SumTotal Delivers Industry's Only Unified Talent Development Suite
Unique new suite brings together best-in-class learning, performance, content, and mobile capabilities
Mountain View, CA – June 2, 2008 – SumTotal® Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUMT), the market leader and global provider of talent development solutions, today announced the 8.0 release of the SumTotal Talent Development Suite , bringing a unified approach to the critical components needed to successfully address businesses’ Talent Development challenges. From easy-to-use self-service user portals and informal learning to rich content creation and content management to industry-leading learning and performance management, the SumTotal Talent Development Suite combines the power of best-in-class applications with the simplicity of a single solution.
“We are proud to be the first company offering a complete, unified solution for Talent Development that provides all the critical components to help companies leverage the talent strategically within their organization,” said Don Fowler, chief executive of SumTotal. “SumTotal has brought together a powerful, yet simple solution so that organizations no longer have to compromise on capability, scalability, deployment methods or ease-of-use. Organizations can now focus on developing their talent and employees at all levels without having to cobble together point solutions.”
New Unified Suite Harnesses the Power of Talent Development
With the benefit of over 20 years of experience and best practices across industries, SumTotal 8.0 puts best-in-class capabilities in the hands of managers, employees, and administrators. It allows organizations to tailor their talent solutions to drive their unique business needs, instead of having to tailor their business needs and processes to fit their talent solutions. Supported by SumTotal’s innovative Anytime, Anywhere Access capabilities and a unique integration framework, the SumTotal Talent Development Suite provides the power to automate the most complex processes, the simple interface for users and administrators to start now, and the luxury of not having to compromise one for the other.
SumTotal 8.0 will introduce a number of new features including:
Self-service user portals, including a unified dashboard, task-oriented home page, drill-down reporting, giving power at the users’ fingertips, increased ease of use and ability to start anywhere.
Informal learning management, using collaboration, ready-access to experts, global search of informal content, communities-of-practice and affinity groups, and offline access.
Rich content creation and management with content deployment to mobile devices and deep OLSA integration for auto-population and deep search of SkillSoft learning catalogs
Industry leading learning and performance management including unique assignment, workflow, and activity architecture that adapt to specific business needs and comparative calibration and ratings for easier, faster and richer performance assessments
“Sum Total has noted the pain points their customers experience and report, and provided new system functionality to meet business and end-users needs,” says Donna Nelson, manager, learning management system, from APL Limited. “The new features, such as the assignment by audience, the out of the box integrations, professional look/feel, and reporting functionality are very important and useful enhancements.”
“With 8.0, SumTotal has unified a complete talent development solution that simplifies and enhances the process of ensuring organizations have a steady supply of talent,” said Josh Bersin, president of Bersin & Associates, an independent research firm. “This release helps organizations easily bring together components from a variety of sources to build a rich talent profile for all users, while also providing the tools and workflows to drive the development of those users. With innovations in informal learning, mobile delivery, content search, and user experience, SumTotal provides a solution to companies who are trying to solve imminent business problems without having to compromise on capability or usability.”
About SumTotal Systems, Inc.
SumTotal Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUMT) the market leader and global provider of talent development solutions. SumTotal deploys mission-critical solutions designed to drive learning, align goals, develop skills, assess performance, plan for succession and set compensation. SumTotal’s solutions aim to accelerate performance and profits for more than 1,500 companies and governments of all sizes, including six of the world’s 10 biggest pharmaceutical makers, six of the 10 largest automotive companies in the world, four of the five branches of the U.S. Armed Forces, three of the world’s top five airlines, five of the six largest U.S. commercial banks and two of the world’s top five specialty retailers. Mountain View, Calif.-based SumTotal has offices across Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. For more information about SumTotal's products and services, visit www.sumtotalsystems.com.
MindLeaders Merger with ThirdForce Creates Global Employee Development Brand
e-Learning leaders join forces to provide full service employee development and training solutions.
May 22,2007- MindLeaders, a leading provider of e-learning and employee development solutions, announced today that it has signed an agreement to merge with ThirdForce Plc.
ThirdForce is a leading provider of e-learning solutions and services to the education, government, hospitality, healthcare, retail, and commercial sectors. Together the two companies provide training solutions to nearly three million learners worldwide.
“This merger was exciting from the very beginning”
MindLeaders clients and partners will soon have access to ThirdForce’s “Skills for Life”, assessments, and content for important verticals such as hospitality and healthcare. “This merger was exciting from the very beginning,” says Paul MacCartney, President of MindLeaders. “Each company creates engaging products that have significant value in the other’s market. The fact that we complement each other so well is going to create opportunities for healthy growth.”
ThirdForce CEO, Brendan O’Sullivan, agrees. “MindLeaders Personal Learning Service is an extremely effective way to deliver learning that achieves both individual and organizational goals in a way the competition simply can’t match. By combining MindLeaders broad product line with ThirdForce’s proven experience in Europe and key verticals, we’ll be able to offer the market an impressive alternative in an industry that has become pretty generic over the last few years. You can expect great things from us.”
