LMS Reporting | Tips to ask LMS vendors

When it comes to learning management, one of the biggest concerns is reliable and flexible reporting. LMS platforms typically come with a set list of reporting capabilities and “flexibility” within parameters. Sometimes these parameters don’t allow you to build reports the way you want to.  

For example, in your current LMS one report might be able to deliver 80% of what you need, and then another report can deliver the remaining 20%. And it's up to you and your team to manually bridge the gap. You put the two files in an excel sheet and after some finagling you have all the data you need reflected in one place. This process “works,” but it's not great. It’s just the way things have been forever and it’s good enough to get the job done. But let’s be honest, it is tedious, time consuming and there are inevitable human errors. And in truth, your LMS should be doing this work for you.  

Your LMS is a reporting tool.

Your LMS is a tool to help manage your learners and learning data. It shouldn’t be up to the LMS what and how information gets tracked.  It is your employees and your data. Therefore, it should make sense to you. What is deemed relevant can vary from organization to organization. This is where LMS decision makers get confused during the buying process.  

Pro-tip: Be sure to understand what metrics you would like to report on and see if your LMS has those capabilities. If it doesn’t, don’t be afraid to keep shopping around. No two platforms are created equal!

Create any report you need.

For most learning technologies, building out standard reports is simple, some of the most common are course completion, assessment results, attendance tracking etc. But do you have the flexibility to create your own reports outside of these? Building reports to track certification progress and compliance is a common topic we get asked. Especially since Learnsoft works with highly regulated industries, timely compliance reports are crucial. Your LMS needs to be able to deliver accurate reports any time you need them. As it is related to accuracy, you also want to be able to get “in the weeds” of your data and be able to tell a story that reflects your organization and its’ employees. You can do this using filters.  

Pro-tip: Ask LMS providers how often reports can be ran (weekly, daily, hourly, etc.)

Filter and sort your LMS reports.

Your organization is may have unique requirements and need to segment data based on these variables; location, job class, employee tenure or any other demographic. These variables act as layers in the data and depending how granular you want to get, you can use the data to tell stories about your productivity, retention, engagement, compliance, and more. But this only works if the data can be cleaned up and easily interpreted.  

Pro-tip: Be sure to ask specific questions that pertain to your use case.  ‍

• Can you create your own filters and customizations?  

• Can you apply more than one filter to the data set?

LMS reporting made easy

Any way you want to dice it, your data is your data. Learnsoft makes reporting easy by delivering your data and then getting out of the way. Want to see if Learnsoft’s reporting features measure up to your organization’s needs?