Presented by Small Business Victoria, the festival is expected to reach 42,000 people this year with both online and physical events.

Software Shortlist is proud to be participating as an event host at Energise Enterprise this year. We’ll be offering the following two webinars aimed at helping firms choose the right software:

1. How to Choose the Right Software for Your Business:  Learn a practical methodology to select software effectively, including case studies of how it can be applied.
2. Software for Your Professional Services Firm: Be inspired by the potential of web-based software including timesheets, email marketing, CRM, and accounting solutions to improve your services firm.

If you’re interested in attending, please book through the Business Victoria website on the links above. Please note there are only 50 places available at each webinar so get in early to make sure you don’t miss out.

Defining what LMS means

Our Definition of Learning Management System

A learning management system (LMS) is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, and reporting of training programs, classroom and online events, e-learning programs, and training content. This software is primarily focused on the administration aspects of training such as user registration, learning resource scheduling, and learner performance analyzing and reporting. Learning Management Systems also typically house the learning content such as videos, presentations, worksheets, instructions, scenarios, and other activities. Learning Management Systems can be used to facilitate technology-based training, instructor-led training, or any hybrid or combination thereof.

What is not in our definition of Learning Management Systems?

Learning management is not an enterprise knowledge system, help documentation authoring tool, or video screen capture tool; although it can usually be integrated with and supported by other such tools. Typically, course developers develop learning materials and content outside of the learning management system with separate tools and then upload materials into the LMS for management, administration, and access by stakeholders.

Choosing the List of LMS Solutions to Review

Our expert reviewer Stephanie has conducted her own initial screen and identified 19 that she believes are worth progressing to the full review stage. So we’d like to get your input to help us make the final selection. Below is the medium list of 19 LMS solutions: if you believe strongly that any particular ones should be included in the final review list, now’s your chance to say so. Also, if there are any that should be on this list (in your opinion) and aren’t there … speak up now!

Full List of LMS

See our Learning Management Software Directory for the full list of solutions that have been considered for review. If others should be added, let us know.

Draft List

The draft list of LMS solutions being considered for full review is as follows:

Have Your Say

Please note that the final decision on which solutions are reviewed will be made by Stephanie. This is not a popularity contest as such, but rather a chance for some community input to guide her decision-making. Well reasoned comments are more likely to influence than simple assertions that “X is best”.  Quality remarks will outweigh  quantity.

Add a comment below if you have a view on which LMS should be included in the reviews.

For the sake of clarity, by independent information we mean that it is not from the vendor or reseller (e.g. whitepapers, website, etc) but instead from a relatively unbiased source such as a trusted blog, review site, magazine, etc.

Take a few seconds, think back to the last time you bought software (or thought about buying some) for your business, and then answer the following quick poll.

A few key questions to consider when looking at software reviews are:

• Is it an unbiased judgement or simply an “advertorial” promotion?
• How qualified is the reviewer? Do they understand both business & technology?
• Did they use a systematic process, or just rely on gut feel?

Here at Software Shortlist, we pride ourselves on delivering high quality, reliable, independent reviews of software for small business.  So, we’ve put the hard word on ourselves and published a clear software review policy that addresses many of the questions and concerns that people typically raise when looking at software reviews.

As you’ll see from the policy, Software Shortlist’s software reviews are:

• Unbiased, editorially independent reviews
• Conducted by qualified experts who also understand small business
• Based on a rigorous and systematic approach

We hope that by publishing this policy, we answer most of the  questions you have about our software reviews. But if we’ve missed something, or you’d like to clarify anything about our review process, please contact us.  And if you think you’ve got what it takes to review a new software category, we’re always on the look out for the right people, so let’s talk.

After reviewing the completed entries, our judges have awarded the prizes to J.Sutton and P.Rountree. Congratulations to you both! You should already have received an email from us with your complimentary copies of the Email Marketing Review Packs (valued at US$149).

For those of you who missed out on winning this time, keep an eye out for our future survey contests or simply go buy yourself a copy of the review pack. You won’t regret it!

SoftwareShortlist.com is currently looking for alliance partners to help expand our unique service. Here’s the low down on how this may work for you…

• You get certified in software selection advice, extending your services capabilities for SMB customers.
• You get access to our proprietary methodology, patented tools and online products/resources to assist customers in selecting software.
• You get a service provider profile on the SoftwareShortlist.com website to get to new customers that you can service.
• Finally, you become a reseller for all of Software Shorlist’s online products. Earn commissions as you provide services.
• … and you earn more revenue by simply extending your offerings to existing and new SMB customers!

Sounds like an intriguing opportunity, don’t you think?