Carol Clark, co-founder, President and CEO of MindLeaders for twenty-five years will join the Board of Directors of the combined companies to provide guidance and support for the future. Industry veteran Pat McDonagh, founder of SmartForce (now SkillSoft) and Riverdeep Interactive Learning is the founder and Chairman of the Board of ThirdForce.
About MindLeaders
MindLeaders is an employee and performance-improvement company with over 25 years of experience in delivering e-learning and employee development solutions. MindLeaders provides personalized learning that supports organizational success. Their e-learning tools cover topics ranging from networking in an enterprise environment to personal use of the PC and from healthcare privacy issues to business skills. MindLeaders is based in Dublin, Ohio. About ThirdForce
ThirdForce is an established provider of e-learning solutions and services to over two million learners in education, government, healthcare, hospitality and commercial organizations worldwide. ThirdForce provides a wide portfolio of e-learning solutions ranging from ICT Literacy to ECDL training and from Health and Safety Training to Care Induction. ThirdForce has offices in the UK, Ireland, Australia, and Canada.
August’s Topic of the Month for SSPA Research is Remote Support. When asked in the July issue of the SSPA News which title you most wanted to see this month, the winner with 80% of the vote was “The ROI for Remote Control Solutions.”
SSPA Research defines remote support platforms as the bundle of functionality used to take control of a customer’s desktop via a secure internet connection to diagnose and resolve issues. Leading remote support platforms are expanding, with new features added in each release. Core components in most platforms include:
Remote desktop control. Agents can access the customer’s equipment via a secure web connection, and take control, performing functions as if they were sitting in front of the machine.
Web chat. Agents may chat with a customer using a Web chat dialog during the remote control session, freeing up the customer to take a call or perform other work, with the agent prompting them with the chat dialog when additional information is required.
Web collaboration. Some platforms also support Web collaboration, allowing other agents to join the remote control session to provide assistance.
Screen sharing. With screen sharing, the agent can view the customer’s desktop, with an option to allow the customer to view the agent’s desktop as well. This allows agents to walk customers through procedures they may be struggling to attempt on their own.
Session monitoring. A new feature now available with some platforms, supervisors can select a remote control session currently in progress to see how the agent is handling the situation. Useful for quality control monitoring or to keep tabs on new agents.
Customer log files. Different platforms offer various diagnostics that can be used to pull complete log files of a customer system for real-time or historical analysis. Log files typically are sent to the agent as a text file at the end of the session and attached to the case.
The SSPA Recommends
Creating an ROI model before initiating a search for new technology is definitely a best practice. Understanding the likely payback helps prioritize projects, and also gives companies an idea of appropriate project budget. In technology areas with practically guaranteed ROI, such as remote support, vendors typically offer an ROI audit to help you benchmark your current performance against other companies within the vendor’s installed base, and help estimate projected cost savings.
When preparing an ROI model for a remote support project, SSPA Research recommends that companies:
Evaluate your current metrics program. If you don’t have benchmarks for current performance, you can’t track improvements and calculate accurate cost savings. Be sure you have current statistics for key metrics detailed in this article before continuing.
Include both hard and soft metrics when modeling ROI. While hard metrics, such as escalations or average talk time, offer obvious cost implications, don’t forget to include important soft metric performance and goals, such as customer satisfaction or loyalty.
Have realistic expectations. ROI is easy to achieve, but beware the “law of diminishing returns.” A company with highly trained and productive agents, an effective, mature knowledgebase and strong case workflow will not receive as dramatic an ROI for remote support as companies with little or no knowledgebase available, and few formalized case handling processes. This doesn’t mean adding remote support will not prove cost effective, but the period of time to realize full project ROI may be 12-18 months instead of 3 to 6 months.
Train, incent and reward to promote adoption of remote support tools. Lack of user adoption is the biggest cause of project failures. Simply put, the technology can’t pay for itself if no one uses it. Be sure to include links to launch remote support from within the agent desktop used for incident tracking, and update knowledgebase articles to advise agents to initiate remote support sessions where applicable. Also, monitor agent use of remote support tools (usage reports included with remote support platforms), and provide additional training and coaching for low adopters.
About John Ragsdale
John Ragsdale is Vice President of Research for the SSPA. Ragsdale spent 10 years managing tech support operations before moving to Silicon Valley where he held product management and marketing positions at eService and CRM vendors. He spent 5 years at Forrester Research as VP and Research Director before joining the SSPA.
Providing unparalleled breadth in application and depth in business functionality, the SumTotal Enterprise Suite 7.6 will be the industry抯 most comprehensive, scalable learning and business performance offering, and the only one to combine learning management with...
