You’re keen to get going and your workers are enthusiastic about the prospect of a new e-learning solution, but what should you do first?

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1. Identify a need: This is the crucial first step and may sound obvious, but you need to consider how e-learning will benefit your business, so you need to identify the key business drivers. Will e-learning provide a measureable return on investment?

2. Clarify goals: Before you begin building anything, you need to clearly define the goals for the e-learning program. Getting this right will lend itself to step number two.

3. Define Scope: With your goals in place, you now need to define the scope of the project. What will it deliver? Ensure it stays on-track by carefully defining the scope so that it is in line with your organizational goals.

4. Consider partners: If appropriate, find partners internally or externally for developing the content, for the technical set-up and on-going support. This could include your own IT department or specialist e-learning providers.

5. Pick a platform: What mechanism will you use to deliver your e-learning? What tools will you rely upon to create your e-learning? These are critical questions that need to be answered up-front so that you can effectively estimate and manage the project budget.

6. Define a budget: Before going ahead, you must define the budget as this will determine the LMS specifications and help estimate the lifespan of the project for example. Remember to include a contingency for any unexpected costs.

7. Quality assurance: Throughout the entire project, and even after implementation, you need to have a means for quality assurance. This includes the building of courses, installing and running the LMS, future updates (technical and structural), among others.  You should have quality phase-gates built into the different phases of your project so that you maintain high program standards, remain in-scope and on budget.

8. Marketing strategy: The successful implementation of an e-learning strategy relies upon its marketing as well as the endorsement of management. The rollout needs to be managed to engage workers, so you may need to involve your marketing team to brand e-learning as a new exciting, fun way of learning.

9. Roll out: Bear in mind the system’s user capacity - you don’t want it crashing on day one as everyone rushes to use it. It may be best to test the system with a small number of users then roll it out to the organisation. Users can be invited by e-mail, enabling phased implementation, or alternatively you could make it available for everyone from the start.

10. Evaluation: Importantly that’s not the end, it’s critical that you constantly evaluate the e-learning to ensure it continues to deliver for the business as well as your workers.  You will need to define and monitor indicators to help you gauge the effectiveness of the e-learning implementation.