There is almost and endless number of initial price models and ongoing costs for learning management systems. In the past, learning management systems were commonly acquired by paying an up-front license fee based on user numbers. In addition to this cost, there was an annual ‘maintenance’ fee of 15-20% of the initial license fee. This pricing model is now rare, replaced by the SaaS (software as a service) subscription model.
The SaaS model is now pervasive and learning management systems are predominantly ‘cloud’ based on servers within a data centre. In the SaaS pricing model, the subscription fees are usually based on user numbers and includes the hosting and ongoing maintenance costs in one monthly fee. You can check out our pricing for WorkPlan LMS here.
Once you have a subscription for an LMS, there are some ongoing costs that you need to consider as well. Whether there are ongoing costs or not depends on your requirements and the vendors service models under the subscription agreement. I will look at the most common ongoing costs.
Initial setup costs: If you are a large organisation, you can expect to have an implementation project to get your learning management system configured to meet your requirements. Our team has extensive experience with large implementation projects for large, complex organisations. It is common for implementation projects for large organisations to take some weeks or even months and the costs could range from a few thousand dollars to well over six figures (>$100k). Data migration from existing learning management systems usually takes some time. Contrast that to WorkPlan Learning LMS that can be implemented in a few hours to a couple of days for most small to medium organisations.
Initial training: Administrator training is essential for any learning management system implementation project. Depending on the complexity of the LMS, administrator training can range from a few hours to a few days. Initial administrator training is usually not included in the subscription price and usually charged as a daily rate. These daily rates vary from $800 to $1300 in Australia. In the past, we would often have training sessions for over 5 days with large enterprise level clients. Working with small to medium businesses, we typically deliver half-day or one full day training for administrators.
Ongoing LMS administration: For a small organisation with a small user population and simple learning requirements, a dedicated administrator is usually not needed. However, learning management systems require an administrator(s) that enjoys working with the software and dedicated to achieving the best results from using the LMS for organisation. Some of our clients use WorkPlan Learning LMS as a profit centre to sell online courses and programs. In this use case the administration demands are quite low. In larger organisations the demands on LMS administrators are greater. The number of administrators can range from one FTE to 4+ administrators in large complex organisations. There are many potential tasks in LMS administration, including user management, content uploads, reporting/analytics, user training/help, vendor liaison, enrolments, among others. The number of administrators you will require for your LMS will become more clear when you have a clearly identified and quantified list of system and business requirements. You can contact us at WorkPlan if you want to explore this further and get some idea of what administration costs will be for you.
System integration: Depending on the size of the organisation, there may be other systems that are used to manage and maintain workforce data. In some industries this can be very complex and in others less so. These other systems may include payroll, scheduling, workplace access, human resource information, among others. It is common for large organisations to require data sharing across this architecture. Integration costs vary depending on the systems involved and their capacity to facilitate integration. If this is a requirement for your learning management system, it is best to map the data you require with the relationships between the different software systems in your architecture.
Customisation: Many SaaS LMS vendors do not offer customisation of the software for specific clients. Most vendors try to offer as many options as possible in the ‘settings’ to tailor to current and future needs. However, learning management systems that have a unique installation for every client, may offer customisations as these can be limited to the specific client. This is a topic that should be included in a discussion with a prospective LMS vendor early in your selection process. Customisation will typically be charged at a daily rate for one or more members of the ‘technical team’ or as a project price for the completed work.
Help and support: There is usually no additional cost for help and support from your LMS vendor. There could be an exception if the vendor has a limit on the number of help desk jobs logged by each client. Most SaaS LMS vendors include help and support for the LMS administrators only. If help for end-users is sought, it is often charged as an additional cost to the subscription rate. When you are researching LMS vendors, you should check the ‘service level agreement’ to ascertain what support services are offered and the timeframe that these services are delivered. Some SaaS LMS vendors have different service levels for different levels of subscription, i.e. user numbers and feature sets.