SkillGate Public Service Courses

SkillGate has recently completed an LMS survey of 1051 organisations in the UK. Organisations were selected on the basis that we believe they have more than 150 staff. Here is an extract of some key findings:

'Do you have an LMS?'  

There were 558 replies to this. Of these 482 said Yes. 76 said No.  34 claimed they had built their own systems in-house. 

'Which LMS vendor do you use?'

284 were prepared to divulge the name of their LMS supplier. (Practically none divulged more than one name). Of the 284 who replied approximately 70 (24%) were government  '.gov' bodies.

109 different LMS vendors were identified by respondents. On average each LMS vendor in our survey (outside the top 5) had an average of only 1.7% of the market. The top 5 vendors accounted for 41% of the responses:

• Virtual College
• Moodle
• SkillGate
• Litmos
• Learning Pool

Comment:

It could be that the market for LMS systems is quite saturated.  87% (7 out of 8) of respondents in our survey said they had an LMS. It seems very rare for an organisation to have more than one LMS. Only 1 in 8 claimed not to have an LMS.

109 different LMS systems were identified. (Note www.elearninglist.com identifies 332 systems and other estimates suggest there are over 1,000 worldwide). So there are clearly plenty to choose from.

LMSs are advanced IT systems, the technicality and sheer number available make them difficult to compare. Evaluating 109 different system must be pretty well impossible for buyers. Furthermore, organisations don't run more than one at a time. So once an organisation has got one, it seems likely that it is very difficult to make a change - even if they could work out how good the alternatives are.

There are three issues that can be overlooked that we suggest companies look for:

• Service quality – make sure that you will not be pulling your hair out in a few weeks due to slow or expensive service. Ensure service quality is defined, priced, measured and delivered and (ideally) not from a foreign country as time differences can affect response times.
• Look for an organisation with a long track record - with thousands of LMSs on the market, the cost of entry for new LMS vendors is clearly not high. New entrants may offer the latest technology today but will they gain enough market share to sustain it tomorrow?
• Examine in detail how easily (and at what cost) you will be able to extract all your data and how you can transfer it to another vendor should you wish to.