Are you hiring? Promoting? Or creating a better training program? If so, learning management system software might be right for you – LMS benefits businesses that want to provide advancement opportunities for workers. Finding the right LMS requirements can make the difference between success and failure.

So, what features should an LMS have? We’ve compiled a checklist to help you. Read on to learn more.

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LMSs train and direct workers and improve onboarding, recruitment, compliance and performance across departments. Maybe that’s why over 55% of respondents in the State of Learning and Development survey have reported a hike in their organizational L&D budgets to put towards new training techniques. But how do you get started?

To find the best platform, compare the vital features that design, manage, track and execute digital training. So, what features should an LMS have? We’ve compiled a checklist to help you. However, before we begin, you need a clear understanding of how eLearning fits in your organization. Read on to learn more.

Article Roadmap

• Requirements and Features
  • Assessments
  • Collaboration
  • Compliance
  • Content and Course Management
  • Ecommerce
  • Learning Delivery
  • Mobile Capabilities
  • Reporting and Dashboards
  • User Management and Gamification
• Technical Requirements
  • Security
  • Integrations
  • Deployment
• Other Features To Consider
• LMS Evaluation Process
  • Determine Current Challenges
  • Organize Stakeholders
  • Understand Your Learning Model/Culture
  • Define Your Strategy
  • Evaluate the Market
  • Decide Your Budget and Timeline
  • Determine Features vs. Needs
  • List Requirements
  • Shortlist Options
  • Request Demos
• Cost Considerations
• Next Steps

Requirements and Features

LMSs train and direct workers and improve onboarding, recruitment, compliance and performance across departments. With over 80% of the workforce currently operating in a remote or hybrid setup, it’s essential to find a solution that fulfills all your employee training needs online.

Comparing the features that design, manage, track and execute digital training is a key step. Creating an LMS requirements list that meets your needs ensures you’re not sinking money into something that won’t help.

Functional requirements, also known as features, make up the LMS capabilities learners, administrators and instructors need to succeed. Once you’ve outlined the best features, you can compare, contrast and analyze your way to the best solution.

To help you make sense of a diverse and varied market, here are the most important functional LMS requirements to consider during your software search:

1. Assessments

An exam editor allows instructors to customize how they test learner knowledge with features like multiple-choice, short essay questions and question randomization. Instructors can plan follow-up quizzes and change scoring requirements with a learning management system. Some even have branching options, allowing for a customized testing experience to suit each learner.

An individualized approach to lesson planning tailors information to each employee’s needs. For example, users can create materials specifically for recently promoted workers or plans tailored to a department shifting its duties.

Some vendors offer eLearning tracking so companies can see how particular employees performed in training modules for post-lesson assessments. Grading and survey features let learners and instructors see where they excel and where they need to improve through weighted grading and automated surveys.

• Anonymous Grading
• Assignment Warnings
• Automated Grading
• Create Assignments
• Question Repository
• Rubrics
• Test Builder
• Test Grading

2. Collaboration

Communication is essential for teamwork to be successful, and an LMS offers many tools for users to stay connected at each step. For example, employees can share their views on a given topic using the discussion board. Peer reviews allow all team members to assess each other’s performance and provide feedback and suggestions for improvement.

They can also send and receive messages, share learning material and work in groups to create content. Other tools that support collaboration include video conferencing, discussion forums, voice calls, personal chat and content sharing.

• Announcements
• Content Sharing
• Discussion Board
• Group Chat
• Notes or Annotations
• Two-Way Messaging

3. Compliance

Most organizations require content standardization, so that courses are delivered consistently across systems and devices. SCORM, for example, has long been a standard in the industry. The most prevalent versions include SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 3rd Edition. However, APIs have recently become a powerful alternative for creating content standards and connections across all deployment options.

For companies working with the federal government, vendors can offer compliance options for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance or other standard helpers. Safety training elements provide tools for maintaining compliance with U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards.

• AICC
• COPPA
• FERPA
• LTI
• SCORM
• xAPI

4. Content and Course Management

Creating engaging content is essential to the success of a training program. Many LMS vendors provide a number of tools and resources to build interactive courses. You can create modules using different templates, colors and fonts, add images, videos and links, and even brand them with your company’s name and logo.

Once learners have completed a course, you can collect their feedback on the experience so you know how your program is performing.

Many LMS vendors provide a range of customization tools to create tailored learning paths. Personalization features include custom courses for different employees or the option to choose topics that are relevant to their job roles. Learners can have more say in what they learn and ensure that training is relevant to their goals and aspirations.

