LARKSPUR, Calif. – April 9, 2014 – Corporate Visions, Inc., the leading marketing and sales messaging, tools and training company, today announced it has launched Executing Profitable Growth™ – an update to its two-day, advanced negotiation skills course designed to help sales teams maximize the value they create throughout the entire buying cycle. The course, which is part of the company’s maximization skills offerings, has been enhanced with several key concepts and techniques, along with new eLearning and reinforcement content.
The Executing Profitable Growth course is designed to help experienced salespeople take and keep control of the sales process by identifying key areas where value leaks out of an opportunity before it reaches traditional late-stage negotiations. Specifically, the program teaches concepts such as identifying and executing “pivotal agreements” for securing key milestones and using them as inspiration for exchanging value rather than giving it away, and asking “provocative questions” that drive a sales conversation toward a customer’s “unconsidered needs” to expand deal size and opportunities for differentiation.
The updated course now includes a complete blended learning approach: eLearning pre-work, in-person discovery cases, hands-on application and new job aids. Additional features include post-course eLearning reinforcement as well as, a new third-party ROI assessment for tracking adoption, behavior change and business impact.
“Many salespeople today assume they are making progress on a deal, only to find out they’ve given away all of their negotiating power and have trained customers to keep asking for additional items or services with no additional charge. In fact, recent research we conducted found that 79 percent of sales reps say their sales process and CRM systems are ‘check-the-box’ activities that don’t help them close larger, more profitable deals,” said Tim Riesterer, chief strategy and marketing officer for Corporate Visions. “Executing Profitable Growth is an advanced negotiations course that promotes a different mindset to help salespeople exchange value throughout the buying cycle, enlarge deals and provide them with even more opportunities to protect revenue and profitability when it comes to the inevitable pressure at the end of a sale.”
About Corporate Visions
Corporate Visions is a leading marketing and sales messaging, tools, and skills company that helps global B2B companies create more sales opportunities, win more deals and increase sales profitability by improving the conversations salespeople have with customers. Companies engage Corporate Visions to help in three key areas:
Developing compelling messages to break the status quo, differentiating their solution, justifying a purchase decision and protecting margins;
Deploying that message through tools and visual stories to enable salespeople to engage multiple decision-makers across the buying cycle; and
Delivering sales skills training that helps salespeople confidently use these messages and tools to create, elevate and capture more value in their customer conversations.
Corporate Visions helps clients such as ADP, Motorola, Philips, UPS, Cisco and others align marketing and sales with a repeatable approach for developing and delivering winning customer conversations.
Corporate Visions Launches New Course to Help Sales Teams Maximize Deal Value
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Saba Enhances Employee Engagement With New Release
Bracknell, UK., April 9, 2014 – Saba, a global leader in next-generation cloud solutions for talent management, today announced the launch of the Saba Cloud Spring 2014 release with a series of new innovations that are designed to help organizations enhance employee engagement, accelerate decision-making and improve productivity.
Key innovations include enhanced predictive capabilities, an improved user experience and workflows, and a new way to easily and rapidly connect with other enterprise solutions and services.
“With these important innovations to Saba Cloud, we have delivered a smarter suite of products that give people more ways to work while increasing better decision-making and productivity,” said Shawn Farshchi, president and CEO. “With the latest updates driven by customer feedback and our commitment to innovation, we plan to continue to evolve our platform to meet the current and future needs of our customers and the marketplace.”
“Companies are adopting next-generation technologies such as collaboration and mobile to improve their human capital processes,” said Stephan Millard, VP and Research Director at Ventana Research. “Saba’s Spring 2014 release of Saba Cloud delivers a significant step in helping companies adopt these next-generation technologies with enhancements like peer-to-peer HD conferencing and mobile goal management, both of which can help employees become more productive.”
About Saba
Saba is a global leader in next-generation cloud solutions for talent management. The company helps organizations transform the way they work by enabling the continuous learning, engagement and development of everyone in their people network, including employees, partners, and customers. Supporting the new world of work, Saba delivers learning, performance, succession, career development, workforce planning and compensation solutions that incorporate modern technologies such as social, collaboration, mobile and gamification. Saba solutions are based on the Saba Cloud platform, a highly scalable architecture that exceeds industry scalability, performance, and security standards. The company currently supports more than 31 million users from 2,200 customers across 195 countries and in 37 languages. For more information, please visit www.saba.com.
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German Company Picks NetDimensions for its LMS
Seattle, WA, April 10, 2014 – NetDimensions, a global provider of performance, knowledge, and learning management systems, announced today that it was selected as a new centralized global Learning Management System (LMS) for tesa’s 3,900 employees in more than 50 countries around the world.
tesa group, a fully owned affiliate of Beiersdorf AG, is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of self-adhesive product and system solutions. The company provides more than 6,500 different system solutions for industrial and professional applications, as well as about 300 products in the consumer and craftsmen businesses.
Innovation is the basis of tesa’s success and the engine driving the company’s dynamic growth. tesa has a wide variety of different businesses in different continents, and in order to meet high quality standards on a global scale, the company needed an innovative and efficient solution for unified training globally.
As part of the company’s learning strategy to support innovation, tesa wanted to provide employees all over the world with a wide variety of multi-language learning programs, together with the ability to enroll to all these programs in a flexible way. In addition, learning content had to be kept constantly up-to-date and easily accessible by tesa’s employees, wherever they are in the world.
“There is a high level of commitment for meeting the quality standards within our organization. This drives a wide spread of training initiatives, so we must always have efficient central management of all our learning programmes in place. We need to make sure that all our programs meet our high quality standards,” explained Helge Kochskämper, Vice President of Human Resources at tesa.
