4/4/2005
Global Knowledge and Oracle Partner to Offer Superior Training Services and Technology for Outsourced Customer Education Programs
Partnership to Focus on Growing Customer Education Market
Cary, N.C. - April 4, 2005 - Global Knowledge, the largest privately-held provider of training and enterprise learning services for information technology (IT) and management professionals, today announced a partnership focused on customer education with Oracle, the world's largest enterprise software company. As a partner in the OracleŽ PartnerNetwork, Global Knowledge's expertise in customer training and education services technology, combined with Oracle Learning Management, will allow organizations to effectively outsource customer education programs with a virtually seamless combination of training services, technology and infrastructure.
With this announcement comes the introduction of Global Knowledge's "Customer Education Enablement" program, a strategic offering that will focus on the five core elements of any successful external training initiative, including strategy, development, marketing, delivery, and management. Global Knowledge offers a variety of customer education services, supporting software, hardware and product training for an organization's sales force, customers, and channel partners. Oracle Learning Management is an enterprise learning management system (LMS) that provides a complete infrastructure for organizations to manage, deliver and track training participation in online or classroom-based environments.
Many of the world's largest companies are already implementing strategic customer education programs to train and educate sales professionals, customers and partners. The Scotts Company, the world's largest marketer of branded consumer lawn and garden products, is working with Global Knowledge and Oracle to develop and deploy a variety of outsourced training programs. "The Scotts Company was looking for a program to help us train our more than 1,600 part-time field sales associates who are responsible for merchandising our lawn care products within our big-box retail customers," explained Claudius Christmas, Director, Sales Operations & Administration for The Scotts Company.
"The seasonal nature of our business has driven us to take a two-pronged approach to training our field sales force," Christmas continued. "We are developing an on-line library of training materials aligned with our training curriculum for the 500 full-time field sales associates. Additionally, we have developed a second set of on-line training materials to continually provide product knowledge, safety training, and in-store procedures for our 1,600 seasonal field sales associates. By working with Global Knowledge and Oracle to develop and deploy effective training programs, we have the opportunity to provide our end-consumers with a higher level of service through improving product expertise among our field sales organization."
The Scotts Company plans to develop and deploy similar training programs to channel partners and consumers in the future. "We envision this training program ultimately reaching the end-consumer, providing valuable information and education related to our expansive product offerings to the buyer looking for help and advice on lawn and garden care," Christmas concluded.
According to research conducted by Josh Bersin, CEO, Bersin & Associates, a research and advisory consulting firm focused on enterprise learning, the customer training business makes up more than $3.5 billion in products and services of the overall $85 billion corporate training market. "Customer training is mission-critical, and the market continues to gain momentum as the training industry moves further toward the adoption of e-learning delivery methods," said Josh Bersin.
"We are thrilled to partner with Oracle to bring organizations our collective strategic value and superior technology for outsourced customer education programs," explained Chris Gosk, vice president, Training Delivery Solutions for Global Knowledge. "Traditionally, learning executives and training professionals have been focused on internal training programs, with little resources left to develop and deploy scalable customer training programs. Times are changing, however, and today's executives are learning that an effective customer training program can significantly impact an organization's ability to strengthen and preserve customer relationships and can enhance business performance for both parties," Gosk concluded.
Global Knowledge will formally launch the "Customer Education Enablement" program at the upcoming CLO Symposium Event to be held April 6 - 8 in Tucson, AZ. Global Knowledge is an associate sponsor of the event and will be hosting a workshop led by Josh Bersin to discuss "Best Practices in Customer Education" that will include a panel of leading external training experts from Microsoft, Verity Software, and Alcatel.
"For organizations looking to deploy customer education programs, working with Global Knowledge and Oracle will offer joint customers the best of both worlds - superior training services and technology combined with a reliable infrastructure in a fully outsourced model," said Scott Ewart, senior director, Oracle Learning Management product development. "As the customer education market continues to grow, this partnership enables us to help organizations transform their training department from what has historically been considered a cost center into a profit center."
This announcement follows Global Knowledge's recent introduction of the Targeted Learning Framework (TLF), the company's disciplined, collaborative approach for creating training solutions that support enterprise-wide learning needs designed to help organizations improve productivity for employees, customers, and channel partners. Supported by Global Knowledge's proprietary SOLVETM methodology and end-to-end learning technology infrastructure called the Global Learning Platform, the TLF enables organizations to address and solve the learning-based issues that create barriers to the successful completion of their business strategies.
For more information, please call 1-800-316-7423 or visit www.globalknowledge.com.
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About Global Knowledge
Global Knowledge is the largest privately held provider of training and
enterprise learning services for information technology (IT) and management
professionals. The company offers a broad array of hands-on IT, project
management, and professional skills training featuring proprietary core and
custom curriculum as well as content from leading companies, including Cisco,
Microsoft, Nortel, Oracle, and Red Hat. Delivered in classrooms, at private
facilities, or over the Internet, Global Knowledge has helped Fortune 500
companies, organizations and government agencies leverage learning to turn
knowledge into productivity for employees, customers, and channel partners.
Founded in 1995, Global Knowledge employs more than 800 people worldwide and is
headquartered in Cary, N.C. The company is owned by New York-based investment
firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson, and Stowe. For more information visit www.globalknowledge.com.
About the Oracle Partner Network
The Oracle PartnerNetwork is a global business network of more than 14,000
companies who deliver innovative enterprise software solutions based on Oracle
software. Through access to Oracle's premier products, education, technical
services, marketing and sales support, the Oracle PartnerNetwork provides
partners with the resources they need to be successful in today's Internet
economy. Oracle partners are able to offer their customers leading-edge
solutions backed by Oracle's position as the world's largest enterprise software
company.
About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's largest enterprise software company. For
more information about Oracle, visit our Web site at www.oracle.com
Oracle, JD Edwards, and PeopleSoft are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.
Media Contact:
Coleen Hanson
RBW Public Relations
(919) 848-2638
coleen.hanson@rbwpr.com
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