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5. Ecommerce

Training employees in various domains is important because of the ever-changing demand for new skills and expertise. Many vendors provide an integrated website to sell individual and bundled courses to both employees and external customers, so that all their training and certification needs are met.

They can browse from a variety of courses, add them to the shopping cart and apply discounts as available. A secure payment processing platform lets them pay for purchases using mobile wallets, gift cards, credit and debit cards, and QR codes, information about which is securely stored in the transaction history.

• Course Bundles
• Course Selling
• Discounts and Promotions
• Transaction History

6. Learning Delivery

Every employee has different learning needs, and how you deliver training goes a long way in meeting them. Virtual learning, face-to-face interactions, a mix of both or something else — an LMS supports many learning delivery methods.

For example, asynchronous learning ensures that employees learn at their own pace, while microlearning consists of bite-sized content so they can continue learning even when strapped for time.

7. Mobile Capabilities

In a 2023 Elucidat report, 85% of L&D professionals reported an increase in requests for online learning, making it essential for learners to be able to access training content remotely. Besides, roughly 68% of the world’s population now uses a mobile phone, with average users spending roughly 5 hours on them daily.

A mobile app is the perfect way for you to make your training content accessible beyond time and location constraints and facilitate on-the-go learning.

Many solutions come with an iOS, Android and Windows-compatible mobile app so employees can access the software on their smartphones.

They can subscribe to courses, submit assignments, view grade cards and send messages on an interactive dashboard. An added benefit is the content library — a repository of all learning material that can be downloaded for access in case of weak or no internet access.

You can send real-time notifications to update users about upcoming events, new courses and timetable changes. You can also schedule reminders for time-bound tasks like submission dates and meetings.

• Mobile Collaboration
• Mobile Course Tracking
• Mobile Learning
• Native iOS and Android Apps
• Offline Learning
• Push Notifications
• Responsive Design

8. Reporting and Dashboards

LMS platforms come with a comprehensive suite of reporting tools that help you visualize company data in various formats and get valuable insights into overall performance.

You can generate real-time, automated reports in the form of graphs, charts and maps. These include pre-built reports on learners’ performance and progress per course, course enrollment and completion, learning time spent per course and more.

You can easily schedule reports to be sent out at a specific time or recurring intervals.

A customizable dashboard helps you apply filters to drill down on data and get insights into all business operations in a single window. You can add widgets to your dashboard to monitor and analyze various aspects of learner performance, and track learner and course KPIs.

• Custom Dashboards
• Custom Reports
• Graphs and Visualizations
• Prebuilt Reports
• Report Scheduling

9. User Management and Gamification

You can create user profiles with an employee’s personal information, like name, phone number and email address, and allow them to log into the system using their credentials. You can also create job roles for employees, and define system access permissions based on their functions.

Gamification tools make learning fun by rewarding learners and encouraging healthy competition. You can showcase the number of points earned by learners on the leaderboard, give them badges for accomplishing time-bound tasks and grant certificates upon completion of courses. This approach helps motivate employees to participate in the learning process.

• Award Points Tracking
• Configuring Milestones
• Course Transcripts
• Customizable Badges
• Leaderboard
• Manage Certifications
• Role-Based Permissions
• Skills Catalog
• User Groups
• User Profiles

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Technical Requirements

Technical requirements help make LMS platforms secure, scalable and easily accessible to users. These capabilities offer multi-platform compatibility, security infrastructure, hardware configuration and data storage for your system.

Here are some of the most important technical requirements.

1. Security

Since users must have complete trust in an LMS’s security protocols, appropriate measures must be in place to ensure data safety.

Here are some security features and how they help you:

• Role-based access control (RBAC) allows administrators to assign employees specific roles to access different aspects of the system.
• Multi-factor authentication protects user accounts against unauthorized access.
• Data encryption keeps data safe using industry-standard encryption protocols, such as TLS (Transport Layer Security).
• Single sign-on (SSO) allows users to log in once with an assigned credential and gain access to multiple systems without needing to log into each one separately.
• Activity tracking, for audit and accountability purposes, allows administrators to monitor system usage by employees.
• Backup and disaster recovery system ensures data is safe from accidental loss due to virus attacks and hardware failures.
• Compatibility with major operating systems like macOS, Windows and Linux.

2. Integrations

Integrations connect your LMS with other types of software, such as customer relationship management (CRM) software, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and eCommerce platforms.