To support blended learning at tesa, NetDimensions Learning will also be integrated with the company’s conference management system, which is used for example for booking classrooms.
About NetDimensions
Established in 1999, NetDimensions is a global provider of performance, knowledge, and learning management systems.
NetDimensions provides companies, government agencies and other organizations with talent management solutions to personalize learning, share knowledge, enhance performance, foster collaboration, and manage compliance programs for employees, customers, partners and suppliers.
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Docebo’s e-Learning Platform Paying Dividends for Corporation
NAPLES, Italy, March 31, 2014 – In the six months after implementing Docebo’s e-Learning platform, more than 1,000 Sealed Air Corporation customers have accessed learning materials via the system. And, the number of customers in the system is growing.
According to Sealed Air, a global leader in food safety and security, facility hygiene and product protection, it’s confident that it made the right choice and that Docebo is an ideal partner. The Docebo learning management system (LMS) provides both the option to customize the system to any specific needs and also allows Sealed Air to customize the system to different target audiences and, thus, achieve tangible business goals through e-learning.
“Our industry is defined by subject matter expertise and compliance in a global marketplace,” said Marc Robitzkat, Sealed Air’s Global Customer and Application Learning Leader. “So it’s crucial for us, as a global market leader, to share the right know-how with our customers so that they can operate safely, increase their productivity and ensure operational sustainability.
Producing and distributing a range of products and services, as well as providing its customers with key industry knowledge and expertise in the field of sustainability, safety and operational compliance, Sealed Air wanted to provide a unique learning solution for its customers that provides all these things and also allows its customers to benefit from a state-of-the-art learning tool to help them use and customize their own learning materials as well.
So, Sealed Air looked for a state-of-the-art LMS which could cope with large numbers of users globally and allow a ‘delegation approach’ - enabling its customers to give their employees access the relevant learning materials, allow certain members of these companies ‘administrator rights’ and prevent customers’ administrators being able to see both what other Sealed Air customers were learning and also how they were performing.
In looking for an ideal LMS, Sealed Air carried out an extensive review of market leading LMSs before selecting the Docebo Enterprise solution —it offered the flexibility of a cutting-edge, accessible, up-to-date and updatable LMS.
About Docebo
Docebo is a disruptive Cloud E-Learning solutions provider that is revolutionizing the online training market with its Software as a Service Learning Management System. Established in 2005, Docebo has over 28,000 installations worldwide, and is sold in more than 65 countries around the world. The Docebo LMS offers an enterprise solution for mid-sized to large organizations. Customers benefit from Docebo solutions thanks to a scalable pricing model, a third party integration (via API), and reliable service available 24/7 to further enhance the user experience.
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Pearson Announces Partnership With Social Network for Language Learning
LONDON, U.K., April 10, 2014 – Pearson English, a newly formed business unit of the world’s largest learning company Pearson, has announced a major partnership with the world’s largest social network for language learning, busuu.
The two companies are joining forces to transform the way English learners around the world can measure their language learning.
The partnership gives busuu’s 40 million language learners access to the latest in self-testing through the launch of a new affordable online test, gSET by Pearson English.
Pearson English President Bhav Singh said the test allows language learners for the first time to easily measure their current level of English on an on-going basis using a globally consistent numeric scale.
“gSET by Pearson English will be a true game-changer for the world of language learning,” he said. “In today’s world, we need to supersize the consumer experience – we’re investing heavily in innovating and inventing new ways to wow our customers and empower them to reach their learning potential.”
busuu CEO Bernhard Niesner agreed.
“It has been our ambition to offer a more effective way of measuring English language proficiency amongst our language students around the globe,” he said. “The gSET by Pearson English provides our learners with an effective test that they can self-administer and allows them to see regular tangible progression in their journey to learn English.”
The gSET by Pearson English is measured on Pearson English’s Global Scale of English – a truly global numeric standard for the measurement of English language proficiency, much more granular and detailed than anything else currently available in the market. The gSET by Pearson English will be available from summer 2014, and will be free to busuu’s paying subscribers and at a nominal charge to its free members.
busuu is the first company worldwide to employ the test and have exclusive access as part of a four-month launch period. The gSET by Pearson English provides a Global Scale of English score against four ‘dimensions’ of learning: speaking, listening, reading and writing, and will be fully integrated into all busuu courses as its standard for measuring students.
Pearson English’s partnership with busuu is the latest in a number of key initiatives brokered by the company in order to fulfil its ambition to be a ‘teacher for life’ to learners of all ages and abilities. Pearson English is consolidating its existing businesses, including Wall Street English, GlobalEnglish and ELT, under one umbrella, as well as investing in deals with Voxy and Grupo Multi, to cement and enhance its position of leadership in the hugely competitive language learning market.
About Pearson
Pearson is the world’s leading learning company, providing educational materials and services and business information through the Financial Times Group. Pearson serves learners of all ages around the globe, employing 41,000 people in more than 70 countries.
Pearson partners with education institutions, organizations, corporations, associations and government agencies to create effective solutions that are aligned to their learning and professional development goals. Pearson’s professional training business offerings include customizable online training materials, digital content management, product development, knowledge capture, and online tutoring.
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Totara Launches Free Downloadable LMS Version
WELLINGTON, New Zealand, April 15, 2014 – Totara Learning Solutions announced a significant change to its open source distribution strategy this week — offering Totara Seedlings, an unsupported version of the popular software.
Since its launch in 2011, TotaraLMS has been offered as a distribution of the popular education platform, Moodle. For a low-cost subscription fee, customers receive the benefit of code support and maintenance, security updates, error correction, patch updates and a continuing stream of new innovations supported by Totara Learning Solutions.
