e2train Launches Kallidus 8
e2train, the UK's leading supplier of learning and
performance technologies, announces the launch of Kallidus® 8, an enterprise-wide learning and performance environment. The new system offers an easy to use 'iGoogle style' web gadget learner interface which will enable learning professionals to integrate formal and informal learning within a single solution. e2train has also built a new reporting platform into the system, making it one of the most powerful enterprise-wide learning solutions available on the market today.
A recent survey from industry analysts, Bersin & Associates,
found that 68% of knowledge workers now feel that their biggest
learning problem is an "overwhelming volume of information".
Similarly, one of the key challenges learning and development
professionals face today is how best to make use of informal
learning and use it to generate valuable business and
performance-based information.
Kallidus 8 helps learning professionals manage this information by
enabling them to specify an environment for their learner that
combines their own formal learning and performance operations with
links to external tools, informal or otherwise. This means that a
far wider range of learning can now be delivered within a
structured and easy-to-navigate environment. In this way, informal
learning can operate seamlessly with more formal learning, such as
instructor-led training, e-learning and blended learning.
Kallidus 8's new 'iGoogle style' web-gadget-driven interface
raises the bar on the learner experience, bringing it into line,
navigationally, with the web's most popular sites. The new
interface will also enable the administrator to easily specify user
profiles which provide their own set of windows and tools. Perhaps
even more important in the long term, however, is that Kallidus 8
has a greatly extended reporting capability. The new reports enable
users to capture performance and learning data and represent this
information in tabular and graphical formats. This will allow
learning professionals to capture the most powerful metrics -
combined from all their activities - and deliver that data straight
to the organisation's top executives to create real business
value.
The launch comes at a time when there is a clear market demand for
new ways of learning and reporting on such learning. A survey of
over 100 senior L&D managers held only this month by e2train in
partnership with the Learning and Skills Group found that 87% of
respondents believe there needs to be a stronger link between
learning and development and core business processes and strategy.
The survey also found that over 60% of managers had a positive
attitude towards learning as long as the benefits are clear.
Linking learning closer to organisational needs was also deemed to
be the single greatest personal learning challenge faced by L&D
managers today (28%) followed by increasing L&D's profile
within the organisation (17%) and social learning and the use of
Web 2.0 tools (16%). 45% of respondents said they would provide
more comprehensive or more frequent reports to the board, if they
had the necessary tools to do so. Currently, learning is reported
on and discussed at boardroom level by the majority of companies on
a monthly (35%) or quarterly (39%) basis. 7% of organisations have
no board level discussions regarding the value of learning.
Said e2train's Managing Director, Rob Caul: 'The corporate
learning landscape continues to evolve. New surveys tell us that
the use of formal e-learning programmes is growing but we also now
have to cater for the dramatic rise in the use of informal learning
tools. As learning professionals, that presents us with new
challenges. To be really effective we need to provide managed
access to these tools from the learner perspective and, above all,
we need to understand how all these operations can be rolled
together so they are shown to be contributing to business
value.'
'We are convinced that Kallidus 8 can meet these challenges,
providing a truly collaborative, flexible, enterprise-wide learning
solution that can generate and disseminate critical information and
whose reporting capabilities can provide real resonance with
managers right up to the boardroom.'
Kallidus 8 is an affordable and completely scalable system which
deploys, manages and reports on all forms of learning via the
Internet or Intranet. Key features of Kallidus 8 include:
* An easy to use and intuitive set of learner pages which can be
assembled and specified by the learning professional from web
gadgets creating a professional management 'dashboard' for the user
from which they can access relevant training information.
* An innovative new SAP-based business reporting tool which
enables business metrics gathered from Kallidus 8 to be
disseminated across the organisation and incorporated into other
management-wide systems. Kallidus 8 also tracks learning
investments to determine where they add value.
* Kallidus Performance enables users to define skills and
competencies, which can in turn be specified within job roles.
Kallidus Performance will then manage the performance review and
employee assessment processes allowing further training
interventions to be set against these processes.
The survey was coordinated by e2train in partnership with the Learning
and Skills Group, an international community of learning and
development professionals, and took place in June 2009. 134 people
from the Learning and Skills Group's membership base answered the
survey across 14 separate industry sectors. 29% of respondents had
over 5,000 employees in their organisation and 28% between 1,000
and 4,999 employees. Over 50% said that they influenced learning
strategy within their organisation, with 43% responsible for
setting the learning strategy for the entire organisation, division
or department.