Integrations enable information-sharing between multiple systems and can build on the base functionality of your LMS. By syncing data across departments, you can more easily provide learners with essential updates, host video sessions, track progress and generate reports.

Popular LMSs also offer APIs to find, create, update or delete information, and let you import and export data in various formats such as XLS, CSV and PDF.

Here are some third-party integrations you can consider:

• Ecommerce: Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento
• Anti-Plagiarism: Copyleaks, Unicheck, Scribbr, Grammarly
• HR: ADP Workforce Now, BambooHR, Rippling
• Video Conferencing: Zoom, GoToMeeting, ClickMeeting, BigBlueButton, Cisco WebEx
• Payment Gateway: Stripe, PayPal
• Collaboration: Microsoft 365, GSuite

3. Deployment

LMS deployment models are the various ways an organization can implement the software.

• Self-hosted LMS allows you to host the solution on private servers or the company’s data centers and provides complete control over the application’s security, design and functionality.
• SaaS deployment lets you outsource the application to a third-party vendor for hosting, making it easier to scale up and down without investing in additional infrastructure or resources.
• Cloud-based LMS is a combination of the self-hosted and SaaS models where you can deploy the infrastructure online by vendors such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure.
• Hybrid deployments allow you to have the best of both worlds by combining cloud hosting with self-hosting, depending on the requirements.

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Other Features To Consider

Here are some more aspects to look out for while evaluating your options:

• User Interface: Go for an LMS that’s easy to operate for both tech-savvy and inexperienced users alike. Also consider the accessibility compliance provided by the software to ensure the system is user-friendly for people with special needs.
• Customization: Branding and white-labeling options help configure the software to reflect your brand’s unique identity and improve marketability.
• Blended Learning: With more organizations adopting hybrid working models, an LMS that enables learners to train both from inside and outside of the office is a must. Look for an option that supports blended learning to provide continuous training to your employees, no matter where they’re located.
• Customer Support: Make sure your vendor offers round-the-clock phone and email support along with an extensive resource database to simplify onboarding for your employees and provide them with prompt software-related assistance.
• Scalability: A scalable solution allows you to upgrade, edit and add courses and users without having to spend tons of money on configuring or replacing the system to accommodate changing needs. You can simply grow the capabilities of your existing LMS by upgrading the subscription plan for a fee.
• Multi-Language Management: LMSs with multi-language support allow for seamless translation of course materials, user interfaces and communication tools, enhancing accessibility and inclusivity. It empowers learners to consume educational materials in their preferred language.
• AI Integration: AI algorithms can analyze learner data to provide insights, predict future learning needs and offer tailored learning experiences. Additionally, AI integration enables LMS platforms to automate administrative tasks, such as content tagging and organization, freeing up educators to focus on instructional design and student support.

LMS Evaluation Process

When looking at a learning management system, having a general idea of importance helps – but alone, it’s not enough. To start with a clear vision of the ideal solution, you’ll need to strategize, determine your needs and prioritize.

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1. Determine Current Challenges

It’s important to evaluate your current business situation to identify the challenges you want to address with a new system.

Talk to your staff members, IT personnel, managers and administrators to brainstorm the problems you need to solve with a new LMS. Do you lack the tools to create multidisciplinary courses? Are your employees having trouble tracking their progress in real time? Answer these and similar questions among members of your organization to get a better idea of how a new software can help fulfill their needs.

2. Organize Stakeholders

Nothing is worse than rolling out a system and discovering a significant flaw that wasn’t obvious from the big-picture view. Involve a group of focused, engaged employees and stakeholders early on in the selection process. Hopefully, this helps you weed out any problems beforehand.

Here are the people to include in your initial group:

• Managers and Assistant Managers
• Executives, VPs and Directors
• Program Administrators
• Teachers and Trainers
• HR Managers and Admin Workers
• Department Employees
• Assistant Managers and Managers
• Workers Overseeing Integration or Workflow

3. Understand Your Learning Model/Culture

Now that you’ve narrowed down the specifics for your LMS, it’s time to ask a broader question about education. Namely, how is training going to factor into your company culture? Deciding on the type of learning to provide is also key. A recent LinkedIn report shows that 83% of organizations want to build a people-centric learning culture, where aligning learning programs to business goals is a top L&D priority.

To emphasize employee knowledge, you’ll need to ensure they’re getting information efficiently and incentivize your workers. Take a look at our guide for how employees learn new skills.

