How do you plan and execute a successful LMS integration or LMS migration project?

You've probably heard the phrase "Garbage in, Garbage out" before. No matter how smart and fancy your tech may be, if you feed it a mess of data, it cannot give you the clean results like you'd see in a sales demo. Get to know what data you can access and where it comes from. This is critical for scoping because your implementation is constrained by how other technology already in place in your organization actually works. For instance, is the unique identifier for users generated one way for employees and a different way for contingent workers? And what happens if a contingent worker becomes and employee or vice versa? Does their training need get reset? Should it? You need to know what's possible and what's within your reach to address.

This is an excellent starting point. I also think it is critical to include your sponsors and others that need to weigh in on the project. It is important not to operate in a silo - especially on a project like LMS integration or migrations. This impacts the entire community of users. When we moved to a new LMS - there were many brainstorming meetings with different stakeholders to ensure that we considered all of these areas - resources, expectations, and creating a communication plan (for specific audiences/users).

Agree with Henrietta. You need a deliberate approach to helping everyone understand what you’re doing, why, and what it means for them. What do you want the experience to be for the users (everyone from learners, managers, business / learning leaders, to compliance teams, admins, and executives). Determine the reporting FIRST! How does it work to integrate and support the rest of your ecosystem? Have you thought about Works councils, data privacy, , translations, etc.? Are your data / courses, ready? These systems often reach more people than your core HR systems so please do not underestimate scope, time, resources, and effort needed to implement!!!

Implementing an LMS often starts with addressing challenges such as: ?? High training costs ?? Repetitive tasks ?? Lack of training resources ?? Limited data to improve quality ?? Lack of understanding of e-learning LMS ?? Resistance from stakeholders If your company or organization faces these issues, adopting an LMS can be a successful solution. ?? How to Adapt Successfully? To succeed, you must define key evaluation goals: - Assess whether learners have gained the skills they were trained for and can apply them in their work. - Evaluate how these skills impact work performance and outcomes. Based on these, create measurement tools like using a Rubric to evaluate progress effectively.

Usually systems demo well and vendors are very much “yes, the system can do that”. Details are where things start showing mismatches to expectations. Remember LMSs were designed for admins, not learners. Technology will not: - fix your issues (whether cultural, procedural, communication, operational, etc.) - meet 100% of your needs (use the 80/20 rule) Try to keep your eyes on improving and supporting business outcomes through well-designed training solutions that consider adult learning (spaced, gamified, interactive, integrated, etc.) and let the technology enable the learning journey. (Often in conjunction with other tools and systems.)

This is a great opportunity to mine your support logs and find the most common support requests and most frequent user errors. You don't need to get creative here, chances are people are already telling you how your existing system is not meeting their expectations. Focus on the top pain points, and examine the root causes. Likely, you won't be able to fix everything you want, let alone what your users struggle with. Do some usability testing of your future state, even if it's just with a mockup. Gather evidence on what makes things better for target user profiles, and be clear in communicating your choices with stakeholders. Your rollout will go much smoother when you set expectations appropriately.

Use caution when researching online - many sites are either sponsored by the vendors or are using individual reviews (not representative of company overall views). Most vendors come in and set it up and aren’t the greatest at giving advice to set it up the way your business needs - consider working with professionals that have experience to help you prepare (prep may be longer than actual implementation). As always, you get what you pay for. Enterprises should work with professionals to set the right strategy, go through a thorough vendor selection process with quantitative and qualitative criteria, then prep, design, configure, deploy, “hyper” support for about 1-2 months, then transition to steady state.

In my experience, it’s rare enterprises are maintaining their learning courses well enough that a new LMS can easily have content and data migrated. Where is all your content housed (source files not just published)? Do you have all the data you need to show correlation to business KPIs? Do you have specific owner names for each course and when they last updated it? Usually reports can start answering these questions but it’s not common that everything is up-to-date. While the system is (usually) thoroughly tested by the vendor, they haven’t (and won’t) tested for your specific business needs. Do you have an experienced team that leverages leading testing practices and processes?

Having performed dozens of LMS migrations, I've yet to see historical data migration actually payoff for the client. Sometimes this is a requirement that cannot be avoided, but anytime it can be skipped, I advocate for skipping it. Old learning data that is retained outside the LMS in a reference database or even flat file that only admins can access is usually enough for most organizations. Remember, the logic your current LMS uses and how it tracks things is inherently different than the LMS you're moving to. That's part of why you're moving, right? Ensuring that accurate historical transcripts can be produced upon request is often much easier when there is a clear before/after migration dividing line.

I wholeheartedly agree with the emphasis on meticulous preparation and testing of data and content for a smooth LMS transition. In my experience, solid data mapping and analytical skills are indispensable for identifying and preempting potential errors. This becomes especially vital when learning history influences future user assignments and deadlines. Ensuring that qualification statuses are accurately transferred is not just beneficial—it's often a critical requirement, especially when regulatory compliance is involved. By taking the time to map and test data rigorously, you're ensuring a seamless transition for both the administrators and end-users and setting the stage for a positive experience in the midst of a substantial change.

I’d recommend keeping your project team, IT, and vendor together for at least 1 month post-launch for elevated support. At the beginning planning stages, identify your target launch date knowing it could move depending on many factors then set up a “soft” launch or pilot first to a VERY small audience. Trust me, launching to everyone with anything not set up correctly and/or not caught during testing can be difficult to recover from. Definitely have a team supporting the communications and leaders! If you hadn’t thought of it, consider a team of champions from across the different stakeholder groups the help you through all aspects.

An LMS change is a great opportunity to clean house. As with cleaning out a closet, it's best to set your default stance to either "when it doubt, keep it" or "when in doubt, throw it out!" Either approach works fine, but be consistent about how you deal with the mystery data. There are likely groups, roles, and learning content that used to be critically important but aren't anymore. There may be users or divisions that are orphaned in your system due to a now defunct datafeed or simple mistake. Auditing all this before you integrate means your integration project has a chance of staying on track. This is the time to backstop all the craziness that crept into your old system. Make sure only valuable and valid data exists in your new one!

Quick bullets: -My perspective is for larger companies but may apply to you -Start with reporting -Worst thing I see (almost 100% of the time) is that companies don’t have a change management team (this will truly be a critical success factor!!!!) -Plan longer than you think for content rationalization, data integrations, content procurement/licensing processes -Incorporate deliberate fun and team-building activities to celebrate milestones or just step back and breathe -Avoid saying “it needs to ‘x’” unless you add the desired result and why; other options exist you may not be aware of -Don’t be afraid to keep asking until you truly understand and/or get the right person helping you