How To Choose the Best Learning Platform (For Your Goals) in 2025

Its decision time

Author

Ross Stevenson
May 6th, 2025

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 TODAY’S THOUGHTS ☠️

Hey there 👋,

We reach the pinnacle of our trilogy in the “navigating conference season and making smart tech buying decisions” series today.

Yes, it’s still a terrible makeshift title.

You can catch up on part one, where we covered what to do before you go hunting for new tech suppliers, and part two, where we covered the essential AI capability questions you must ask because everyone is “AI-focused” now.

Our last piece of the puzzle is choosing your perfect partner.

We’ll explore that today by unpacking how to assess your line-up of learning tech platform finalists, like those old 90s dating shows, to find your perfect match.

Get your tea or beverage of choice ready, 🍵.

We've got lots to discuss!

P.S. Your app might clip this edition due to size, if so, read the full edition in all its glory in your browser.

 IN THIS DROP 📔

  • Choosing the right tech supplier and platform for your context

  • Four checks that keep you from bad tech buys

  • Why audience-first design is non-negotiable in the AI era

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 THE BIG THOUGHT 👀

How To Choose the Best Learning Platform (For Your Context) in 2025

tyra banks love GIF by America's Got Talent

Let’s do it

A quick reminder, this is part 3 of my “navigating conference season and making smart tech purchases” series.

The goal of the series is to help you:

  1. Pick the right partners to explore

  2. Know how to assess the AI capabilities of tools and platforms with smart questions

  3. Make the best purchase for your organisation, team and goals

Technically, you can use all of this playbook series without attending a single conference this year. My mission is to make sure you spend your L&D tech budget on the right stuff, not more stuff.

Catch up on parts one and two to get the most from today’s edition.

System overload

In researching my 2022 conference 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 chasing shiny new things, when often we’d be better off stepping back and asking: What’s the right tool for the job?

Oh, and now we added AI to that mix.

So how do we narrow down what’s right for you?

How to decide what’s a match for your context

Before we get into the details, let’s back up to keep a few things in mind. I’m talking about the hard questions that create easy answers.

We covered most of this in part 1, but here’s a TL;DR to hold onto as we enter the final stage:

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 answers should serve as a guiding light throughout your buying process. So keep coming back to them if you lose your way.

Now, let’s 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 who to 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 (yet!). 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:

Get that ‘bingo’ of 4 ✅’s and you have a winner

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.

Analyse with AI

When you’ve answered these questions for each supplier, you can use AI to run 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.

Be like this guy

Final thoughts

And that, my friend, brings our trilogy to a close.

We’ve covered how to find real partners, not just providers. The AI capability questions you must ask and how to find your perfect match based on your context.

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.

→ If you’ve found this helpful, please consider sharing it wherever you hang out online, tag me in and share your thoughts.

Till next time, you stay classy, learning friend!

PS… If you’re enjoying the newsletter, will you take 4 seconds to forward this edition to a friend? It goes a long way in helping me grow the newsletter (and cut through our industry BS with actionable insights).

And one more thing, I’d love your input on how to make the newsletter even more useful for you!

So please leave a comment with:

  1. Ideas you’d like covered in future editions

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 👀 ICYMI (In case you missed it!)

  1. The AI Tutors are coming, and they’ll predict academic performance too. New Research from Stanford on how AI is reshaping the education experience.

  2. What happens when two guys called Ross and another guy with a PHD chat about critical thinking with AI and how you can use a sausage to operate your phone screen? Find out in this discussion with the MindTools team

  3. The question I’m asked everyday and (probably) the answer you don't want to hear.

  4. Microsoft drops its new people skills feature and skills AI agent to index all of your organisation’s skills intelligence.

 VIDEO THOUGHTS 💾

I Tried 7Taps New AI Copilot for Learning

The smart folks at 7Taps (and today’s NL sponsor) gave me access to their new AI copilot a few months ago.

I’ve used the 7Taps platform since 2019, and the team is always doing something unique. So when they asked me to check out how they’re thoughtfully implementing AI in their tech, I had to try it.

In this video, I unpack the new feature and explain why it reinforced my belief that audience-first design is non-negotiable in this AI era.

Enjoy!

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