Of course, there are a few characteristics we are looking for in suitable candidates:

• Independent – you are not strongly aligned to a particular product or vendor and can keep an open mind in looking for appropriate software solutions
• Credible – you have a good reputation in your space, and your judgement and opinions would be trusted by those looking for software
• Capable – you have the capabilities to extend your services to advise customers on software selection

Interested companies and individuals are invited to review more details of our Certified Consultant Membership plan on our website. You may sign up directly or get in touch with us by emailing any questions to: partners@softwareshortlist.com.

We’ve just had our expert reviewers look at 19 leading web-based email marketing systems, and give us their judgement on each. But we’d like to extend this by finding out what YOU think about your email marketing software. Once we get enough responses, we’ll build this customer feedback into our email marketing review pack as additional information to help people make the right buying decision.

So, we’re running a short survey on email marketing software to collect your feedback. And to make it worth your while, there are two free review packs (valued at US$149 each) up for grabs. Simply complete the survey by the end of March and you’re in the running. Plus you’ll have the nice glowing feeling that comes from helping another business make the right choice (or avoid the wrong one!)

Take the survey now…

Launched recently, the Email Marketing Software Review Pack contains independent reviews of 19 leading web-based email marketing systems. Taking the perspective of a small to mid-sized business, the reviews are designed to give you the hard facts and opinions that you need to cut through the marketing spiel and reach an informed decision. Here’s what a couple of customers have to say so far:

“This report is awesome. It’s comprehensive and concise at the same time.”  (Yoel, Paralert.com)

“Excellent service and analysis. We are actually searching for a eDM system and this report has now made that easy.”  (David, Leadmaster.com.au)

One of the most popular elements of the Email Marketing Software Review Pack is the convenient feature matrix. Here we  looked in detail at 39 key features that are critical for email marketing and identified which of the 19 products offer each feature.  As one reader explained:

“I really like the matrix of product features because it is very easy to identify things that I know I need and confirm or not whether a package provides them. It also triggered some thoughts about features that I hadn’t considered and maybe I should.”  (Yoel, Paralert.com)

Also in the report, you’ll find plenty of information on each email marketing system. We’ve given each product we reviewed a full page and ensured it is in a consistent format so you can easily flip between pages and compare products. Information on each product includes:

• Written review about what our independent reviewer liked and didn’t like
• Overall star rating
• Ratings on ten key dimensions, such as ‘ease of use’, ‘powerful reporting’, ‘grows with your business’, etc
• Pricing information (with actual prices cited for all products)
• Vendor contact details

Interestingly, we’re finding that software vendors are buying the report for competitive intelligence reasons. They aren’t our primary  audience – we focus instead on SMBs looking to buy software – but it is encouraging that they see the value of an independent perspective on how they and their competitors compare.

To find out more about the review pack, or to buy yourself a copy, visit the Email Marketing Software Review Pack page on our website.

Yes, you heard right. The higher the rating, the lower the price …even though price was just one of ten factors we considered. See the graph below for a summary of average price by star rating for the solutions reviewed.

This finding is great news for small and mid-sized businesses who want to get started with (or ramp up) their permission-based email marketing. You can rest assured that there are great solutions out there at a very affordable price. However, it also means you need to choose carefully as price, functionality & usability vary considerably.

For example, looking at the scenario of a business sending 5000 emails per month to a list of 2500 subscribers, the products given five-star ratings cost an average of $31 per month, compared to over $166 per month for the two-star products. The most expensive solution in our list cost a remarkable 17 times more than the most affordable, but was actually much less useful. Ouch!

Launch of our Email Marketing Software Review Pack

The findings above are based on the reviews in our new Email Marketing Software Review Pack, which we’re pleased to officially launch today.

This comprehensive 33 page report contains detailed independent reviews of 19 leading web-based email marketing solutions, including AWeber, Benchmark, Campaign Monitor, Campaigner, Constant Contact, Email Brain, Ennect Mail, GetResponse, GraphicMail, iContact, inwise, JangoMail, MailChimp, newzapp, Savicom, SimplyCast, Streamsend, Vertical Response, and Vision 6.

Buy the Review Pack

You can purchase the Review Pack on Software Shortlist and download the report immediately.

Win a Review Pack!

To celebrate the launch of the Review Pack, we will be giving away 2 free copies.

For your chance to win, simply complete our email marketing software survey, including the final question about the challenges you’ve faced in choosing email marketing software and why you want to win the Review Pack.  We’ll choose two (2) winners based on how interesting & insightful your answers are. Entries close 31st March 2010. For full terms & conditions, see the survey.

Enter now!

Previous Winner: Congratulations to David M. from Australia. He completed our February survey about email marketing software and his answer was judged to be the best by Software Shortlist staff. David will be receiving his free copy of the Email Marketing Software Review Pack today.