How to Choose the Right Learning Management System for a Growing Business

As your business expands, you enter an exciting and stressful period. Regardless of how big your team is, there will come a time when you find a skills gap that needs to be filled. Sometimes the fix is to hire for these skills, but upskilling your existing team has a list of benefits, too.

According to the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, 85% of employers expect to prioritise upskilling their workforce between 2025 and 2030. So the best strategy for you is to stay ahead of the curve and offer this to your own employees. 

One way to do this is to sign up for and buy courses offered on platforms. But this can be messy, hard to manage, and not always offer the desired effects on your team. An owned Learning Management System (LMS) gives you more control over your employee training and provides a single platform where you can keep track of where and how your team is learning. 

If this is the next step in your business plan, we have a few tips on how to select the ideal LMS for your business, your team, and your budget. 

Define your LMS needs

Before you start comparing providers, you should have a good idea of what you need from your LMS. Without that understanding, it’s easy to get distracted by the shiny features and impressive claims that may not actually solve a real problem in your business. 

Start by looking at how you currently manage learning. Are new employees given a structured onboarding program, or do they receive a collection of random documents and links?

Are managers aware of what training their teams have completed? Do employees have a clear roadmap to progression in their roles?

Answering these questions will help you figure out what your main priorities are, and from there you can find the LMS that fits those needs. 

Features to look for

Here are a few features to look for and compare against in your provider list. 

• Course and content management should be high on the list. You need to be able to upload, organize, update, and assign different types of learning content without creating any unnecessary work for your team. 

• Automated assignments can make a huge difference as your workforce grows. If your LMS lets you assign training based on your employees’ roles, departments, location, etc., it can make the process a lot more personalized. Automated reminders are also handy, helping employees remember to complete their learning. 

• How the LMS handles reporting and analytics is equally important. Completion rates are useful, but ideally you also want to be able to identify any overdue courses, compare teams, and understand where employees need additional development. 

• Another important consideration is learner experience. If your employees battle to navigate the platform, they’re not going to get the most out of the courses offered to them. You should see the employee-facing side of the LMS as well as the admin dashboard, to make sure it’s a smooth process for everyone involved.

• Last but not least, integrations should be on your checklist. Having your LMS work seamlessly with your HR platform, communication software, and reporting tools can help reduce duplicate data entry and make it easier to keep all employee information up to date. 

Compare your options

There’s no shortage of LMS options out there, so don’t start by finding every single one available. Instead, use your feature checklist and platform reviews to create a shortlist to compare and choose from. 

If you’re a bit too overwhelmed, here are some of the best enterprise LMS platforms that you can start with:

• Kallidus offers a broad LMS designed to support learning, compliance, skills development, performance, and reporting. Its Learn LMS supports automated assignments, CPD, instructor-led training, and system integration. It’s a good choice for a company wanting to bring multiple parts of employee development into one platform. 

• Cornerstone provides tools for learning, skills development, talent management, and workforce development. It’s designed for larger organizations, with more complex employee training and development requirements. 

• Docebo is focused on delivering and managing learning across different audiences. It handles employee training well, but supports customer, partner, and extended-enterprise learning. 

Decide how much of your learning you want to build in-house

Building your own courses means you have full control over the content in them and how the information is delivered. But there might be times when it makes more sense to buy an existing course, saving your team time and money. 

You have to decide:

• Are you building everything internally?

• Do you plan on bringing external courses in, but need reporting to happen on your platform?

• Or will there be a mix of internal and external training offered?

With that answered, you can then find out from your list of LMS providers if they can handle the demand, what each option would cost you, and what it would look like. If the LMS can handle an internal and external mix, but they charge extra for third-party content or limit which providers you can use, that would affect your decision. 

Set a realistic budget

The cost of the LMS is just one part of your budget. You should also be adding in the costs of creating, managing, and updating the learning content.

So first, find out what each provider on your list charges. Do they charge per learner? Are there limits to features based on how much you pay? Is there a once-off fee or a yearly cost?

Keep in mind that if a provider has different tiers, you might fit into the lower tier now, but need a higher one in the future. Does that fit into future budget plans? And of course, look at any extra things that they might charge separately for.

Then work out the cost of creating or buying the courses you’re adding to the platform. This includes editing, any subject matter experts you might need to bring in, and the time it will take from each person working on the content. 

There’s also the time to learn the platform itself, so if one LMS has better onboarding, and free support, this can really be in their favor when it comes to being budget-friendly. 

Test before you commit

You wouldn’t buy a car before taking it for a test run, so treat your LMS the same way. Ask for a demo from your shortlisted providers, and see how much they can offer you before you sign up. 

Get them to walk you through the features you’re most interested in and how they would be implemented for your team. If you want to combine internal and external training, ask them to show you exactly how that would work. If reporting is a priority, ask to see the reports your managers would actually use.

Get your managers and other decision makers involved, too. They may have different priorities from the person managing the LMS day to day, and getting their input early can help you spot problems before you've committed to a platform.

If possible, ask whether you can access a trial or test environment. Give a few potential users a chance to navigate the platform and complete a course. You'll quickly find out whether the LMS is as easy to use in practice as it looks in a sales demo.

Finding an LMS that can grow with your business 

Perhaps the most important note in comparing and choosing an LMS is to not only think of what your business needs today. Think about what you will need when you reach double the number of employees, or have five new departments. Or how you’d add training when new roles are needed in your team. 

Whichever LMS you end up with should be a long-term commitment. Something that is able to set your team up for success, and not let you down in the moments you need it the most. 

So take the time to work out what you actually need before you start comparing providers. And then don’t be scared to ask the hard questions and put them to the test. You'll have a much clearer idea of what to look for, what to ask, and which LMS makes the most sense for your business.