Smartforce Launches Smartforce Connect

New program of alliance partnerships, interoperability standards and hosting capabilities to help connect SmartForce learning solutions

SmartForce, today announced the formation of its program, a series of initiatives and relationships designed to help to drive its learning solutions, and ultimately its customers’ learning programs, deeper into and more closely aligned with customers’ core, critical business objectives.

Commenting on the launch of the program, SmartForce Chairman and CEO, Greg Priest, said: “For some time now we have been making substantial investments in the linkage between learning and the primary business drivers of the enterprise. We’ve been doing it through both the positioning of the learning solutions we sell and support, and through close strategic working relationships with our enterprise customers. This has been supported by active participation in driving the emerging interoperability standards and by working closely with the vendors of other products, services and enterprise applications that in some way “connect” with our customers’ learning initiatives. SmartForceConnect will consolidate and expand the great progress that we’ve been making in this area and will be instrumental in moving learning outside of what is considered traditional training.”

Leading learning industry analyst, Cushing Anderson, program director of IDC's Learning Services Research, commented: "Research clearly demonstrates that learning initiatives must be linked to specific business problems to be effective. The real power of learning rests in its ability to help companies overcome business obstacles and execute change effectively through relevant, efficient delivery of content. The ability of learning solutions to integrate with mission-critical applications will increase the relevance of the learning experiences for all employees. SmartForceConnect demonstrates SmartForce's commitment to linking learning and real business needs and results. SmartForce is in a unique position to innovate and lead the market toward this important breakthrough."

Although only formally being launched today, the SmartForceConnect program brings together a number of initiatives and relationships that have already been put in place, and is expected to be the framework for many new initiatives and relationships in a number of different areas:

For SmartForce Learning Content Solutions, continued proactive support for, and compliance with, the constantly evolving standards for interoperability including AICC, SCORM and LRN.

For SmartForce Learning Content Solutions, a series of tools and formal partnerships with leading Learning Management Systems (LMS) vendors to allow SmartForce content solutions to be easily tracked and managed using non-SmartForce learning management systems.

For SmartForce learning infrastructure platforms, a series of initiatives to facilitate the interoperability of other vendors’ content offerings on the SmartForce platforms.

For SmartForce Learning Solutions generally, formal relationships and software integration tools with market-leading vendors of other enterprise applications, for example in the areas of CRM, ERP and HRM.

For SmartForce SolutionSets (specialised learning and productivity solutions for specific business processes and functions, for example Field Sales and Contact Centre productivity solutions), a series of relationships and integrations with leading vendors with other specialised applications used by those enterprise functions and departments.

July 25th, 2002