Richard Wyles, Totara’s chief executive, said that he has always seen his company as an extension of the Moodle community.
“We believe Seedlings is the most effective way to do that, compared to our previous direct approach such as our work on open badges for Moodle,” he said. “It might not have been clear just how much we do in the open source realm.”
He added that Seedlings is a great way for software developers to get to know the company and engage in its project, and for potential customers to evaluate the features including upcoming versions.
“We don’t believe in dumbing down our community version to bait customers into buying our enterprise edition,” he said. “Seedlings is the beta version containing our very latest innovations.”
As the name implies, Totara Seedlings contains young, even experimental code, so it’s not suitable for use in a production setting, Wyles added.
TotaraLMS 2.6 includes a wide range of new features including a powerful enhancement to the learner catalog system enabling organizations to define how training opportunities are presented.
About Totara
Totara is a distribution of Moodle designed specifically for the corporate sector.
Moodle was designed for the education sector and has become the leading platform in education. At Totara we have focused on the requirements of the corporate sector and extended Moodle's wide range of functionality to meet the specific requirements of corporates.
The key additional features in Totara include:
competency structure to which you can link roles and learning resources and courses
management hierarchy allowing managers to review and manage their team's learning
individual development plans to manage staff performance and development
full classroom management and self-service
sophisticated reporting and a dashboard for management reporting
enhanced theme branding to ensure you can fully reflect any brand
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SAVO Debuts First End-to-End Sales Productivity Platform
CHICAGO, IL., April 15, 2014 – SAVO Group, the market leader in sales enablement, today launched Sales Process Pro, a new application that accelerates a higher return on training investments and helps organizations be more effective while attaining a higher level of sales productivity. With the launch of Sales Process Pro, SAVO has also unveiled the industry’s first end-to-end sales productivity platform to provide all the necessary applications – from training reinforcement and ramping to automated proposal creation and insight-driven data – to drive greater efficiency, effectiveness and engagement.
“For companies to be successful, every part of the organization must be ‘Sales First’ and center on the enablement of their sales teams,” said Mark O’Connell, president and CEO of SAVO. “Sales Process Pro helps organizations achieve an environment of efficiency, effectiveness and engagement by fostering a culture of sales productivity that allows companies to better realize their revenue goals.”
Sales Process Pro enables greater productivity through continuous coaching and real-time insight into actions taken by sales teams. The application helps to standardize key sales behaviors and create consistent high performers, while also providing a unique experience for each rep through tailored coaching and recommendations specific to the opportunity they’re advancing. Robust analytics and dashboards enable sales leaders to gain a clear view of the pipeline and overall deal quality to optimize and ensure sales process consistency. These advanced features help catch performance issues while there’s still time to make corrections and allow reps to have greater confidence in the accuracy of their sales forecasting.
“Looking at the marketing and sales technology landscape, we see systems of engagement are taking hold, but the question remains as to how they will help enable the salesforce to be more productive,” said Matt Mullen, senior analyst, 451 Research. “There is a great industry need for dedicated sales solutions that are true productivity applications – not just databases to reference for records – and we see this being a key piece to the marketing and sales puzzle in the year ahead.”
Specific Sales Process Pro features include:
Dynamic sales playbook – Incorporates sales process best practices and CRM solution data to guide reps’ specific sales actions, provide situational coaching, push relevant content and prescribe messaging that enables more effective conversations at each stage of the sales cycle. The application also tracks and benchmarks sales interactions against top performers to drive healthy competition and continuous development.
Deal quality index (DQI) – The DQI indicates deal success and quality, and weighs desired outcomes against adherence to the sales process and verifiable outcomes. The DQI tells reps if they are making the right moves, and ensures they receive the right feedback. This score reflects not only how well a rep is performing, but what’s actually happening and how the customer is responding.
Alerts and team messaging – Alerts pop up when a deal needs attention, giving managers the ability to gently guide reps in the right direction. Messaging capabilities, akin to Facebook Chat, allow team members and managers to collaborate more readily from anywhere at any time, and share deal-related news with the team.
Relationship mapping – This portion of the app provides automated capabilities for mapping account and opportunity contacts and relationships, enabling reps to better understand where they’re engaged within an opportunity and where they need greater leverage to close a deal.
Social intelligence – An aggregator compiles all the mentions and insights shared via social channels to help reps make the most strategic moves and have highly relevant conversations with prospects or customers. Through this feature, reps can also share information and updates from their own social profiles without leaving the application.
“Each year, companies spend billions on sales methodologies and training, yet results fall significantly short of the investment,” said Kurt Andersen, executive vice president of sales enablement and marketing, SAVO. “Research has proven that sales performance hinges on reinforcement, so we created Sales Process Pro to provide the technology that delivers individual guidance for reps to help realize an overall improvement in the quality of deals won, as well as the speed at which they close.”
About SAVO
Founded in 1999, SAVO is the leading provider of sales enablement solutions. SAVO’s on-demand sales enablement platform maximizes the sales team’s ability to communicate value and differentiation in clear, consistent and compelling ways. Combining proven sales and marketing best practices with award-winning technology, SAVO addresses all aspects of the sales enablement challenge — spanning people, process, insight and technology.
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John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Acquires CrossKnowledge
HOBOKEN, NJ, April 15, 2014 - John Wiley & Sons Inc. announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire CrossKnowledge, a learning solutions provider focused on leadership and managerial skills development, for $175 million in cash.
The transaction is expected to close on May 1.
