Holland America Line chooses SumTotal Systems for shipboard training and first-ever online learning initiative
Premium cruise leader Holland America Line has chosen the SumTotal Enterprise Suite 7.0 to power a new online learning and compliance initiative reaching 14,000 employees across its extended enterprise, including its Holland America Line, Windstar Cruises, Westmark Hotels and Gray Line divisions. The initiative will include a unique shipboard training program for personnel at sea around the world, featuring learning data synchronization via satellite.
SumTotal™ Systems (NASDAQ: SUMTE), the largest provider of learning and business performance technologies, services and processes, today announced that premium cruise leader Holland America Line, has chosen the SumTotal Enterprise Suite 7.0 to power a new online learning and compliance initiative reaching 14,000 employees across its extended enterprise, including its Holland America Line, Windstar Cruises, Westmark Hotels and Gray Line divisions. The initiative will include a unique shipboard training program for personnel at sea around the world, featuring learning data synchronization via satellite.
Holland America Line will use SumTotal's TotalLMS, TotalLCMS and ToolBook content and simulation authoring solution to create its first-ever online learning program for corporate and field employees around the world. The system will tie Holland America Line's training facilities in Indonesia, the Philippines and Holland, as well as all of its ships, to its Seattle, WA headquarters, allowing it to centrally manage all learning activities across the world.
The company's goals for its learning initiative include enhancing customer service and increasing customer satisfaction, developing employee skills and competencies, as well as addressing regulatory audits that require Holland America Line to have up-to-date training and certification data at its fingertips. Automating and streamlining the delivery, management and reporting of activities such as mandatory safety, security and environmental compliance training, for example, will help Holland America Line reduce business expenses and time-to-readiness, and will allow management to proactively identify and resolve gaps in training and certification.
Holland America Line also faces the unique challenge of thousands of personnel at any given time at sea with limited Web access, making it more difficult to keep training data current and to satisfy compliance reporting requirements. To meet this challenge, SumTotal will help Holland America Line develop a unique interface enabling daily, ship-to-shore data synchronization via satellite from training taken offline through TotalLMS by shipboard personnel.
"Skilled, motivated personnel have always been our greatest asset in setting Holland America Line apart from our competitors, which makes our initiative to deliver greater learning opportunities to our employees mission critical to our organization," said Stein Kruse, President and CEO of Holland America Line. "By making training and certification easier, quicker and more efficient to access, complete and report, we are able to have employees focus on what is most important to us -- providing our guests with the world-class service, amenities and programs that have been part of the Holland America Line premium travel experience for 130 years."
"Holland America Line's success depends upon decreasing the costs of doing business while increasing revenues from repeat passenger business. Our solution does both - helping Holland America Line more smoothly run a complex, global business, and seamlessly providing top-quality customer service that motivates guests to return again and again," said Andrew Eckert, SumTotal CEO. "We are proud of the unique solution we have helped Holland America Line create, not only meeting its compliance challenges, but helping transform the way it does business every day. It is a perfect example of the extra effort and creative thinking we bring to our partnerships with customers to ensure that our solutions truly address their most pressing business needs."