3 Critical Questions To Ask A Learning Technology Vendor

• 4 min read

Win over IT leadership when building your business case for learning technology.

Understanding the many benefits that a modern learning platform can bring to your organization is easy. Presenting them to your executive team to gain executive buy-in? That’s a little more difficult.

To make your case successfully, there will be areas specific to each decision-maker along your journey that you’ll need to address. Among the list of decision-makers that you’ll need to check off that list include IT leadership, which can be particularly difficult.

Winning buy-in from IT leadership (e.g., CTO, Director of IT, etc.) can be especially challenging for L&D professionals who have a different set of KPIs and don’t regularly engage in techspeak. IT’s concerns lie within the technical infrastructure of the solution, including system maintenance, integrations, security, plus how it would cooperate with existing IT systems.

Here are 3 critical questions to ask to better prepare your learning technology business case.

1. Is It SaaS?

Most state-of-the-art learning platforms are Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions. This means the software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted via the cloud (as opposed to an on-premise solution).

In general, SaaS solutions are favorable for IT because they provide a way to offload the management of the software used by other departments, such as HRIS and CRM platforms.

There is also no need to deploy and support different platforms for the delivery of learning materials.

Learning content can be accessed anywhere with Internet, from multiple devices and operating systems.

SaaS solutions are often more cost-effective because they eliminate the need for:

  • Dealing with infrastructure provisioning.
  • Maintaining software updates.
  • Maintaining hardware configurations.
  • L2 and L3 support (this type of support is managed by the learning platform vendor)

2. What Integrations Does It Have?

Regardless of the learning technology solution you implement, it’s important to ensure that your SaaS learning platform vendor can support integrations. Otherwise, the benefits of the solution will be substantially diminished.

Make sure your vendor provides a variety of out-of-the-box integrations with your business ecosystem.

Your learning platform shouldn’t be a silo – it should be able to integrate with your core business platforms, including HR software, your CRM, social media, CMS, video conferencing tools, identity management, etc.

Make sure your vendor has a wide set of well-documented REST APIs to ensure the possibility of creating an integration with any proprietary information systems you may have in place.

Important integrations to consider:

API and SSO

This app lets you get access codes to recall the API from your learning platform and activate the single sign-on (SSO)

Elucidat

Combine your learning platform with Elucidat (e-learning authoring tool)

Google Drive

Integrate with Google Drive to seamlessly develop, deliver and track learning content packaged as Google Docs, Sheets and Slides.

Zendesk

Interface your learning platform with Zendesk, or any popular alternative.

Drupal

Interface your learning platform with your Drupal installation.

Salesforce

Get more out of both your learning platform and Salesforce by embedding learning in your Salesforce environment.

Shopify

Sell your learning courses online from your Shopify store.

WordPress

Interface your learning platform with your WordPress installation.

3. How Does it Address Compliance and Security?

Information security and data protection are paramount for organizations in this day and age. Ensure your vendor regularly undergoes independent verification of security, privacy, and compliance controls and has achieved certifications against global standards.

Docebo maintains an information security management system (ISMS) and within this framework, has defined a comprehensive information security program including a full set of controls implemented in accordance with ISO 27001 and AICPA SOC 2 managed by a dedicated security team. Docebo LMS is developed, maintained and operated through a Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and a Change Management process including the security by design principle and the highest security and quality standards. Docebo is fully compliant with GDPR.

The Next Steps

By asking these questions, you will arm yourself with the knowledge to gain the sought-after buy-in from IT leadership. But this is only the beginning. It’s also important to maintain transparency about next steps and their level of involvement.

The following list of best practices will help:

  1. Maintain open communication with IT.
  2. Avoid surprises and setbacks in the implementation process by ensuring transparency between your IT team and your chosen vendor.
  3. Ensure your vendor is ready to speak to your IT departments at multiple levels so that you can see if the vendor complies with your IT policies.

Examples of items you should discuss include:

  • Disaster recovery policy
  • Security policies
  • Architecture overview
  • Security certifications
  • Storage limitations
  • API rate limits
  • SSO options
  • User provisioning options

Want more insight into how to build your business case for a learning platform and gain the buy-in you need?

Get in touch with one of our experts