CrossKnowledge is a privately-held company based in France with over 200 employees. It offers subscription-based, digital learning solutions for multi-national corporations, universities, and small and medium-sized enterprises. CrossKnowledge solutions, which include managerial and leadership skills assessment, courses, certifications, content, and executive training programs, are delivered on a cloud-based platform providing over 17,000 learning objects in 17 languages. Solutions can be readily customized for each individual client, providing employees with access to relevant learning and development resources in a tailored online experience. CrossKnowledge generated $37 million of revenue in its fiscal year ending June 30, 2013.
Steve Smith, President and CEO of Wiley, said: “The addition of CrossKnowledge to our talent management portfolio, which now includes innovative pre- and post-hire assessment solutions from our Profiles International and Inscape acquisitions, positions us as a leader in the rapidly-growing area of enterprise talent management. In today’s knowledge-based economy, organizations of all different shapes and sizes are looking to address skill, productivity and performance gaps through investment in their current workforce rather than hiring additional resources. At the same time, they are moving from face-to-face training to e-learning solutions that offer individualized assessment and prescriptive learning. Wiley and CrossKnowledge are at the forefront of this trend.”
“CrossKnowledge brings to Wiley a valued brand, global footprint and talented leadership team,” said Mark Allin, Wiley’s SVP, Professional Development. “Together with our acquisitions of Profiles International, Inscape and Deltak, CrossKnowledge accelerates our strategy to provide customers with a suite of services from education through employment, enabling individuals to fulfill their career ambitions and corporations to maximize their talent.”
Mickaël Ohana, CEO of CrossKnowledge, commented: “CrossKnowledge has gained excellent momentum in this shift to digital learning for professionals. CrossKnowledge is delivering solid growth in Europe, its largest region, and has recently launched its important entry into the Americas. We now have five million end-users in over 80 countries. With Wiley’s scale, content, author base, and distribution network, CrossKnowledge is now poised to accelerate its growth strategies and reach new markets.”
Conference Call
Wiley management will provide further details and address questions during a conference call scheduled for May 8, 2014 at 2:00 pm EDT.
Access the webcast at www.wiley.com > Investor Relations> Events and Presentations, or http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-370238.html
U.S. callers, please dial (888) 417-8465 and enter the participant code 9593011#
International callers, please dial (719) 325-2393 and enter the participant code 9593011#
An archive of the webcast will be available for a period of up to 14 days
About Wiley
Wiley is a global provider of knowledge and knowledge-enabled services that improve outcomes in areas of research, professional practice, and education. Through the Research segment, the Company provides digital and print scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly journals, reference works, books, database services, and advertising. The Professional Development segment provides digital and print books, online assessment and training services, and test prep and certification. In Education, Wiley provides print and digital content, and education solutions including online program management services for higher education institutions and course management tools for instructors and students.
About CrossKnowledge
CrossKnowledge is a leader in cloud-based distance learning solutions. Its full SaaS solutions are based on exclusive learning technologies, delivering the most sought-after content in the world and a range of accompanying services. CrossKnowledge solutions enable fast workforce empowerment and global strategic alignment, guaranteeing a unique learning experience for the individual and a real return on investment for the organization. CrossKnowledge learning content and formats are developed in collaboration with an international 'Faculty', comprising the best authors, professors and management professionals from the most renowned business schools in the world. CrossKnowledge has created the CrossKnowledge Academy in order to formalize and share its expertise in instructional design and deployment with its clients via certification programs. CrossKnowledge operates worldwide and serves companies including global enterprises, mid-sized companies and the education sector spanning more than five million users.
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VitalSmarts Releases Virtual Training for Crucial Conversations
PROVO, UT, April 17, 2014 —VitalSmarts, an innovator in corporate training and leadership development, announced that its award-winning Crucial Conversations™ classroom course is available online via live, synchronous learning.
The company launched this first course using its new VitalSmarts Virtual Classroom™ technology, a highly collaborative learning platform using Adobe® Connect™ and MeetingOne conferencing solutions. Plans to offer more courses on the same platform are currently underway.
Courses in the VitalSmarts Virtual Classroom provide the same award-winning content and skills as the traditional classroom courses and are ideal for learners who have limited travel budgets, work in remote locations, or who simply want to access training in the location of their choice and in shorter intervals.
"We live in an exciting time when the technology available for virtual, synchronous training allows for innovations that aren't available in the classroom," said Andrew Shimberg, CEO at VitalSmarts. "We've attempted to transform the virtual learning experience for participants just like we did in our traditional classroom model."
The Crucial Conversations Virtual Classroom provides participants with flexibility to attend training in five, two-hour learning sessions that are delivered over the course of multiple days. In comparison, the traditional Crucial Conversations course is two full days in the physical classroom.
Unique features of the VitalSmarts Virtual Classroom include: one-on-one interaction with fellow training participants as if you're in the same room; VitalSmarts' award-winning training videos; chat and hand-raise capabilities; instant quizzing and polling; and easily downloadable digital participant materials.
About VitalSmarts
An innovator in corporate training and leadership development, VitalSmarts is home to the award-winning Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything Training and New York Times bestselling books of the same titles. When used in combination, these courses enable organizations to achieve new levels of performance by changing employee behavior. VitalSmarts has consulted with more than 300 of the Fortune 500 companies and trained more than one million people worldwide.
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Australia’s Largest Technical IT Training Provider Announces Partnership to Strengthen Training
SYDNEY, Australia, April 18, 2014 — DDLS (Dimension Data Learning Solutions), Australia’s largest provider of technical IT training, certification and professional development, today announced a strategic partnership with Ouellette & Associates Consulting, Inc. (O&A) to provide the learning and development content to help businesses strengthen and evolve their IT departments and personnel.
