Questions to ask your internal stakeholders to secure your LMS budget

1. Whose budget will this come from?

Will this be your department’s budget? Or will this come from a larger organisational budget? Speak to the financial powers within the business from the outset, as this will have a greater impact on how much budget you have.

2. Is this a shared business expense across multiple units?

A learning management system may reach every team member in your business. Other times, a company chooses a learning system to support focused areas like Sales or Customer Service. Depending on your company’s expectation of an LMS, you may deal with multiple cost centres. Consider consulting with budget holders benefitting from the LMS or who have specific expectations of the LMS as you plan for how your company will manage LMS expenses. Remember to consider how you will pay for content, too!

3. Whose roles would be directly impacted?

Adopting an LMS is a change for everyone. A positive one, but still change. Think about your safety and compliance managers. An LMS enables you to deliver impactful and effective training that reduces the chance of non-compliance in your organisation. This has a significant impact on your compliance managers’ daily roles because it will reduce their time chasing overdue training, giving them more time to spend on policies and procedures. Not only does an LMS easily keep you compliant, but it simplifies processes, increases productivity, and boosts employee retention – a dream come true for your C-Suite and senior leaders. As for your managers, they can wave goodbye to lengthy onboarding processes and manual admin, as the LMS will automate all of this for them. It’s all changes for the good, so speak to them early on to enlighten them about the differences it will make and get them excited for the LMS.

4. What kind of access will we need?

Are you global or local? Need different languages? Do you need integrations to connect your people platforms seamlessly? Have you thought about Single Sign-On (SSO) so that your employees never need to use a password? These are all things that need to be considered when deciding on an LMS, and they can affect how much of the budget you’ll need. Check out our page about all things integrations to help you understand the components you may need.

5. Have we aligned this cost to the beneficial savings or revenue growth?

It all comes down to the numbers. If the decision-makers can visualise the return on investment and potential savings they’ll make through having an LMS, the cost will be justified. An LMS drives savings by:

• Improving employee performance and productivity – Not only does an LMS provide easier access to learning, but it also reduces learning time by 50%. The more training completed, the higher skilled your workforce will be.
• Reducing staff turnover –  94% of employees stated they would stay at the company longer if their employers invested in their careers. By investing in an LMS, you’re investing in your team, which will mean they’re going to feel valued and gain a sense of belonging.
• Lowering training and development costs – An LMS cuts the expenses that would normally be involved with your typical classroom training. No longer do you need to pay course fees, source learning materials, or even travel expenses. In contrast to in-person training, which usually involves part of your workforce out of the office, an LMS allows your people to learn whilst at work and, therefore, no loss of productivity.
• Ensuring compliance – LMS is a fast and easy way to deliver the correct training to employees to ensure you are maintaining compliance within your organisation, reducing the risk of non-compliance fines.
• Reducing admin burden – An LMS can auto-populate any and all training your team, and new hires must complete, saving time manually inputting and ensuring your new hires have the correct information when they need it.

6. Do we understand the purchasing and procurement process to buy software?

By taking a dynamic approach to LMS procurement from the beginning, you’ll prevent your company from feeling locked into expensive, long-term contracts that stunt your growth as a company. To ensure you choose an LMS that grows with you, consider the following:

• Always opt for “flexible” as opposed to “fixed”. You don’t know how dramatically your company may change in the next 3 years, so you’ll want your LMS partner to be flexible with your needs.
• Ask for case studies of companies that were experiencing challenges similar to your own and gain an understanding of how the LMS provider fixed or ameliorated those issues.
• Get a feel for how the LMS provider addresses innovation by asking about their roadmap.
• Understand Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) so there are no or few financial surprises as you grow into your new LMS.
• Ask about the levels of support that are offered to you and get comfortable with how your team will leverage that support as you grow with your provider.

7. Who needs to approve this spending?

Is it the Head of L&D, CFO, Operations Director? It’s different for all companies, so make sure you know exactly who has final approval and ensure they’re informed throughout the whole process. Information is key to success because if you prepare your decision-makers with the possible outcomes that will get them invested, the more likely you’ll be to receive that big fat YES!

8. Is our IT infrastructure able to handle an LMS?

To ensure a smooth LMS implementation, we recommend that you share all IT requirements with your IT/technology team as soon as possible. This ensures that all IT considerations can be addressed in plenty of time, and the IT team knows what will be expected of them. This will also help you to understand if any extra costs will occur. The requirements for IT infrastructure will differ from organization to organization; however, there are foundational requirements that should always be addressed.

Take a look at our System Capabilities playbook to help you understand the necessary requirements.

9. What timeline are we looking at?

Is there time pressure on delivering the LMS? We won’t lie; there is a process once you’ve chosen your supplier (but it’s all for your support, we promise). There will be legal and contracts, welcome calls and introductory training, and the implementation project, all before you reach your launch date. The length of time from purchasing to launching varies depending on your organisation’s size. If you’re a mid-size business, it may take around 6-9 months to get to the contract stage. If you’re an enterprise, this could take as long as 12 months.  If you think an LMS may be right for you, start the process now.

10. Is an LMS viewed as a cost or an investment?

You need the decision makers bought in from the beginning, and the way you’ll do this is by positioning the purchase of an LMS as an investment rather than a cost to the business. The clearer the benefits are to the decision-makers, the more positive the budget discussions will be.

Remember: information is key to success. Planning and securing a budget isn’t easy, and it can feel daunting knowing how many people you need to involve. However, you want as many people as possible to support the project. Asking these questions will give you clarity on the successful route to getting your budget secured and providing an infrastructure for learning and development in your company.

Speak to a Kallidus expert today to see how we can help you in your LMS discovery process.

Written by Claire Moloney

Claire is an enthusiastic and meticulous content writer whose passion is to support growth and continual learning for everyone.

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