Achieving its most important milestone of 2004, SumTotal Systems, the industry’s largest provider of learning and business performance technologies, services and processes, today announced the availability of the much-anticipated SumTotal Enterprise Suite 7.0. The revolutionary new platform is the first major product release for the company following its formation by the merger of Click2learn and Docent in March 2004.
The hallmark of SumTotal 7.0 is its unmatched flexibility and adaptability. SumTotal 7.0 enables organizations to “mold” the platform to the specific characteristics of the business. It dynamically adapts to an organization’s changing needs, whether it’s business processes, terminology and workflow, evolving organizational structures, or the personalized learning, certification and skills development needs of the individual employee. SumTotal 7.0 offers radically easier administration of learning activities, user organizations, reporting and compliance, as well as unprecedented interoperability and integration with other technology applications and infrastructures - all without the need for programming and customization.
“After months of strategy and planning, hard work from our product management and R & D teams, and extensive feedback from customers, partners and analysts, we are proud to bring to market what many have told us is this industry’s most groundbreaking solution to-date,” said R. Andrew Eckert, SumTotal CEO. “SumTotal 7.0 is the culmination of the product vision we established when our two companies merged earlier this year. Today, we have successfully combined the strengths of two products and two organizations to bring our customers one of the most powerful tools they can deploy to accelerate readiness, business performance and profits.”
SumTotal 7.0 is comprised of eight, globally-scalable business performance management applications that enable companies to embed learning activities and relevant content into everyday business processes to achieve bottom-line results. Integrated into a single, comprehensive suite, the applications include:
TotalLMS — delivers, manages tracks and reports on any blend of learning activities: self-paced Web, live interactive Web, on-the-job, traditional instructor-led and documentation
TotalLCMS — provides a complete environment for creating, managing, assembling, and delivering learning content
TotalDashboard — offers the most complete packaged solution for measuring and analyzing the impact of learning activities on business performance by connecting to mission-critical applications
TotalPerformance — provides a performance management solution that ensures all levels of the organization are aligned and working together to attain business objectives
TotalAccess — enables offline learning capabilities for the mobile workforce
TotalCollaboration — allows instant learner collaboration with peers and experts
TotalInformation — helps manage tacit knowledge by allowing authorized users to publish and manage unstructured content to any web server, with instant, searchable access to information
Virtual Classroom — provides a live, Web-based forum for real-time communication and collaboration among geographically dispersed individualsLeading industry analyst firm brandon-hall.com evaluated SumTotal 7.0 for its LMS Knowledgebase. In their write-up, the reviewing analysts wrote, ” We were literally one of the first to review the new LMS solution in action. What we discovered is that the new offering isn’t just “the best of Aspen meets Docent;” rather, SumTotal commendably took this opportunity to apply “lessons learned” from both companies and to create something robust and brand new.” The report continued on to say, “This system is ideally suited for large-scale, enterprise implementations, but is easy enough to use for literally any setting.”
Developed to address both the specific needs of vertical industries, as well as broad-reaching business challenges common across all industry sectors, SumTotal 7.0 enables organizations to effectively manage certifications and regulatory compliance; bring new products to market faster; ensure personnel readiness; align individual and corporate objectives; and communicate and collaborate in real-time with employees, channel partners, customers and suppliers.