Under the agreement, DDLS will license O&A's "T3" Services and Toolsets for delivery in the thriving Australian IT market:
- Talent Development - a comprehensive series of leadership and professional development workshops focused on Relationship Management, Project Management and Vendor Management.
- Talent Assessment - SaaS-based tools for IT competency assessment, talent development and analytics, and employee engagement and retention.
- Thought Leadership - Lou Markstrom, DDLS’ Professional Development Subject Matter Expert has collaborated with O&A to develop and publish an Australian version of the highly recommended book “Unleashing the Power of IT”, which discusses how to create an IT workforce and culture for the 21st century. The book helps IT leaders across Australia and the AsiaPac Region provide a roadmap for their IT talent development and culture change initiatives.
DDLS CEO Mal Shaw said the demands placed upon CIOs have never been higher.
“To be successful in today’s fast paced, increasingly complex, and ever changing business environment, they are transforming their culture and developing their IT workforce in new ways,” he said. “IT professionals are increasingly finding themselves in business-facing and partnering roles. They are finding expectations placed upon them from business leaders to provide competitive advantage and to leverage technology to change the way they do business. To succeed in this new environment, every member of the IT team needs to add strong business skills to their technical and process skills.”
About DDLS
Dimension Data Learning Solutions (DDLS) is Australia’s leading, trusted training partner offering learning solutions across IT, process management and professional development. DDLS designs, develops and delivers innovative learning solutions from certification through to customized learning programs to enable clients to confidently deploy technology and effectively manage processes and people for their business growth and success. With national training facilities in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Canberra, DDLS provides the highest quality learning programs, Technical Instructors, Trainers and Facilitators to train over 15,000 students a year, from beginner, specialist to advanced levels, transforming their effectiveness.
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Richardson Partners with SAVO to Maximize Sales Training Investments
PHILADELPHIA, April 18, 2014 — Richardson, a leading global sales training and performance improvement company, today announced a partnership with SAVO, the market leader in sales enablement. Together, the two companies have developed SAVO Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition, an application that allows sales and marketing leaders to reinforce training and execute best practices through coaching at each stage of the sales cycle. Integrating seamlessly with CRM solutions, the application helps to improve productivity and sales forecasts and ensure overall deal quality.
Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition gives companies an edge by systematically reinforcing Richardson's methodology and training solutions. By automating and aggregating sales pursuit activities, such as opportunity planning and account mapping, the application enables sellers and holds them accountable for verifiable outcomes at each stage of an opportunity. Through integration with CRM and robust analytics, Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition also provides sales leaders with better forecast accuracy and real-time visibility into seller behavior and deal quality.
Guide best practice adherence and consistent sales execution Coach sales reps and prescribe activities by deal stage to reinforce best practice sales methodologies and processes.
Improve seller productivity and efficiency Automate and aggregate sales pursuit activities, such as opportunity planning, account mapping, social intelligence and collaboration, on any device.
Drive forecast accuracy and deal quality Hold sellers accountable for satisfying verifiable outcomes at each deal stage tracked in the application and CRM system to give sales leaders visibility into deal progress and overall quality.
"We are extremely excited about working with a leading sales enablement company like SAVO to optimize and sustain Richardson's sales training solutions," said Dario Priolo, Chief Strategy Officer for Richardson. "Today, companies are spending millions on sales methodologies, processes and skills training yet the average sales rep forgets 87 percent of what they learned in training just three months ago without continuous reinforcement. Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition is designed to help our clients drive consistency in sales execution through reinforcement with technology and coaching at the right time and in the right context for sales reps."
"The combination of SAVO's market-leading sales enablement solutions and Richardson's award-winning sales process, methodology, and skills training offerings is a game changer," said Daniel West, Executive Vice President of Strategy & Corporate Development for SAVO. "Transforming and sustaining change in sales behavior to improve business results requires regular reinforcement of best practices and processes. With this partnership, we can deliver both to the market in a single solution."
About Richardson
Richardson is a global sales training and performance improvement company that helps leading organizations drive sales results. We do this in three ways: we analyze the structure and talent of your sales force, we train and develop your sales team, and we continue that development through coaching and reinforcement. We equip your sales leaders and sales force with the skills and strategies they need to win in today's complex selling environment. What is unique about Richardson is how we create truly customized solutions that change behavior and provide measurable results.
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Six Dimensions Expands Digital and Content Management Training Services
CINCINNATI, April 23, 2014 — Six Dimensions, a privately held provider of expert digital technology consulting services announced today that it has expanded its training services, My6D Training, to both potential and existing customers who are adopting the Adobe® Experience Manager (AEM) solution. AEM incorporates the web content management technology formally known as Adobe CQ. The new My6D Training courses are designed to help enterprises maximize their return on their software investment.
Courses are offered for content authors and developers at Six Dimensions’ 6D Labs in Cincinnati, Ohio. 6D Labs is the company’s center of excellence where professionals can gain market-relevant skills in a relaxed and fun environment. Courses are small in size allowing participants to receive comprehensive hands-on training and collaborate and share best practices with other participants. All courses are taught by Six Dimensions’ certified and experienced professionals whom lead real-world digital and mobile implementations around the world for Fortune 100 companies.
Six Dimensions also offers My6D Training for companies at their location on their specific AEM environment. In addition, My6D Custom Training allows companies to work with Six Dimensions’ senior architects to define the specific course modules needed to meet their unique project needs.
