SumTotal Systems, the industry’s largest provider of learning and business performance technologies, services and processes, today announced that a full slate of customer presentations will headline its appearance at the Training Fall 2004 Conference and Expo, held this year at San Francisco’s Moscone Center from October 11 — 13. Industry leaders United Airlines, Bechtel, TRW Automotive and others will host a variety of sessions on achieving business results with learning technology as part of the user “conference-within-a-conference” SumTotal Systems holds each year during the expo.
Practical lessons from SumTotal customers
Among the group of SumTotal customers presenting at Training Fall 2004, will be long-time SumTotal customer United Airlines, leading a session on compliance training on Monday, October 11 from 8:30 a.m. — 9:30 a.m. The airline giant will share the comprehensive process it has created to increase both the efficiency and effectiveness of mandated compliance training. Presenter Jeff Presseau, program manager, workforce performance systems at United, will discuss the evolution of several curricula over the past decade, as well as how to partner with regulatory agencies and how to leverage learning technology investments to create better compliance and learning assessment programs.
Also on Monday, from 2:00 p.m. — 3:30 p.m., Bechtel, one of the world’s premier engineering, construction, and project management companies, will discuss how it built Bechtel University to meet the logistical challenge of developing a skilled, global workforce capable of quickly responding to shifting markets and changing policies and regulations. Bechtel University operations manager Glenette Alston, will lead the “how-to” session, which will include best practices in implementing LMS technology to power a corporate university; course delivery methods and development software; course administration; and obtaining funding for learning initiatives.
On Wednesday, October 13 from 8:00 a.m. — 9:00 a.m., Mark Dumar, project manager, Health, Safety & Environment Information Systems at TRW Automotive, a global manufacturer of automotive parts and systems, will present “If you Build It, They Will Come: A Grass Roots Approach to Implementing e-Learning With Minimal Funding and Support.” The session will explore the success of “bottom-up” e-learning implementation, including: How to defy the budget cuts and spark a thriving e-learning program for under $3,000How to make e-learning popular in an environment where most employees don’t even have a desk, much less a computer How to get internal customers to drive e-learning growth for the organization
Using learning to address business objectives
Reflecting SumTotal’s ongoing efforts to provide clients with solutions that solve real-world business problems, the company’s director of product management, Jon Ciampi, and senior director of product management, Bill Docherty, will offer a series of sessions on using learning technologies to accelerate organizational proficiency and to achieve specific business goals.
Ciampi will present a session on optimizing training and performance in the call center on Tuesday, October 12 from 9:45 a.m. — 11:00 a.m., during which he will discuss the challenge of improving call center agent performance when training time is limited. Ciampi will cover learning initiatives for improving call center customer service levels and performance, as well as how best to deliver learning to call center representatives while minimizing their time away from customers.
Ciampi also will deliver a session on Wednesday, October 13 from 2:00 p.m. — 3:00 p.m. on using learning to drive corporate initiatives. Using real world examples, he will lead participants in scrutinizing four common corporate initiatives — product training, call center training, customer training and channel training — breaking them down to their core components and processes, and discussing how successful companies have mapped their learning initiatives to their most vital business objectives.
Finally, Ciampi and Docherty will lead a talk on Wednesday, October 13 from 3:15 — 4:15 on using learning as an effective tool in launching new products, including decreasing time-to-market, readying sales, services and support teams and how to measure the results.
Content development shoot-out
In addition to its user group sessions at this year’s expo, SumTotal also will pit its ToolBook 2004 simulation and content authoring solution against other solutions in a product “shoot-out” scheduled for Wednesday, October 13 from 10:15 — 11:00 a.m. Sponsored by industry analyst firm brandon-hall.com and hosted by analyst Bryan Chapman, the shoot-out focuses on using PowerPoint in e-learning and requires participants to take an existing PowerPoint presentation and convert it live, in front of an audience, into a compelling e-learning course.
ToolBook helps organizations create compelling content and simulations that are a critical success factor in any organizational learning initiative. Using ToolBook’s powerful features, companies can create professional, standards-based simulations, tutorials, assessments, courseware and other interactive learning content without in-depth programming skills. Based on AICC and SCORM standards, ToolBook also makes it easy to launch and track ToolBook content through a standards-compliant learning management system (LMS).
