For the 16 years CDSM has been developing and selling learning technologies, it never fails to surprise me how products get marketed and sold into the commercial and public sectors in the United Kingdom. Seemingly, companies prefer learning management systems with huge feature lists, each one often described in glorious techno-waffle.
As a result, the customer that originally set out to embrace digital learning experiences for his or her organisation often gets swayed by supplier interviews that convince them that they need learning content creations tools; and room-booking tools; and talent management tools; and 360-degree review tools; and a micro-site CMS. The list goes on and on.
Why is this? Is it just a deep-seated characteristic drummed into us since birth? Are we duty bound to choose that option that gives us the most ‘stuff’ for the smallest amount? After all, isn’t that what makes a good deal?
I suppose the question I most want to ask most corporate L&D departments is the ‘value-for-money’ question. How much of your learning management system do you actually use? And therefore, how much value do you actually get from it? You pay a significant sum of money every year — how much of that whopping great feature list you paid for do you fully appreciate, let alone use?
Recent conversations with a number of prospective clients lead me to think that there is a real ‘sea-change’ in attitudes emerging which questions the value of the sprawling feature list — a change which should bring about a more specialized and focused approach to the creation and development of high quality learning. This is certainly how CDSM now thinks about its learning technologies: more focus on the explicit learning features, not the subsidiary features.
Of course, it is not only a value for money issue. I also find myself genuinely questioning the quality of those learning management systems with masses of unnecessary features. In particular, I am reminded of a discussion I overheard recently whilst out looking for a new bed for my youngest daughter. A particularly loud couple at the store announced they were buying a bed for their spare room.
‘You are looking at our latest sofa-bed range. Why not spend your money wisely and get two pieces of furniture for the price of one? For the night, a bed to sleep in and during the day a sofa to lounge on!’ The salesperson sounded extremely sincere as he delivered this well-practiced sales patter to his potential customers. I wondered how the loud couple would respond to this sales pitch, and couldn’t help but smile at the man’s succinct yet equally logical response.
‘I don’t want a sofa bed! I tried all that nonsense in the eighties and ended up with a bed that wasn’t a very good bed and a sofa that wasn’t much good as a sofa! I gave up in the end and got rid’.
It stands to reason that if your learning management system provider has too many features that need looking after, it will probably mean that the technical resources allotted to its maintenance and development become stretched.
In my opinion, it is the developer’s or vendor’s responsibility to provide focused, intuitive and well-engineered tools to help an organisation create and distribute high quality learning opportunities. Our customers want a flexible set of assessment tools to measure its people’s learning. They want extensive and detailed reports on the learner’s progress and what this means for them in terms of career development and progression. Where possible, the system should offer recognition or reward for career development and successful learning outcomes.
The more features there are, the more the learning management system is compromised, particularly when it comes to the quality of the features that really matter.