“We’ve been educating, empowering and enabling our customers for years, making sure they are capable of optimizing their AEM platform to achieve maximum business results,” said TJ Iaciofano, Vice President of Digital and Content Solutions for Six Dimensions. “We are excited to expand our training offering to potential customers who need help adopting, migration or implementing AEM. Hosting the training at 6D Labs and opening up our internal solution delivery lab to enterprise businesses is very rewarding. It’s a creative, relaxed, and collaborative environment which is different than the typical classroom setting. It inspires discussion and sparks real-world knowledge sharing.”
The demand for AEM content author and developer training has been fueled by Adobe’s leadership in web experience management over the last two years. Most recently, Adobe reported earnings March 18, 2014 that included an increase of over 24 percent for Adobe Marketing Cloud bookings.
About Six Dimensions Six Dimensions delivers top performing people with skills and experience in the key digital technology areas that enterprises need during critical changes and growth. The company distinguishes itself by having the most ambitious and creative thought leaders who think beyond the code. With a diverse and esteemed network of consultants, Six Dimensions people are masters of their domain who customers listen to and call on. Six Dimensions is accountable to its clients, partners, and employees by honoring its commitments, providing results, and striving for the highest quality based on loyalty and integrity.
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NterOne Partners with MasterStreet on Technology and Business Training Classes
NEW YORK, NY, Apr 23, 2014 – MasterStreet and NterOne announced a new partnership that makes the latter’s technology and business training classes available to professionals through MasterStreet's free search engine and booking platform for technology, business, and design classes, and training.
NterOne Corporation is a trusted global training and consulting company focusing on virtualization, live online training, and consulting services. NterOne has helped thousands of professionals improve the quality and effectiveness of their IT projects. To meet the needs of busy IT professionals, NterOne offers classes in-person and live-online. NterOne was recently named the recipient of the Cisco Acceleration Learning Partner of the Year. In addition to Cisco training, NterOne is an experienced provider of private and on-site training, which can be requested through MasterStreet's website.
"At NterOne, our mission is to help professionals develop technical skills that are vital for the success of their companies and careers. This goal is accomplished with our highly practical training in high demand skill and topic areas," said Anthony Hamilton, CEO at NterOne. "Our partnership with MasterStreet helps us introduce our classes and training to the next generation of IT professionals and teams."
"We are excited to partner with NterOne, a trusted provider of information technology training and education that shares our commitment to 100 percent client satisfaction," said MasterStreet VP of Business Development Stephen Schmalhofer. "Their in-person and live online technology and business classes provide convenient, high ROI skill development opportunities for the thousands of IT and business professionals we serve at MasterStreet."
About NterOne
NterOne Corporation is a trusted global training and consulting company focusing on virtualization technologies, live online training, and consulting services. The founders of NterOne developed this company to exactly identify and contribute to the adequate development of training transitions that are ultimately required for every IT manager, engineer, administrator, and company that expects to not get left behind in today and tomorrow's emerging inevitable network evolution. We are a veteran owned business headquartered in Reston, VA with cloud offices located throughout the Americas. The company operates almost 100% virtually by allowing their employees to work from cloud offices to reduce the company's overall carbon footprint.
About MasterStreet
MasterStreet is a free search engine and booking platform for technology, business, and design classes and training programs. MasterStreet's search engine contains more than 15,000+ classes, programs, and conferences from top universities, training organizations, and conference providers that address key skill needs in Engineering, IT, Design, Marketing, Strategy, Finance, Operations, and more. MasterStreet helps partners reach leading entrepreneurs, executives, and their teams while providing useful data and analytics reports.
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Social Learning Platform Declara Raises $16M
PALO ALTO, Calif., April 23, 2014 – Education startup Declara has raised a hefty $16 million funding in support of its efforts to provide continuing education services to customers such as thousands of teachers in the Australian public school system and Mexico’s enormous teachers’ union SNTE.
The two-year-old company helps teachers document their lessons and teaching materials, connect to each other through a closed social network and find additional learning resources online.
So far, Declara’s customers are usually governments and ministries, but it also sells its Web and mobile products to companies like Genentech and schools like the University of Pennsylvania.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company’s backers are edtech specialist GSV Capital along with Catamount Ventures and previous investors Data Collective and Founders Fund. It has now raised a total of $25 million.
Declara is led by indomitable entrepreneur Ramona Pierson, whose personal history was profiled last year by BusinessWeek; as a U.S. Marine in her 20s who was injured in a drunk driving accident, she spent 18 months in a coma and had more than 100 surgeries to reconstruct and repair her body since.
Pierson previously built an online education system for Seattle public schools backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and sold a different edtech startup called SynapticMash.
She said this week that Declara is built on top of fancy technology like semantic search, predictive analytics and machine learning — but it gathers much of the content it analyzes by offering a simple forum for people to discuss what they’re working on, and share existing training documents and videos.
The point is to turn lots of data into a personalized curriculum for each user.
With the new funding, Pierson’s next projects will include expanding the Declara business into Asia and hiring more people to do data science, she said.
She said existing customers pay Declara $50 per user per year for its services, though sometimes less if they have a lot of users.
“Declara looks like Facebook and Google had a baby,” said Data Collective investor Matt Ocko in an earlier interview about the company (for good analogous measure, he also compared Declara to the scary smart data analysis company Palantir). “It’s a stream of relevant information that you can also search. There’s 14 years of neuroscience about what will help you learn more, better, faster, with the right peers, at the right time.”
About Declara
Declara is focused on bringing data to life. The company, founded in 2012, builds a technology platform that uses machine learning, search, algorithms and recommendations to develop specific learning paths for individuals, making learning a constant discovery.
Originally published on ReCode.com.
