Learning Executives Identify Biggest Challenges: Content Translation, Management, Spending, LMS Use and Outsourcing

Mountain View, CA – October 18, 2006 – Expertus, a global provider of services that optimize the business impact of learning, and TrainingOutsourcing.com, a company that offers guidance and consulting to buyers and sellers of outsourcing services, jointly announced today the results of the second of six surveys designed to provide market data on all aspects of today’s corporate training challenges.

This latest survey focused on global training, defined as training provided to employees, customers, and partners outside of an organization’s home country. Questions explored a variety of issues, including: percentage of current budget spent on training outside of home countries, governance of global training, use of e-learning and LMSs, language translations, and most common challenges. A total of 268 responses were received and analyzed by company size. Approximately 31% of survey respondents had between 5 and 50 locations outside of home countries and almost 20% had more than 50 locations outside of home countries.

Following are survey highlights:

• While a vast majority of companies are now involved in global training, most training dollars are still spent on training delivered within home countries. Almost half of responding companies spend less than 10% of their annual training budgets on training delivered outside of home countries. In 36.7% of responding companies, employees outside of home countries receive less training than those employees located within home countries.
• 62.2% of companies managed global training through a centralized learning organization. However, 42% of respondents had training staff located in U.S. and non-U.S. countries.
• English is by far the most commonly used language for training (95%). Almost 40% of companies translate training into Spanish, 30% into French, 25% into Chinese, and 25% into German.
• In 57.7% of companies, all employees have access to e-learning.
• The top challenges identified by respondents are budget constraints, content localization and translation, effective learning delivery, and maximization of e-learning.

“Global training presents a whole new range of challenges to most companies,” said Ramesh Ramani, president of Expertus. “While most companies recognize that all employees should have equal access to corporate training resources, few know how to meet this goal with existing budgets and technology infrastructures. We’ve seen demonstrable results from those companies that have made global training a priority – including increased revenues, reduced spending, and improved utilization of workforce resources.”

“Just in the last three years, we’ve seen a definite increase in global training initiatives,” said Doug Harward, CEO of TrainingOutsourcing.com. “We expect that this trend will continue, as companies open more locations worldwide and depend on the optimum use of a worldwide workforce.”

An analysis of all survey results is available at: https://www.expertus.com/survey/results2/globaltraining.pdf. The next survey in the series will be distributed later in October. Future surveys in the series will collect input on the following topics: use of consolidated LMSs for internal and external training; training analytics; LMS implementation, integration, and maintenance; and training administration.

About Expertus
Recently named as an Emerging Leader in Outsourcing, Expertus provides a variety of training outsourcing services in business consulting, technology, content, and strategic business process outsourcing. From implementing and managing LMS and learning-related technologies to supporting major customer training initiatives to seamlessly handling all aspects of training administration, Expertus has helped major companies such as Cisco, ADP, EMC, and Hyperion achieve efficiencies in corporate learning and development. Expertus is headquartered in Mountain View, California and has offices in London, New Jersey, and Chennai, India. Its staff of highly trained business and technical consultants, content developers, and process specialists delivers to clients the experience, skills, and knowledge that have an immediate impact on learning initiatives.

For more information, go to www.expertus.com or contact Mohana Radhakrishnan mohanark@expertus.com.

About TrainingOutsourcing.com
TrainingOutsourcing.com offers guidance and consulting to buyers and providers of training outsourcing services with the goal of facilitating mutually beneficial economic relationships. Its web-based knowledge community offers a wealth of information resources and best practices to those interested in any aspect of training outsourcing. For more information on TrainingOutsourcing.com and its webinars and conferences, go to www.trainingoutsourcing.com.