engagement is poor
Next, you need to align these reasons with the goals of the stakeholders you’ll be presenting to. You’ll likely know why an LMS will help you inside and out – that’s why you’re making a case for one. But what about everyone else? Take some time to think about what they are trying to achieve and how a new LMS will feed these objectives.
You can apply this to your organization’s overarching business strategy, too. How will an LMS support that?
Nail The Benefits
Your business case should summarise the problem but also focus on the benefits across your organization. Here are a few examples:
- An LMS can benefit HR by streamlining the onboarding process and saving time on admin
- For IT, an LMS can become the one source of “true” employee data and thus improve data security
- An LMS will result in lower training costs and improved operational efficiency
Your list of benefits should change depending on who you are targeting or including. But the key is to make them specific and relevant to everyone, not just HR or L&D departments.
Speak To The Right People
While your instinct might be to go for the jugular and make your business case to HR or procurement right off the bat, start with your end-users first.
Speak to the people who will actually be using and engaging with the LMS. What are their thoughts on it? Do they have any reservations or preconceived notions? Use what you find out by speaking to them to inform your business case and build support from the grassroots up. When you’ve got your end-users on board, it’s much easier to convince those higher up the chain that it’s worth the time and/or money.
The same goes for your IT department and upper management teams. An LMS is a company-wide system and you’ll want the best up-take and engagement when the time comes, so make them your allies and listen to their concerns and contributions.
Create A Roadmap
After you’ve spoken to end-users and thrashed out the benefits for all involved, then it’s time to create a roadmap.
It can be tempting to go super granular with this, but your stakeholders probably aren’t interested in the finer details. For your business case, they will want to see a rough timeline from start to completion and, crucially, when they’ll start to see the impact of their investment.
Make all of this clear in your roadmap. Highlight key milestones to give a bird’s eye view of the process and how long it will take to show significant ROI. Doing this will involve a bit of research and crunching some numbers, but it’s definitely worth taking the time to do so because if you can back your business case up with data, it’s hard to argue against it.
Presenting A Convincing Business Case For An LMS
The best way to present a convincing and compelling business case is with facts and cold, hard numbers.
So, do the leg work and spell it out.
For example, you could mention that bespoke eLearning content housed in an LMS increases employee engagement, which leads to increased productivity and less time spent on training.
Be sure to include statistics in addition to your reasoning to further cement your argument.
Have you calculated that an investment in an LMS will lead to a 50% increase in productivity? Mention it! There’s nothing more compelling (and exciting) than quantifiable results.
Are You Ready?
Making an LMS business case is not an easy thing to do. But with the right positioning, backed up with facts and numbers, it’ll be difficult to argue against when presented in the right way.
If you’re really convinced that an LMS will make a difference to your organization (and it will!), do your research and arm yourself with all the information you need to build a cohesive argument for it. Trust us, you’ll be shopping around for a new LMS in no time.
And nobody can argue with that!