LMS: Strategy or tool? — from Upside Learning by Amit Gautam
Also, one of the questions I have been trying to answer for myself is – Should the LMS be sold as a tool or a strategy? What approach would bring out the best value to the customer in terms of dollar savings, easier management of tasks, learning delivered, performance improvement, etc.
Ideally, the even bigger question than ‘how to sell’ and ‘how customer sees’ is what actually an LMS is? Is it strategy or is it just a tool? I am sure there are arguments either ways and also there is a mix of factors that we may want to consider before we answer this question. E.g. does it make a difference if an LMS has more or less features? Or does it make a difference if it is SaaS or onsite deployment? Or does it make a difference if the LMS has social learning elements or collaboration tools or not? And a few more such questions.
For the sake of simplicity I am making two categories – one who use LMS for selling training or for just putting up eLearning and one who use the LMS for the entire Learning and Development process…