Training industry to get travel-style booking network
Enterprise Study Network (ESN), a suppliers' network to bring travel industry-style search and reservations functionality to the training industry, is launched today. The long-overdue application will provide 'flight-style' booking of training courses for the training industry.
Enterprise Study today announced it is launching the next phase
of its training administration systems' technology, ESN, that will
improve communications across the training industry.
ESN is a tool that enables training providers to manage their
clients' on line requirements: booking management, real time
reporting, intelligent scheduling and client-specific terms and
conditions. Individual training suppliers can provide their clients
with an aggregated schedule of courses presented via the Internet
and training buyers can request multiple training suppliers'
schedules, viewed through a single client interface. ESN is a
technology that enables buyers and suppliers to collaborate,
maintaining their chosen client-supplier relationships and
significantly lowering the administrative overhead associated with
buying and sourcing training.
Richard Williams, sales director, Enterprise Study: "The training
industry has no way of knowing what courses are available other
than by contacting individual training providers. This is very
time-consuming. It results in the staff at training companies
searching amongst their suppliers to find suitable courses for
their customers, often involving many telephone calls to check
availability and to negotiate reseller rates. In other industries,
for example travel and hotels, 'service aggregators' offer an
established way for customers to quickly identify a suitable
flight, travel ticket or hotel accommodation from a large pool of
potential suppliers.
"Partners will be able to browse ESN to identify courses: by
location, course type, price and availability, across their chosen
list of suppliers."
"Galileo International provides a similar service for the travel
industry and it is Enterprise Study's aim to become a 'Galileo' of
the training industry, serving the training-provider community and
the end customer. With these 'similar' network services in other
industries, the buyer retains their customer relationship with the
service provider. "This is also how ESN works," added
Williams.
Enterprise Study is inviting training providers to publish their
course schedules into ESN. Contact Richard Williams for details,
[email protected].
The upload process is also automated, with ESN and training
providers' systems dynamically exchanging course schedule and
reservations data, thus removing any ongoing administration.
"ESN overcomes the issue of training providers having to upload
their schedules directly into many of their client's ERP systems.
This is particularly an issue when training providers do not know
in advance how many bookings they will receive and, if the booking
quantity is low, often leads to schedule updates not being
completed regularly. With ESN the client uses the ESN service,
tailoring access levels to only include those suppliers' schedules
approved by the buyer or training provider."
ESN provides aggregated reporting, by supplier, for both end
customers and training providers that are delivering managed
services contracts.
Global Learning Alliance is one of the early adopters of
Enterprise Study's technology and Rob Clarke is their marketing
director: "Global Learning Alliance manages large training projects
and we need a method of aggregating the course schedules of our
suppliers around the world so that our project managers and
customers can collaborate together - identifying training courses
and resources. We've used the technology successfully in several
international projects and we are currently building a global
course schedule using ESN. Our suppliers in around 40 countries -
across EMEA, Asia Pacific and North and South America have already
uploaded their schedules and we're hoping to be able to quickly
extend it to the rest of our network."
Ben Pike is operations director with leading UK IT training
provider Xpertise: "ESN promises to be extremely useful system.
It's concept of one central database made available over the
internet is already proving helpful in reducing the administrative
overhead of working with our worldwide training partners in the
delivery of global skills development programmes."
Don Taylor is partnerships director with skills management
software provider, InfoBasis: "ESN bridges the technology gap
between training providers and end customers and allows buyers to
see a their centrally-pooled schedule of courses from a select
group of training suppliers. Our skills management system ESI
(Enterprise Skills Infrastructure) integrates with Enterprise
Study's technology, extending the skills management solution that
we are able to deliver to corporate enterprises."
Further information for providers and buyers:
Training providers requiring details about uploading course
schedules to ESN and training buyers requiring information about
using ESN should contact Richard Williams, [email protected].
Ends
Enterprise Study Ltd acknowledges the use of trademarks contained
in this press statement.
Notes to editors