How to Find the Best LMS for Your Needs: Customer Ed Nugget 31

It’s a Process…

Just when people were wondering if learning systems had seen better days, along came AI. Now, I’m constantly seeing powerful new tools that take enterprise learning to a whole new level.

Of course, all this tech innovation is great for industry analysts like me. But it doesn’t help customer education leaders who are already overwhelmed by too many options.

If you’ve looked for a new or replacement learning platform lately, you know what I mean. No one wants to chase an endless stream of cool features down the rabbit hole. Yet that often happens when trying to find the best LMS for your business.

Fortunately, there’s a better way to make this decision. It’s not magic. But it’s a process that respects your time and resources.

What does this approach look like? Find out now, as I walk through 6 critical steps to LMS selection success on this Customer Ed Nuggets mini-podcast…

Don’t miss what’s happening at the leading edge of enterprise learning technology! Get our weekly email brief. SUBSCRIBE HERE →

How to Find the Best LMS for Your Needs

Let’s quickly walk through 6 fundamental steps:

1. Clarify the Business Case

Before anything else, lock-in your business case. Why? This is the key to winning approval for your LMS selection project.

Start by analyzing current costs and usage patterns. Don’t forget unwanted expenses for things like manual administrative workarounds as well as customer service time to resolve learner experience issues.

By mapping current costs and benefits, you’ll understand the financial and operational upside of considering other solutions. You’ll also establish benchmarks to help determine whether investing in an alternative is cost-justified.

2. Define Your Requirements

Once you have approval to proceed, it’s time to document your LMS use cases and audiences, along with the functionality needed to support those scenarios. Be sure to include integrations and technical considerations, including hosting, deployment, and security standards. You’ll also want to identify vendor services and support you’ll need to ensure a smooth transition to a new system.

Together with your usage patterns, preferred license structure, and budgetary constraints, these requirements form a blueprint you can use to evaluate and compare LMS vendors.

This may sound like a lot of work. But documenting requirements upfront reduces emotional bias and helps you think more strategically as you move toward a system that better fits your needs.

3. Build a Vendor Shortlist

With over 1,000 learning systems available, no one has the time or resources to evaluate them all — let alone 100, or even 20. Besides, why would you want to analyze that many options, when your goal is to focus on solutions that fit your specific parameters?

The trick is to rely on a vendor shortlisting process that quickly narrows the field to 4-5 options that are qualified to meet or exceed your requirements.

You can do this by relying on freely available resources or specialized services. If you prefer a DIY approach, you can use our public LMS Directory, reviews, and how-to content. Or, you can hire me to help fast-track through your requirements and develop a viable shortlist.

2026 OFFICE HOURS: If you’re buying a learning system, why not choose with confidence? Join analyst John Leh for this free 6-part webinar series just for LMS buyers. SAVE YOUR SEAT →

4. Prepare and Distribute Your RFP

Once you settle on a tight shortlist, it’s time to solicit vendors with a formal request for proposal document. An actionable RFP can take many forms, but it must include critical information, such as your…

• Current business and training situation
• Desired learning situation (including preferred technology)
• Use cases and target audiences
• Required functionality (including the rationale for these choices)
• Existing usage patterns

In response, you can expect written proposals addressing your requirements. This makes it easier to compare vendor capabilities on an apples-to-apples basis.

You’ll see how closely each vendor meets or exceeds your expectations, how their offerings are differentiated, and how their costs compare. These details will help you make a better-informed decision.

5. Coordinate and Evaluate Demos

After receiving and reviewing proposals, you’ll want to invite finalists to present use case demonstrations. These real-time presentations should give you a good sense of which vendors are the best candidates.

Because your RFP already specifies use cases, participating vendors should understand your needs and be prepared to address them directly. They won’t wonder how to frame their application, or what to emphasize. And with demos focused on your needs, you’ll be able to evaluate solutions through your unique business lens without resorting to guesswork.

6. Verify Capabilities and Negotiate

If your preferred vendor plans wisely, at this stage, you should have access to a sandbox environment built for your use case demonstration. This means you can test the solution hands-on, with sample content and data.

Assuming the sandbox trial is successful, you’ll want to contact vendor references to discuss how well the company works with clients. You’ll also want to check LinkedIn and other professional networks to validate the vendor’s reputation.

Once you choose the strongest solution, it’s time to finalize terms of a deal. Not everything in life is negotiable, but LMS licenses are. So, it pays to know what and how to negotiate, so you can strike the best deal.

Celebrate the best in learning tech innovation! See our latest annual LMS Award recipients, featuring 65 top solutions in 6 categories. SEE ALL THE WINNERS →

The Bottom Line on Finding the Best LMS for Your Needs

There are many ways to choose a customer education platform. But for successful results, I recommend you follow the 6 steps I’ve outlined. Here’s why: This approach puts your needs first and integrates comparative measures throughout the process.

Of course, you can shoot from the hip or let your gut decide. But those methods come with a serious downside.

Selecting an LMS without a thorough evaluation framework means you’re likely to get stuck with a weak solution. And in 3-4 years when you try to replace that suboptimal system, approval will be harder to find. I’ve seen this happen time and time again.

So, if learning is strategic to your organization, take my advice. Don’t assume your best choice is the status quo. And don’t leave your decision to chance. Instead, rely on a thoughtful decision process that will serve you well, now and in the future.

Watch This Customer Ed Nuggets Episode

Want more details about how to find the best LMS for your customer education needs? Watch the video version of this mini-podcast below…

Or, if you’d rather listen, tune in to the audio version right here at TalentedLearning.com.

Find out how real-world companies are achieving more with learning systems that create business value. Get inspiration from dozens of success stories in our free LMS Case Study Directory →

About Talented Learning Customer Ed Nuggets

Hosted by Talented Learning CEO John Leh, the Customer Ed Nuggets podcast is a trusted source of advice, guidance and best practices for customer education professionals of all types. In this series of brief video and audio “nuggets” (each 10 minutes or less), we explore key topics with numerous guest experts.

Join us anytime here or on our YouTube channel to explore all facets of customer education, from how to build a persuasive business case, to effective strategies, technologies and content that help professionals create, deploy and grow successful customer-centered programs.

How to Follow the Customer Ed Nuggets Podcast

We practice what we preach by providing our content in a format for every learning preference. You can stay up-to-date with this podcast series through these channels:

• Listen and subscribe on popular audio podcast platforms:
  Apple | Amazon | Spotify | YouTube Podcasts | Blubrry | Android | Email | RSS
• Watch and subscribe to Talented Learning videos on YouTube
• Find more episodes on our Customer Ed Nuggets Series main page
• Subscribe to our weekly Talented Learning newsletter

Buying or Selling a Customer LMS?

The right learning platform can improve business performance. And our Customer LMS Buyer’s Guide can help you find a platform that works for you.

This independent analysis compares 16 top customer learning systems, so you’ll have actionable insights, whatever your goal may be.

SEE DETAILS →

Need Advice to Find Your Best LMS? Let’s Talk…

Which platform fits you best? Get independent guidance you can trust. Schedule a free 30-minute consultation with me, John Leh, Founder and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning:

*NOTE TO SALESPEOPLE: Want to sell us something? Please contact us via standard channels. Thanks!