Lecot – How to choose your LMS trajectory and LMS365 implementation 

Lecot stands for logistics, expertise, comfort, omnichannel and tradition. It is a national player in the distribution of hardware, fasteners, construction fittings, tools and personal protective equipment.

The company exists already more than 130 years and is active in Belgium and the Netherlands. In 2018 the company decided to take a more digital approach in learning and started their search for a suitable learning management system (LMS).

Initially, the LMS will provide training for the employees of Lecot. Since Lecot has employees with different native languages (Dutch/French), the LMS should be able to provide both languages in the same platform.

Why did Lecot call on The Learning Hub?

In 2018 Lecot first came to The Learning Hub for guidance in their search for a learning management solution. With this LMS, Lecot wanted to make their current content available to their employees on a single, easy to use, platform. After selecting their preferred vendor, LMS365, Lecot asked The Learning Hub to implement the LMS solution. 

How did we do this?

In our ‘How to choose your LMS’-workshops, we immersed Lecot in the L&D world to give them some helpful insights for choosing the right LMS. Furthermore, we analyzed their needs in depth to make sure all the requirements for the LMS became clear. Some of the most important requirements were:

  • Customizable portal available in Dutch and French
  • Dutch support
  • Link with Active Directory (AD) and Microsoft products
  • An appealing trainings dashboard where employees can follow up on their trainings

The Learning Hub took all these requirements into consideration, delivered an RFI and presented a short list of vendors that would possibly fit their needs.

At the end, Lecot selected LMS365 as their preferred LMS solution. They called on The Learning Hub (as an official partner of LMS365) for support with the implementation and configuration of the portal.

As usual, we started the implementation with a kick-off. The first part of the day consisted of an analysis workshop during which we got to know the desired configuration settings. Once these settings were clear, our technical colleague from IW (another Cronos company) started the technical installation in cooperation with Lecot’s IT colleague. The second part of the day was already designated for LMS configuration. Side by side, Lecot and The Learning Hub started the implementation process. With our guidance, Lecot’s L&D responsible started configuring the platform. An initial home page was created, the first courses were added to the portal and a personal certificate included. At the end of the day, the first prototype of their own LMS, Lecot Learning, was ready.

After this first day on site, we finished the other requested configurations remotely during the next weeks. In the meantime, Lecot was already testing some functionalities and adding new courses to get more familiar with the platform. Any questions that arose were answered through our communication channel in our project tool ‘Wrike’. We organized a follow-up meeting to discuss the final configuration and their remaining questions.

The greatest challenge for Lecot was the use of multiple languages. The platform and the courses needed to be available for all the employees in both languages. To fulfill this need, we made a different homepage for each language. Each employee can choose his preferred homepage by selecting the desired language on their Sharepoint site.

The result

After the first kick-off day (on site), Lecot was able to start adding courses to their own LMS. While we were finishing the remaining configuration tasks, the L&D manager of Lecot was already exploring their LMS.

In June 2020 the first course of Lecot went live with some support of The Learning Hub. After this course and some extra testing, Lecot was ready for managing all their future courses in LMS365. Two years later, more than 120 courses were added, which resulted in total of 2900 course enrolments.

    The Learning Hub provided us the guidance and support we needed to start our journey in providing courses, on one single platform, for our employees.

    Cindy Maes

    Learning & Development Specialist (HR), Lecot