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Kallidus LMS to Deliver Training and Mobile Learning for Major Brand
CIRENESTER, U.K., April 24, 2014 — Kallidus Learning Management System (LMS) is scheduled to go live for Kao, the maker of beauty products such as John Frieda hair care, across the U.S., Canada and Australia, in June.
The LMS would enable delivery of a more consistent learning experience to employees, customized to meet specific local needs. The new solution also enables Kao to provide a more comprehensive blend of training techniques including e-learning, webinars and classroom training and to deliver learning to tablets in addition to PCs.
“Kallidus offeres a global solution that could be customized locally and would support content from a wide variety of sources,” said Stephanie Brausch, Kao’s Senior Talent Manager. “We were particularly impressed with Kallidus’ m-learning capabilities as it is essential for us to be able to deliver learning when and where it is needed. We have many employees who travel domestically and internationally with some beginning to move to an iPad only environment, and therefore m-learning was a key driver in our decision.”
Kallidus LMS provides a central resource for training content for Kao employees, from compliance training to process and professional development. It enables the company to reach geographically dispersed employees with great ease. Looking to the future, the LMS will support technical skills development and will enable Kao to provide a truly personalized approach to blended learning.
About Kallidus
Kallidus (previously e2train and 81Boxes) is an award-winning supplier of learning and talent management solutions.
It helps organizations develop talent and improve business effectiveness. Its mission is to empower individuals and organizations to develop continually, learn effectively and improve their performance.
The company supplies software systems, consultancy services and content development to some of the world's leading blue-chip, public sector and mid-sized organizations, working in partnership to provide innovative trusted solutions. Kallidus prides itself in its commitment to outstanding customer service. Customers include Boots, the NHS, Nissan Europe, O2, Transport for London and Eurostar.
Founded in 2000, the company continues to achieve year-on-year profitable growth.
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Xyleme and Acrolinx Announce Product Integration
BOULDER, CO., April 24, 2014 — Xyleme and Acrolinx announced integrating their software in order to optimize their content directly within the Xyleme LCMS (Learning Content Management System).
Xyleme LCMS allows organizations the ability to author, manage, publish, and deploy learning content across all print, online and mobile formats. The combination of Acrolinx and Xyleme’s single-source approach ensures granular content is consistent and compliant across output formats.
“Our customers want to deliver training content that their audiences can quickly understand,” said Monica Kraft, Director of Product Marketing at Xyleme. “However, during the content development process, problems can arise that reduce comprehension. For example jargon, inconsistent terminology, and overly complicated phrasing can all contribute to confusion and misunderstanding. Multiple customers indicated they wanted to use Acrolinx to alleviate these problems, and now they can.”
Tom Aldous, Acrolinx’s SVP of Global Operations said his company wants to continue delivering a consistently-high quality customer experience.
“Xyleme has expanded the reach of Acrolinx to a vital sphere (with) training and educational material,” he said. “We’re delighted with this integration, especially since Xyleme is the leading company in its field.”
About Xyleme Xyleme, Inc. is the leader in standards-based learning solutions that enable the creation, management publishing and personalized delivery of training content. Xyleme’s suite of products is powered by Xyleme LCMS, a 100% XML-based single-source platform. It provides the industry’s most efficient content development platform for the rapid reuse of content across all types of print, eLearning, tablet and mobile outputs.
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DuPont Sustainable Solutions Releases Housekeeping and Warehouse Safety Programs
VIRGINIA BEACH, VA, April 25, 2014 — DuPont Sustainable Solutions launched two new safety programs that highlight the vital link between a clean, organized environment and a safe, productive workplace.
“Housekeeping Safety: A Team Approach” discusses the five S’s of housekeeping (sort, systemize, sweep/scrub, standardize, sustain), and helps employees understand the business value of a neat, organized workplace.
Stressing that all employees have a personal stake, this new program explains why housekeeping should be a part of an organization’s overall safety culture. It presents housekeeping as a round-the-clock team effort to help employees manage safety issues, maximize work space, and enhance overall efficiency and productivity.
“Warehouse Safety: Safe Material Handling” alerts viewers to common warehouse hazards, including forklift accidents, hazardous material leaks, and slips, trips and falls. The program identifies the kinds of personal protective equipment (PPE) used in various warehouse operations. Warehouse Safety introduces the Hazard Communication Label and Safety Data Sheets (SDS), and explains how to store and handle various chemicals, including flammable liquids and toxic substances.
These courses are available on DVD, streaming video and are coming soon as interactive, customizable online courses.
About DuPont
DuPont Sustainable Solutions is a learning provider empowering organizations to transform business results through the development of a safe, efficient, and capable workforce. Our experts will collaborate with you to understand your unique development needs and define key learning objectives. Then we’ll put our world-class production capabilities to work to create a tailored training solution designed to develop employee skills and align with your business goals. Let DuPont help you accelerate employee skills development and transform business performance through our real-world experience.
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NIIT Makes Expansion Plans
ATLANTA, Ga., April 28, 2014 — NIIT, a leading global talent development corporation and pioneer in IT training, has plans to tap tier II and III cities for expansion in India. The brand currently has 1,000 centers.
NIIT’s training solutions in IT, banking, finance and insurance, knowledge process outsourcing (KPO), business process management (BPM), executive management education, vocational skills, school learning solutions and communication and professional life skills has impacted more than 35 million learners since inception.
Rajendra S Pawar, NIIT Group’s Chairman said he hopes to increase centers by 30 percent within the next five years.
“We will be focusing upon tier II and III cities where we can set up our centers in 100-150 locations,” he said.
About NIIT
NIIT is a market-leading, global managed training services company with over 30 years of experience in learning outsourcing. With a team of some of the world’s finest learning professionals and presence in 38 countries, we help the world’s leading companies dramatically improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their training.
