ICOG - 18-Aug-2021

You’ve got a small team and a tiny budget. You dream of a futuristic LXP for your organization, but you have access to one that is just okay. Or, maybe this is your first time.

So to speak, you are in that phase where you need an LXP, like yesterday, but have no time to assess all the plethora of platforms out there to make a choice.

You. This one's for you, the time-pressed L&D manager who needs an L&D platform, yesterday.

Let’s help you recognize what you really need through a series of questions and steps. Follow these 5 steps to pick the right learning experience platform for your organization.

Decide on the WHY

First, think about the WHY. Why is now the right time for you to shop for an LXP? How transforming can the right learning platform be for your organization?

What do you desperately want to change about how things currently are? What 3 elements in an LXP will totally change the learning experience for your employees?

Which top features in an LXP are you most excited about? 

All of these questions matter. These lead you to understand what you need, better. Not all learning platforms were built equally and it’s only fair that you get to take the one that most serves your needs.

You might also want to discuss internally with your team and arrive at a cumulative expectation sheet.

After deciding on the WHY, consider what success will look like with an LXP. Would success mean a high employee engagement rate? Would success look like a high course completion rate? Would success mean more internal promotions?

What about content creation?

Creating content for L&D efforts is often the biggest challenge for small L&D teams. If you don’t have the right content to feed into it, what good does an L&D platform do for your business?

Of course, if you’re looking to shift toward content curation and lessen the burden on your L&D team, things might look different.

Are you considering content curation as a possibility for your learning efforts? You might, in that case, want to look at a platform that allows mixing content creation as well as curation.

Another aspect to consider at this point is - “Who creates the content?”

More and bigger organizations are moving toward employee-led learning, meaning employees proactively define their career path, align it with the organization’s objectives, create content for their subordinates and learn through peer-based learning.

This social interaction enhances learning and allows organizations to encourage employee-led upskilling and reskilling.

Consider who you want actively involved in creating L&D content and whether or not you’d appreciate curation.

What kind of a user experience?

Let’s face it. If an LXP is not smooth and easy to use, your employees won’t use it. Or maybe they will if you press them about it, but that sort of learning rarely brings revolution.

So at this point, consider the kind of user experience you want learners to enjoy in your organization.

A good UX might include a personalized learning experience, or peer-based learning, or interactive dashboards, or career pathing and everything in between.

Learning and career paths walk hand-in-hand as organizations focus on the core competencies they wish to develop in their employees and employees look at the career turns they wish to take.

Your LXP of choice might support personalized learning through career pathing, which means taking full control of your own learning.

One important, hard-to-ignore part of learner experience is how accessible a platform is on the mobile device. Increasingly, employees are away from their desks for a major part of the day and they want to learn from anywhere.

Consider when an employee has an on-field position and needs access to knowledge to perform better or get a task done. Learning in the flow of work is only possible with smooth access to your LXP on mobile.

What insights would you track?

Business intelligence and analytics are critical pieces of L&D platforms essential to track the business impact of learning. Better analytics and insights allow L&D managers to base decisions on data rather than hard guesses.

Your ideal LXP might allow you to glean several insights, such as performance indicators, organizational cumulative competency index, learning index, learner engagement, feedback, skills and overall performance summaries.

Futuristic LXPs allow L&D teams to identify skill gaps, predict talent vulnerabilities and explore talent for cross-movement.

ICOG’s client L&T gets awarded by People Matters for best-in-class L&D data and analytics.

Seamless dashboards make it easy for learners to track their journeys, learning managers to stay ahead and stakeholders to view the progress of an organization's competency building efforts.

Wish to Digitize?

We know you want to get a new (or your first) LXP. But we don’t think you want to start from scratch creating content, right?

Most organizations look for an LXP that allows you to upload content of various formats like PPTx, DOC, Excel, SCORM, Video, Audio etc.

Did you know? ICOG has something for you that no one else does-

Upload any classroom or web conference video to ICOG and it will process the video to auto-index it, create an in-video search and automatically transcribe and provide subtitles with minimal curation efforts for each video. 

An automatically generated table of contents also helps learners navigate a video easily. That is what futuristic looks like if you ask me.

With a strong and semi-automated curation engine, ICOG can help learners consume content from various nooks on the internet without L&D managers having to reinvent the wheel.

Anyway, those are the exact steps and factors you need to consider when making the choice for a powerful L&D platform.

Make the right pick!