• Company Culture
• Training Goals
• Learning Culture
• Instructor-Led Training
• Self-Paced Training

4. Define Your Strategy

It’s time to ask some pointed questions: How does a learning management system fit within the goals of your organization? Are you looking for a robust solution that can handle complicated course management functions? Or, are you looking for something simple that runs training for a few departments? Most importantly, what KPI makes the difference between success and failure?

Define a training and learning strategy so you can choose features that best support it.

Here’s what you’ll need to start your LMS process:

• LMS Strategy
• Research Committee
• Engaged Stakeholders
• Departmental Buy-In
• Implementation Plan

5. Evaluate the Market

Understanding the market is an important step when buying an LMS. It helps you assess available options in terms of the features and functionalities offered, types of pricing models and each vendor’s performance relative to industry standards. Here are some steps to take:

• Identify top eLearning trends.
• Determine the top features provided by leading solutions.
• Estimate your budget based on ongoing market research.
• Read industry reports to get insights into training trends and statistics.

Selecting an LMS that incorporates advanced technologies and innovations to build a modern training program gives your organization a competitive edge in the long term.

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6. Decide Your Budget and Timeline

Before deciding your requirements, plan a budget to ensure that you only pay for what you need and don’t spend on unnecessary features. Talk to the vendor about ongoing charges like maintenance and support, additional features, system upgrades and similar costs so you can come up with an accurate estimate.

Determining a timeline is also crucial as it dictates how long software implementation is likely to take. Staff training and onboarding, data migration and content creation are some of the things involved in the setup, so make sure you factor these in while deciding the timeframe to go live with your new system.

7. Determine Features vs. Needs

It’s time to separate the “wants” from the “must-haves.” What do you need for your organization to function? You’ll want accurate numbers for how many courses, students and administrators to accommodate. If you choose wisely, you’ll even have the option to build as you grow.

• Key Features
• Non-essential Features
• Core Functionality
• Scalability

8. List Requirements

Once you have your needs and wants, prioritize. What is the critical differentiator that’s going to set you head and shoulders above your competition? What fits in best with your company’s mission and values? Narrow your list to your top priorities to direct your search more effectively.

Here are some questions to help you get more clarity while listing requirements:

• Will any specially-abled people use the LMS? If yes, which accessibility features do you need?
• Are there any industry-specific features you should consider?
• Do you need offline learning trackers?
• Are you looking to create multiple training portals?
• Which tasks do you need available for offline use?

Here are strategies to determine top priorities:

• Key Differentiators
• Mission, Vision and Values
• Priority Checklist
• SWOT Analysis

9. Shortlist Options

While you may have a lot of options available, it’s essential to shortlist and compare a handful of suitable solutions before making a decision. Consider RFP responses and how well they meet your business-specific needs, and eliminate vendors who do not tick any important checkboxes of your requirements.

Remember to not rule out a solution because it doesn’t offer a nice-to-have requirement and is priced higher. It may offer a better user interface and helpful customer support than a cheaper, more “feature-rich” alternative. Always take a quality-first approach and prioritize aspects that will actively affect your staff members’ training experience.

10. Request Demos

Once you have a list of two to three solutions, it’s time to get a hands-on approach to each system and test how well they work for your training model. In your demo scenarios, include features and functionalities that are critical to your use case, and try to get first-hand experience with the vendor’s support team.

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Cost Considerations

Over 40% of respondents in a Training Industry survey reported a hike in their employee training budgets in 2023, and with the corporate training market expected to grow by $153.41 billion between 2024-2028, it’s clear this isn’t a cheap endeavor.

Here are some of the most common types of LMS pricing models:

• Pay-as-you-go: You pay for the services you use.
• Pay-per-active-users: You pay only for the users who use the LMS in a billing cycle.
• Pay-per-learner: You pay a fixed price for a definite number of users.
• License fee: You pay for a fixed period with the freedom to change the number of users and courses based on your needs.
• Free: You can access a limited number of features free of cost.

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Next Steps

Essentially, most key online training features work toward a holistic learner and performance management process. Other essential elements serve business or IT requirements. Competency and performance tools are a big part of how products enhance operations and provide the value that these software packages bring to an enterprise.

Additional LMS features ensure ease of use and provide a comprehensive tool that conducts learning functions with the added benefit of human resource management. Keep all of this in mind when looking for your next LMS for a smoother selection process. That way, you’ll ensure selecting a product that makes everyone’s life easier and more productive.

If you take the hassle out of determining your LMS requirements, our free template makes it easy to choose and prioritize requirements based on your needs.

What do you think is the most important in finding a good LMS? Let us know in the comments below!