How to evaluate your teams next learning platform (Google Sheets checklist template included)

Choosing a learning platform for your team has many things to consider. We’ve created a Google Sheets checklist template to help you make an informed decision and show your stakeholders the value you are looking to provide your team.

Let’s run through some major areas to consider to make the best decision for your team.

1. Think about the broader needs of what this tool needs to solve for

Here we consider who might have an interest in the decision around this platform.

- Finance - budget management
- Risk and compliance - ensuring team members are compliant depending on your industry
- IT - ensuring security, ease of login access, ability to integrate to other tools, data portability and ease of access to data
- Brand - how well does this platform tie into how we want to represent our brand internally

2. What are your learner's needs?

When considering a new learning platform, questions around your overall goals for your team must be considered. Are you looking to use this tool for their long term career development? Or are you simply looking to upskill them for specific skill sets that enable them to be more effective in their current roles? If it’s compliance only you are looking for, then ensure you aren’t paying for a platform where you won’t have the opportunity to roll out a system with additional social and gamification features that may not get used.

Learning style is also a large factor in how successful your learning platform launch will be. Pick the platform that best compliments how, where and when your learners like to learn. For example, if you have a customer-facing staff where they may not get the chance to learn except their commute home, ensure the platform is well equipped for mobile and tablet learning. In this case, make sure the responsive design extends not only to the platform but also any courseware, PDFs, and documents that are likely going to make up a learning experience. Engagement with a platform that doesn’t function on all form factors at the moment a learner wants to get their compliance course done is a recipe for frustration and disengagement.

3. Budget

Budget not only for now, but 12, 24 and 48 months time, allowing for growth and scale of your business and learning needs. Ensure that if you require larger team features such as single sign-on or advanced reporting, that upgraded plans aren’t prohibitively expensive and do not back you into a corner of needing to either move off the platform, or be forced to request additional budget. Also consider per user costs in addition to any initial setup fees that are involved.

4. Setup

How soon are you looking to get going with your new platform? Ensure the ease of use of the platform for managers and admins is smooth enough to allow sufficient time to train up various stakeholders, who will be crucial to the success of this rollout.

Ask for feedback from managers and admins as soon as possible how they feel about the platform, how easy is it for them to do certain tasks such as create content, manage teams and users, set up logins and export reporting. All of this due diligence up front will ensure early and important buy-in from your power users.

In addition, involve your IT team as early as possible to allow them to understand what level of input they might be needed for in order to have the platform live. Are they going to need to do custom development work just to get this launched for your team, or is it a seamless plug and play setup, allowing your admins to easily integrate with the tools they already use without any help from the IT team.

When considering how to set up the platform, it’s also important to think about how to remove specific learners data should they request it. It’s also important to be shown where and how fast you are able to get access to all of your data, including any learning documents you’ve uploaded, learner details you’ve entered and other company details you might like to report on as well as export in the event you wish to move platforms.

5. Content

Are the batteries included? Really what we want to understand here is what level of additional effort will I need to put in to get my teams learning platform live? Will I need to bring my own content, and if I don’t have any does the platform provide any content?

6. Reporting

The most important piece to any software is reporting. For learning platforms, how easy is the reporting interface to navigate? Can I get a CSV of data easily? What other apps can the learning platform send my data to? In short, has it been thoughtful about my board report I need to present every month for the data I need and allows easy access to it?

Conclusion

Choosing a new learning platform can be incredibly rewarding for your admins, managers and importantly your team members when done correctly. By considering not only the learner's needs but peripheral stakeholder needs, you increase your likelihood of a successful rollout and an uptick in ongoing engagement, with the added outcome of reduced manager overhead to inspire and develop their team.

Are you looking to ensure your next learning platform is a success?

Download this Google Sheets checklist showing a full list of factors to compare your potential learning

SuperPath

If you’re interested in providing your team with learning and onboarding pathways allowing them to be guided with minimal initial setup, then try SuperPath. SuperPath is a new style of learning platform, allowing managers to copy and edit from existing position-based pathways and assign them easily to their team.

You’re welcome to try out SuperPath for free with no credit card needed today. Go to superpath.io to strengthen your team's engagement as well as provide streamlined learning and onboarding pathways with little to no setup.