How to Assemble an LMS Implementation Dream Team

Launching a new learning management system takes careful planning, including the assembling of a dream team of superstars who will make the implementation happen smoothly and efficiently. If you're a small organization, your internal dream team may be a mighty party of one. If a larger, then roles are likely distributed across different departments and people. Either way, the importance of a customized LMS implementation plan cannot be overstated. With the help of your new LMS provider and an onboarding specialist dedicated to your organization, you'll be put on the right path to ensuring the long term success of your learning and development program. In addition to an onboarding specialist, a team leader, eLearning developer, training administrator and an IT expert are good to have as part of your LMS implementation crew. Here's what each role brings to the table, regardless of who does the work.

LMS Onboarding specialist

It all begins with your LMS onboarding specialist. The onboarding specialist oversees several key tasks essential to getting your new learning platform off the ground. Some of these tasks include:

• Acting as a dedicated point of contact during the onboarding phase
• Ensuring your organization's admins are trained on the system
• Providing best practice recommendations
• Coordinating the onboarding project, deliverables and timelines
• Finding opportunities to leverage additional functionality (e.g. integrations, new features) to maximize your use of the system
• Assisting in identifying KPIs

Once your onboarding specialist is ready to turn over the reins to your internal L&D department and LMS service representative, your behind-the-scenes team will perform several key role into ensuring your LMS remains relevant and helpful to your workforce.

Team leader

The team leader oversees the efficient running of their new LMS. Two areas of management are required:

• Project management: Creating a schedule, identifying milestones and tracking progress. The team leader will create project specification documents, hold planning and implementation meetings and take responsibility for keeping things on track.
• People management: Resolving schedule conflicts, removing obstacles and providing guidance to team members.

Whether one person fills both of these roles or they are divided between two team members depends on your resources and needs. If organizational scaling is a significant cause or intended effect of your learning platform, you'll likely need multiple people to fill this role. That way your leaders will be better prepared to manage incoming learners.

eLearning developer

As decisions are made concerning how learners access and use the LMS, and eLearning courses are migrated or created in the new LMS, someone should look out for the learners to ensure a positive user experience. This person will have extensive knowledge of their old LMS platform and their new one. Migrating existing content can be complex, but with the help of the onboarding specialist, the eLearning developer will have a partner in managing interoperability testing and integrating courses. The eLearning development might also manage assessments and learner surveys to gauge LMS value and suggest improvements. As more content is integrated or created, you may call on instructional designers and eLearning content creators, curriculum managers or other specialists who focus on the content and the design of coherent learning paths.

Training administrator

The training administrator is also an eLearning professional, but this role focuses on LMS configuration and administration rather than course content or migration. Rest assured that your onboarding specialist will lead in-depth tutorials on the new LMS with your organization's lead admins. From here, the admins who were trained by the onboarding specialist can go forth and pass their expertise on to others. The training administrator will ensure that your implementation meets certification and compliance requirements, set up user profiles, audience tracking and configure notifications, and establish course assignment and registration protocols. Later in the rollout, your team may call on additional LMS administrators, as well as team members who can conduct user acceptance testing or perform quality control functions. The extra support can ensure that migrated content works properly.

IT expert

The role of an IT expert varies, depending on whether your LMS is implemented as software as a service (SaaS)—which would entail a minimal IT role—or hosted on-site. The IT leader handles security, including user account authentication. This role also migrates data from the legacy LMS, ensures data security, integrates the LMS with a talent management or other HR system and addresses security around other integrations, with web conferencing systems or external eLearning libraries, for example. Additional resources might be needed in areas like network management, systems integration or database management.

Plan for the unexpected

No team can anticipate every need or pitfall, especially if LMS implemnation work is concentrated among fewer people. But assembling a core team to own the project is a crucial step toward ensuring an efficient and successful rollout of your new LMS platform.

Meet the Absorb Onboarding Team

The Absorb Software client onboarding team is solely focused on assisting you in getting live on Absorb LMS and having a great experience from day one. The onboarding team acts has dedicated project managers, trainers and system specialists to ensure that everything is working effectively toward the targeted go-live date. During the relationship, the core focus is to ensure that you're implementing best practices, having a seamless transition from any prior systems and realizing the full value and potential of Absorb LMS right out of the gate. There's a lot of work to be done when launching a new LMS. By tapping Absorb experts, you'll never have to go it alone!