| | Dec - Jan19CIOReviewFor those of us in the L&D industry, giving back to others is one of the biggest rewards we can experience. I accepted a new role at United Real Estate earlier this year with one of my first major goals being to secure the best learning management system that would meet the needs of our real estate agents, brokers, owners, franchise owners, and employees. Having worked with a few different LMS's over my career, I found this to be an exciting opportunity, yet one that I knew would be a big challenge. I would learn a lot more from this selection process than I had originally anticipated. Through this article, I'd like to share with you my process, tips and advice, and lessons learned as I went through this journey. If you find yourself in a similar situation at your company, I hope some of the insights into my own experience can help you in your own journey.I entered this challenge feeling comfortable to some degree with my knowledge of LMSs in terms of what the value they serve for organizations. As an employee working at different companies throughout my career, I personally experienced a handful of different LMS platforms in terms of taking compliance related courses, skill-building courses, navigating through the system to find courses of interest, and those assigned to me. Most recently, I also had experience being an administration of a particular LMS, which gave me new insight into the "behind the scenes" setup and operational tasks, which make an LMS tick and work properly. As I approached this challenge at United Real Estate, one of the first things I did was to reflect upon all of my LMS personal experiences and journal my thoughts onto paper. What LMS providers did I have specific experience with, either as an end user or as an admin? If I didn't know the provider, I reached out to past co-workers to get their input. What was my experience like in terms of how the system motivated me to learn more? How easy was the platform to navigate and find what I was looking for? As an administrator, what did I remember that I liked and struggled with regarding each platform? I also began by making a list of all the LMS providers that I was familiar with or had heard about over the years. My free hand responses to these questions above served as a good starting point to my LMS selection journey. It helped me get into the "LMS selection mindset."At the heart of any product selection process is the understanding of core business requirements. My next step was to outline in detail the business requirements for our LMS. What started out initially as a list of 6-7 key requirements, quickly grew to more a more expansive list of "must have's" and "wouldn't it be great if's" as I spoke to more business leaders. As I was new to United Real Estate, it was critical for me to spend significant time to understand the company I was working for, our business model, long terms goals, and the general audience of our real estate agents and brokers. What was the goal of the LMS for my company? What was the vision for how the platform would support our Training, Education, & Development (TED) efforts? At the same time we were investing in a LMS system for the company, there was also a strategic project going on that the LMS would support ­ the TIPS & ADVICE FOR YOUR LMS JOURNEY A GLIMPSE INTO MY LMS SELECTION JOURNEYBy Susan Elliott, Director of Training, Education & Development, United Real EstateCXO INSIGHTSWhat helped me tremendously in my process was creating an LMS Selection Spreadsheet, which would house key pieces of information as I began my journey
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