A Practical Guide to Choosing the Best Learning Tech For Business

Don’t you love buying new stuff?

I do, especially when it comes to new tech. Around this time every year, I find myself doing a strange dance with Apple’s newest iPhone. It’s new, has shiny colours, and has attractive buttons – I have no clue what they do, but I want them!

The problem is there’s a difference between a want and a need.

And I may want…but I do not need it.

This happens inside companies too.

In research for my 2022 talk “How to stop buying bloated learning tech”, I discovered that the average company provides over 88 different workplace tools for employees. A crazy stat, I know.

If you think about it, it’s not really that staggering in today’s environment.

I’ve worked with large organisations with 20+ LMS/LXPs and tiny organisations with nothing but a Google doc.

We’re in a confusing land of boundless technology and pressure from market expectations. We lose our way with acquiring shiny new things when we would do well to step back and figure out what’s the right tool for the job.

I want to help you get unstuck from this.

After a decade-plus dealing with vendors, L&D teams and senior leaders (I’m looking at you CFOs). I’ve picked up a few useful tools to navigate the buying process without losing my sanity.

I hope these serve you well.

📌 Key insights

• Before buying, clearly understand the problem you’re solving and who it benefits.
• Use a simple process to evaluate tech options (see framework below).
• Always ‘try before you buy’ with a pilot if possible.
• Choose tools that genuinely meet your needs, and resist the temptations!

Hard questions, easy decisions

An easy win in your journey before you even embark on the “let’s buy this new thing”, is to answer these 3 questions:

1️⃣ What are you solving?

2️⃣ Who are you serving?

3️⃣ What is the best tool for that job?

While they seem simple, that doesn’t mean they’re easy to answer.

Your response to these should be treated as a guiding light throughout your buying process. So keep going back to these if you get off-track.

On top of this, I’ve previously shared my “Ultimate Guide To Buying New Learning Technology Checklist”. It’s a meaty one which walks through the process I used with a 30,000-plus sized business.

The key takeaways are to figure out if you really need anything new and pick partners, not providers. Read the whole thing to learn from my wins and avoid my failures.

How to find the right tool for you 

The process of acquiring new tech goes through a pre, during and post-cycle.

Everything I shared above covers the ‘pre’ phase. So before you eyeball the below, run through those to set yourself up for success (I still can’t shake that term from my corpo days).

Now, we’ll cover what to do in the assessment stage.

You’ve spoken to a few providers and seen some demos here. Things are getting a little bit more serious, and you need a framework to help you decide who to continue dating or ditch.

My Zero-Cost Assessment Framework

Ok, here’s what I do during the dating game of “Who will be our new learning tool?”.

I’m still waiting for Netflix to get back to me on the show concept, btw.

This framework stops me from making bad decisions. We all make bad dating decisions, so don’t be hard on yourself. You’ll note the framework pulls from what we spoke about in the ‘pre’ phase. That’s why you should cover that before scrolling any further.

To assess our options, I create a spreadsheet.

Yes, you read that correctly. I don’t use AI because I don’t need to. However, you can introduce it into the later stage of this for some ‘devil’s advocate’ perspectives.

Right, our spreadsheet (or table) looks like this:

Now, all you have to do is provide the answers for each supplier for a bit of competitive analysis.

Before we get to that, let’s unpack these 4 stages in a bit more detail:

1. Research: This throws back to our ‘pre-analysis’. Does the tool and supplier help you solve the problem? Make sure it aligns.
   
   
2. Assess: Does it differ from the tools you have? Here I find it useful to ponder if it’s a product or a feature, meaning are you buying something that one of your existing tools might add on? You want a unique product, not a copy of something you already have with a different look.
   
   
3. Connection: Not enough teams consider interoperability between tech. Will the new tool connect with your existing stack to share data? How so, SSO etc, and what APIs are available out of the box? No good having a shiny new toy that won’t play with anyone else. This is where teams get burned most.
   
   
4. Test: When I became a head of L&D, my firm rule with new tech was “Unless we can test it, we don’t buy it”. Looking at staged demos and a few client stories isn’t enough. You need to get hands-on. The best companies will do this for you.
   
   Anything from 4 weeks – 3 months is perfect.
   
   You don’t want to be that person who signs off on a multi-year contract on the promise of a product demo. I’ve been there, it sucks and procurement calls for contract breaks are not delightful.

Save yourself, friend.

Analyse with AI

When you’ve answered these questions for each supplier, you can use AI to do a competitive analysis.

You don’t have to, but I feel like I’m committing a cardinal sin if I don’t mention it.

Upload your document to your LLM of choice, and ask:

• “Give me a competitive analysis of the suppliers in this document. Provide a high-level summary of no more than 100 words. I want a clear outcome and your reasons why you chose a particular supplier as the best option”
  
  
• “Let’s play devil’s advocate with this analysis. What could I be missing? What haven’t I asked or considered as part of this process”
  
  
• “What might be the unexpected and unintended consequences on our current tech stack for users if we introduce this tool? (Note: You will need to provide the context on your tech stack)”
  
  
• “Rank every tool in order of suitability and provide in-depth reasons as to why you ranked in this order based on my requirements”
  
  
• “Create an exec summary of the most suitable tool that I can share with my CPO and CFO.” Power up this prompt by providing an example of what a good summary looks like, and the key points to cover.

I think you get my drift.

AI can be a useful thought partner when you have structured data.

Don’t be seduced by market expectations

It’s easy to be starstruck by technology.

It feels smarter to buy the new thing, instead of fixing the old one. We currently live in an age where AI is often treated like the second coming of the tech gods. I’m pitched at least 3 new tools a day in my DMs.

But let’s not forget that any tool, no matter how advanced, is only as good as the problem it solves.

Read that line again. Let it sink in.

On your journey, you will find lots of tools that want to date you. So, always keep in mind the problem you’re solving.

Final thoughts

Ok, we’ve covered the dating game of L&D tech.

A little time, research and reflection can save you from a dreadful relationship. Try these frameworks out, and let me know how you get on.

Before you go… 👋

If you like my writing and think “Hey, I’d like to hear more of what this guy has to say” then you’re in luck.

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