We are very excited to announce three upcoming workshops this fall entitled Building the High Impact Learning Organization. The workshops, led by Josh Bersin and Leighanne DeMarzo, are a collaborative, research-driven program to benchmark your current learning organization against best practices and learn how to optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of the learning organization.

These one-day workshops are built around our High Impact Learning Organization research. Each attendee will participate in a customized Learning Organization Assessment, a research-driven benchmarking program which scores you on 12 areas of your learning organization. At the event you will receive a Learning Organization Scorecard and learn about the 12 research-driven best practice areas. You will then work in small groups with your peers and our analysts to build an action plan tailored to your organization.

Some of the areas covered include:

• Governance and Leadership
• LMS Administration and Standards
• E-Learning Content Development
• Measurement
• Performance Consulting
• Resource Allocation
• Much more...

In many organizations, accelerating the time to competency for new employees is a critical driver of profitability. The problem is often exacerbated by high turnover, resulting in lost productivity and opportunity costs while new employees get up to speed.

While management typically looks to the training or human resources department to solve the onboarding challenge, Randstad took a somewhat unique approach. The company devised a new onboarding process for its U.S. operations, aligned with its global onboarding model. In the new process, line managers, using tools and materials developed by the learning department, drive the onboarding training and are held accountable for the results.

This case study describes Randstad’s innovative approach to driving organizational accountability to its onboarding program. Results show significant growth in productivity among new hires in the U.S. Randstad’s North American team is now facilitating the adoption of the technology and process among its European colleagues.

On August 3 SumTotal announced the acquisition of Pathore, expanding the company's #1 position in the LMS market. What does this mean for corporate training organizations?

The New SumTotal:

There are three major changes for SumTotal. First, the company now has more than 1700 customers, and has expanded its vertical breadth into state and local government, healthcare, and regional banking. Second, the company now has five product lines to support and manage, including SumTotal7, Docent, Aspen, Pathlore, and DK Systems. Finally, the company now clearly supports three major market segments: Global Enterprise, Enterprise, and Mid- Market buyers. No other LMS company has successfully been able to maintain leadership in all three segments.

The New LMS Market

As a result of this merger, the Saba-Thinq merger, and the Oracle-Peoplesoft merger, more than half of all LMS buyers today now have a product which is no longer supported by the company which sold it to them. These buyers have a reason to be nervous: will their vendor continue to support the product they implemented?

A fair question. In the case of SumTotal, the company is committed to supporting and growing its newly acquired mid-market install base. But doing so will not be easy.

We do not believe this acquisition means that the LMS market is slowing. Rather the opposite is occurring - the market is expanding and evolving -- and this is a move by SumTotal to try to further establish and maintain their #1 position.

We are completing our analysis of this merger and will be publishing a 25 page analysis for research members in the coming week. Research members can also join our 1-hour briefing on the merger this Friday August 19 at 10AM Pacific, 1PM Eastern.

If you are a paid research member and have not yet registered for the briefing, please contact Diane Anselm at (585) 671-8823 or email to diane@bersin.com. Watch the the Research Center for this research report to be posted this week.

We have three webcasts scheduled in the coming weeks. The August 25 webinar highlights the findings from our upcoming research study, "Offshoring E- Learning: What Works." The offshoring of training functions and technology is a growing trend in the market. This session will help you decide what projects or functions to outsource, how to select an offshore supplier, and how to successfully manage the project and ongoing relationship.

This webinar is free and is presented by Karen O'Leonard, Principal Analyst, Bersin & Associates. Attendees of the live session will receive a complimentary copy of the "Offshoring E-Learning: What Works" white paper.

• "Offshoring E-Learning: Best Practices for Selecting and Managing an Offshore Partnership"
• Thursday, August 25, 2005
• 2:00pm Eastern/11:00am Pacific
• SIGN UP NOW

The September 22 webinar is "Using Benchmarks to Optimize the Business Impact of the Corporate Training Function.". Benchmark results provide you with the data required to determine the best course of action to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of your training function. In this session, you will learn about how High Impact Learning Organizations benchmark, when they use benchmark results, and what benchmark results are most important to capture.

This webinar is free and is presented by Leighanne DeMarzo, Director of Strategic Services, Bersin and Associates.

• "Using Benchmarks to Optimize the Business Impact of the Corporate Training Function"
• Thursday, September 22, 2005
• 2:00pm Eastern/11:00am Pacific
• SIGN UP NOW