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Outsourcing LMS Administration

  • PHIL SPOKES
Blog Post: Outsourcing

More organisations are outsourcing support services than ever before, but how do you decide if it’s beneficial to your organisation? Before we look at some of the key areas of outsourcing LMS administration, ask yourself the following questions:

  • How much support will your users need?
  • How critical is the learning and/or service provided?
  • When will users need support?
 

If the answer to the above is “not much”, “not very” and “during working hours only”, then you may be able to incorporate LMS admin into an existing role. If, however, the users need more support, the learning/service level is important and/or users will need support outside of normal working hours, then you will likely need a dedicated resource. So, should that be a new member of staff or an outsourced third party? Below are some things for you to consider when making the decision.

Costs:

Before making any decision in your organisation, you should do a cost-benefit analysis.

  • Establish your requirements. When do you need support to be available? How quickly do you want issues resolved? How much budget do you have?
  • Calculate how much you would spend on recruiting and/or training staff to manage your LMS. Look at similar jobs to get an indication of the current market. We have seen LMS admin roles advertised for anywhere between £18-35k, which will largely depend on the specific requirements of the role, as well as the location. Don’t forget – even if you think you only need one person, you will still need to factor in holiday/sick cover so you will need at least two people trained up.
  • Get quotes from LMS outsourcing companies. It may not be as expensive as you think, and many will offer flexible pricing plans to suit your requirements.

TIME:

LMS administration and support can be sporadic and disruptive to other day-to-day tasks. A single query can throw your whole day, especially if you aren’t experienced in all the potential issues that could come about. Consider whether your in-house LMS administrator will have other responsibilities too? If they do, how critical are they? Meeting deadlines and service delivery agreements can be stressful, especially if it is all placed on an individual’s head.

If you foresee some of these issues, then outsourcing can help by reducing disruptions and taking pressure off your team.

Quick, Quality Support:

Mastering all areas of LMS support and administration can take months, or even years to learn. If you need to be able to provide a quality service quickly then outsourcing could be a good option, even if it is temporary. You will bring immediate knowledge of systems and experience of dealing with a variety of queries and issues and you can take it over in your own time if you choose, usually with support and guidance from the outsourced company!

FLEXIBILITY:

What do you do if your LMS project takes off a lot quicker than you anticipated, or if it isn’t adopted as well as you’d hope? Reassigning resources is another job you could do without. If you already have a large, flexible team, then it might be easy for you to flex. If not then outsourcing could help you scale up and down, quickly and easily.

Another consideration is around the support hours. Do you have the capability to cover LMS queries/issues during out of hours periods?

RISK:

Recruiting staff can be a big gamble, as can investing time and money into recruiting training staff in-house. If the longevity of your LMS project is in doubt, or if you have concerns with recruiting/training, outsourcing can be a low-risk option. Unlike with in-house staff, you can cancel outsourcing contracts quickly and easily if you need to.

If you’re interested in finding out more about outsourcing your LMS administration, drop us a line. Spokes Education offer flexible pricing plans which can be based on any of the following models to ensure you get the best value for money:

  • Fixed price
  • Active user price
  • Pay-as-you-go

We take great pride in providing a quick and effective service. We recently analysed our response times for an existing client and our average resolution time was 35.4 minutes!

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