TATA Interactive Systems at Learning Technologies
Having completed over 500 projects involving custom-built e-learning solutions since becoming established in the UK some five years ago, TATA Interactive Systems (TIS) is now extending its operations - especially creating end user e-learning applications for IT product implementation training, such as SAP.
It is also producing custom-built e-learning programmes concerned with systems implementation training, as well as IT change management, and is also beginning to explore the market for generic e-learning materials - with the launch of a number of off-the-shelf programmes aimed at the pharmaceutical and financial services industries.
Some of these programmes, along with a special CD-ROM - containing samples of courseware from TIS's completed projects in the systems and end user training fields, produced for major blue chip clients around the world - will be on display at TIS's exhibition stand at this year's Learning Technologies exhibition, at Olympia, London, on 29th and 30th January 2003.
TIS, which has one of the world's largest teams for the design and development of custom-built e-learning solutions, has taken the decision to expand its activities within the UK in the light of increased demand for its products - despite the general downturn in the UK e-learning market. Earlier this month, TIS increased its sales staff in the UK with the addition of Jyotsana (Jo) Aggarwal and Pankaj Jathar.
According to Sambit Mohapatra, head of TIS in the UK: "We find that buyers of e-learning programmes are more concerned with the quality of those programmes than with their cost. Being one of the largest specialist e-learning developers in the world, TIS programmes tend to be in the 'mid-price' range but our clients tell us that the quality of the products and the quality of our customer service are second to none."
At the end of 2000, TIS became the first company providing custom-built e-learning solutions
to be assessed at level five on the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) scale. Sanjaya Sharma, TIS's chief executive explained: "The CMM is the most rigorous quality standard worldwide and encompasses leading companies such as Boeing, Raytheon, IBM, NASA and Motorola. Its prestige and value is well known within the IT world and it is becoming recognised within the e-learning world too."
TIS also holds ISO 9001 quality certification and practices Six Sigma techniques - a management philosophy originally developed by the Motorola organisation. The central idea behind Six Sigma is that if you can measure how many 'defects' you have in a process, you can work out how to eliminate them and get as close to 'zero defects' as possible.
Applying Six Sigma techniques helped TIS to achieve a remarkable 70 per cent reduction in product 'defects' from 44 per thousand to just 18 per thousand within the first quarter of 2002.
Sambit Mohapatra, the head of TIS in the UK, commented: "The 'defects' refer to such things as spelling mistakes, the style and 'look' of 'screens' in an e-learning programme and so on, rather than major problems. Many companies that use Six Sigma techniques are fortunate to reduce product defects by some 35 per cent a year, but TIS reduced its defect rate by 70 per cent in only one quarter."
Delegates to the Learning Technologies conference, which accompanies the exhibition, can hear about TIS's work from a client's perspective when Nigel Marsh, e-learning lead project manager at Royal Mail plc, is speaking about 'getting the right content for your organisation'.
TIS is on stand 50 at the Learning Technologies exhibition.
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