4 Ways to Improve Your LMS Housekeeping

Last week we wrote all about how to give your elearning content a spring clean, so this week we’re giving you 4 ways to improve your housekeeping in your LMS (Learning Management System).

An LMS is a lot like a home. As time goes by, even the most organised of houses can become cluttered if it’s not kept clean and up-to-date with routine maintenance. It’s the same with your LMS. Every so often it needs a good going over to bring it back to its former glory.

Each room in your house serves a different purpose and function. Your LMS acts in the same way; we need specific functions and the ability to store and access data on a regular basis to ensure we can trust that data. Occasionally we need to do a bit of housekeeping to keep it clear of clutter.

We’ve listed below our 4 ways you can get on top of your LMS housekeeping:

1. Store

Ask yourself some questions about the people and courses that are currently sitting in your LMS. Below are some things you can do to declutter.

• Remove courses that are no longer required or relevant to your organisation. They may be taking up space, and decluttering helps you find the information you need. Be careful however to ensure you don’t lose any compliance data that you may need to evidence that your employees or trainees have undertaken certain types of training.
• Remove or replace inactive users. Learners in your organisation come and go, and depending on the type of license you have for your LMS, you may be taking up space or paying for user licenses you no longer need.
• Organise your learners into relevant groups. The way you decide to do this will depend on how your organisation is structured, but good examples of this we have seen are organising them into folders based on department, job role or management level.

2. Refresh

A house sometimes needs a lick of paint to bring it back into the modern-day and an LMS is similar. Your LMS can benefit from a refresh and an update to ensure you’re getting the most out of it. Consider the following:

• Is your LMS already branded? If not, adding your company logo and colours will make it really feel a part of the organisation. If it is branded, make sure that your branding is current and up-to-date with your company branding guidelines.
• Are you on your platform’s latest version? Lots of SaaS companies automatically update their software, but sometimes for certain reasons you may be on an older version of the system. Updates can ensure your system runs at optimum performance and on modern browser types, making sure it will work when you need it to.
• Are your reporting tools working hard for you? Are there better ways to create and analyse your reports that you can investigate? Consult your LMS provider for help with this. For example, at Nimble we have a dedicated Customer Success team to ensure you’re getting the most out of your system.

3. Protect

Whether it’s CCTV, outside lighting or a guard dog, your home likely has some sort of extra security in addition to the locks on your doors. Your LMS is no different and it’s important to keep security in mind. Think about the following when it comes to your LMS and its security:

• Cleanse your legacy data to keep compliant with data protection regulations, but ensure you’re not deleting information that you’re legally required to keep for longer periods of time. For example, under GDPR, you must remove data that you no longer need to store, and a normal timeframe for this is 2 years. However, you may need to evidence training data for longer periods than this, so it’s best to do your own research into how long it is safe to store personal data in your LMS.
• If you do need to keep data for longer periods of time, store that data and back it up safely in a password protected manner. Ensure that you’re not keeping people’s personal data as unprotected files on your local machine to make sure you stay compliant with GDPR and other laws surrounding data protection.
• Make sure your personal data is up to date, including updating names of employees and any information that is taken in from your HR systems, depending on the way you manage this data.
• Remove old logins and administrators who are no longer with the organisation.

4. Grow

As a family expands, you often need more space for it to grow into. The same is true for your LMS. As your organisation grows, the number of learners and their training needs grow too. Though many people might be tempted to move to a new home, at Nimble we pride ourselves on listening and working with our customers to give them the functionality they need to grow as their needs grow.

Consider the following when thinking about what your LMS needs to do for your organisation:

• Is your system easy enough for everyone to use, particularly those who may not be using it as part of their everyday job role?
• Do you need further training on the system, or have new people taken over the management of the LMS and need introductory training?
• Once you’ve got your compliance training covered, is there the potential to roll out soft skills training across your organisation, taking them to their next level of Learning and Development?

We hope these tips and pointers will help you think about how you can keep improving your LMS. We’ll be hard at work improving our Nimble LMS too!