Getting an LMS? Be aware of the hidden costs
Have you got the LMS bill and it was more than you had anticipated? Sometimes organisations have this problem that they tend to ignore expenses associated with an LMS. Apart from the cost of the LMS and the monthly subscription fees, many factors are contributing to its cost. So, all elearning companies should alert their clients about such costs.
The company must know of unexpected costs of an LMS before buying it:
Installing the LMS
There is a signup fee associated with the LMS provider. Sometimes, it can be an upfront cost but others have the subscription fees charged monthly. Apart from the signup costs, there are also installation costs. There are LMS admins sent to your office by the elearning company so that the system can be installed on your local server. An elearning company can take care of that. Otherwise, the LMS has its cloud-based server and you don’t pay an installation charge.
Fee for every user
Other costs associated with an LMS include how many users can access it. A fee has to be paid for every user. Otherwise, a package includes a certain number of users.
Support for the LMS
LMS vendors ensure that their services are given over chat or telephone. But some LMS vendors come to your place and charge for each visit. Therefore, when you are getting an LMS, make sure what will be the repair charges for the LMS. This is a kind of figure that is to be included in the LMS budget every year. There can be miscellaneous expenses for LMS problems.
Updates to the LMS
An LMS also needs to be updated must maintain functionality. Some LMS vendors make sure updates are free. But some others, don’t have free updates. Most of the times, cloud-based LMS provide free updates in sync with modern technology whereas those updates are not free where LMS is located on your server. You should get an initial idea about the LMS upgrades so you don’t have to pay unexpected costs in the future.
Employee training
There is the training of the LMS required for employees also. It’s because every LMS is a different platform. Therefore, there should be the training of LMS provided by the eLearning companies. LMS vendors include the costs of such training in the cost of the LMS. A trained technician will make sure that the functionality of LMS is taught to your workers. But there can be charges paid for per hour of the technician. There can still be some hiccups faced by the Learning and Development team while using the software on the job.
Hence a company needs to know about such costs and get knowledge from its chosen one of the Elearning companies.