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Skillsoft Announces Completion of Acquisition by Charterhouse Capital Partners LLP
DUBLIN, IRELAND, April 29, 2014 – Skillsoft Limited, a pioneer in the field of technology-delivered learning with a long history of innovation and delivery of solutions for its customers worldwide, ranging from global enterprises, government, and education to mid-sized and small businesses, announced that it has completed the sale of its subsidiaries to Pointwell Limited, an entity indirectly owned by funds managed by Charterhouse Capital Partners LLP (“Charterhouse”). Terms of the purchase were not disclosed.
Skillsoft CEO Chuck Moran said his company was excited to announce the closing of this transaction.
“We have enjoyed four successful years with the support of Berkshire Partners, Bain Capital and Advent International, and are looking forward to building on that success with the team at Charterhouse,” he said.
Skillsoft will continue to be headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, and be led by the current management team, including Moran as CEO.
Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. acted as exclusive financial advisor to Skillsoft. Ropes & Gray LLP acted as legal counsel to Skillsoft. Barclays acted as exclusive financial advisor to Pointwell Limited. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett acted as legal counsel to Pointwell Limited.
About Skillsoft
Skillsoft is a pioneer in the field of learning with a long history of innovation. Skillsoft provides cloud based learning solutions for its customers worldwide, ranging from global enterprises, government, and education to mid-sized and small businesses. Skillsoft's customer support teams draw on a wealth of in-house experience and a comprehensive learning e-library to develop off-the-shelf and custom learning programs tailored to cost-effectively meet customer needs. Skillsoft's courses, books and videos have been developed by industry leading learning experts to ensure that they maximize business skills, performance, and talent development.
About Charterhouse Capital Partners LLP
Charterhouse is one of the oldest Private Equity funds in Europe having been investing in management buyouts since the 1980s. Since then, Charterhouse has completed 138 transactions with an aggregate value of EUR 50 billion. Today Charterhouse is investing from its ninth fund of EUR 4 billion and focuses on backing managers of outstanding businesses to achieve their growth plans.
About Berkshire Partners
Berkshire Partners, the Boston-based investment firm, has invested in over 100 middle market companies since 1986 through eight private equity funds with aggregate capital commitments of $11 billion. Berkshire has developed specific industry experience in several areas including consumer products and retail, business services, industrial manufacturing, transportation and communications. Berkshire has a strong history of partnering with management teams to grow the companies in which it invests with the goal of consistently achieving superior investment returns. The firm is currently investing from Berkshire Fund VIII, a $4.5 billion fund raised in 2011. Berkshire seeks to invest $50 million to $500 million of equity capital in each portfolio company.
About Bain Capital Private Equity
Founded in 1984, Bain Capital one of the world’s foremost privately-held alternative investment firms, with more than $75 billion of assets under management. With deep experience investing in and building businesses around the world, the firm has made private equity, growth, and venture capital investments in over 450 companies, across a variety of industries including consumer/retail, financial services and institutions, healthcare, industrials, and technology, media and telecommunications. The firm has a strong track record of investments in leading software, business services and education businesses. Bain Capital has offices in Boston, New York, Chicago, Palo Alto, London, Munich, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mumbai and Melbourne.
About Advent International
Founded in 1984, Advent International is one of the largest and most experienced global investors dedicated solely to private equity. Since inception, the firm has invested in more than 280 buyout transactions in 39 countries and today has $32.0 billion in assets under management. With offices on four continents, Advent has established a globally integrated team of over 170 investment professionals across North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia. The firm focuses on growth and traditional buyout and strategic repositioning transactions across five core sectors , including business and financial services ; healthcare ; industrial ; retail, consumer and leisure ; and technology, media and telecoms. After 30 years dedicated to international investing, Advent remains committed to partnering with management teams to deliver sustained revenue and earnings growth for portfolio companies.
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VitalSmarts Releases Virtual Training for Crucial Conversations
PROVO, UT, April 17, 2014 —VitalSmarts, an innovator in corporate training and leadership development, announced that its award-winning Crucial Conversations™ classroom course is available online via live, synchronous learning.
The company launched this first course using its new VitalSmarts Virtual Classroom™ technology, a highly collaborative learning platform using Adobe® Connect™ and MeetingOne conferencing solutions. Plans to offer more courses on the same platform are currently underway.
Courses in the VitalSmarts Virtual Classroom provide the same award-winning content and skills as the traditional classroom courses and are ideal for learners who have limited travel budgets, work in remote locations, or who simply want to access training in the location of their choice and in shorter intervals.
"We live in an exciting time when the technology available for virtual, synchronous training allows for innovations that aren't available in the classroom," said Andrew Shimberg, CEO at VitalSmarts. "We've attempted to transform the virtual learning experience for participants just like we did in our traditional classroom model."
The Crucial Conversations Virtual Classroom provides participants with flexibility to attend training in five, two-hour learning sessions that are delivered over the course of multiple days. In comparison, the traditional Crucial Conversations course is two full days in the physical classroom.
Unique features of the VitalSmarts Virtual Classroom include: one-on-one interaction with fellow training participants as if you're in the same room; VitalSmarts' award-winning training videos; chat and hand-raise capabilities; instant quizzing and polling; and easily downloadable digital participant materials.
About VitalSmarts
An innovator in corporate training and leadership development, VitalSmarts is home to the award-winning Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything Training and New York Times bestselling books of the same titles. When used in combination, these courses enable organizations to achieve new levels of performance by changing employee behavior. VitalSmarts has consulted with more than 300 of the Fortune 500 companies and trained more than one million people worldwide.
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