How to buy an LMS

Associations, training companies, corporate channel, customer and other extended enterprise buyers can create any number – hundreds of thousands even – of active ongoing accounts but a buying organization only pays for active usage.

If you can’t define and predictively measure how the purchase of an LMS is going to help your organization make or save money – way more money than the cost of the LMS – you aren't ready to buy a system.

There are new buzzwords out there since the last time you paid attention like Gamification, Social Learning, Mobile Learning, Cloud, SaaS, Tin Can, NextGen, Talent Suite and extended enterprise LMS and you are not sure what it all means and how it applies to you.

In contrast, the smartest buyers always have a commanding understanding of their business model, their preferred software licensing model and contract structure when they're selecting an LMS or any enterprise software.

If a vendor can get in early, educate you, and get you to skip the request for proposal (RFP), then they get to shape the solution, cover their own holes and set the pricing negotiation.