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  Technology   In Other news  17 Aug 2019  Delivering beautiful technology with Skillsoft

Delivering beautiful technology with Skillsoft

THE ASIAN AGE
Published : Aug 17, 2019, 6:02 pm IST
Updated : Aug 17, 2019, 6:02 pm IST

Skillsoft offers a comprehensive library of content.

Skillsoft revolves around corporate learning, delivering beautiful technology, and engaging content that drives business impact for modern enterprises.
 Skillsoft revolves around corporate learning, delivering beautiful technology, and engaging content that drives business impact for modern enterprises.

Skillsoft revolves around corporate learning, delivering beautiful technology, and engaging content that drives business impact for modern enterprises. Skillsoft comprises three award-winning systems that support learning, performance, and success: Skillsoft learning content, the Percipio intelligent learning experience platform and the SumTotal suite for Human Capital Management. Skillsoft provides a comprehensive selection of cloud-based corporate learning content, including courses, videos, books and other resources on Business and Management Skills, Leadership Development, Digital Transformation, Technology & Developer, Productivity and Collaboration Tools and Compliance. Percipio’s intuitive design engages modern learners and its consumer-led experience assists in accelerating learning. The SumTotal suite features four key components built on a unified platform: Learning Management, Talent Management, Talent Acquisition, and Workforce Management.

To understand more about Skillsoft , we got in touch with Mr. Mike Hendrickson, VP, Technology & Developer Products, Skillsoft.

DC: Please share the differentiating factor which sets you apart from the other corporate learning platforms in the country?

Mr. Mike: Skillsoft has several unique factors that set us apart from competing solutions. First, we are fully accessibility compliant to ensure people with disabilities and users of assistive technologies can utilize Skillsoft content. We also provide content in a variety of modalities, including courses, videos, books and audio books, as we don’t just play lip-service to offering alternative ways to learn, but we have plenty of training materials in all formats for our learners. Additionally, Skillsoft offers a comprehensive library of content that includes Compliance, Leadership &Business and Technology& Developer content so an organization can provide a diverse range of training to its entire workforce.

In the technology space specifically, we offer intentionally designed Skillsoft Aspire learning journeys that provide prescriptive content that builds upon each other to help a learner go from one role to an aspirational role. Each journey is custom-built and not simply curated by subject area. We also provide several practice labs that enable learners to gain hands-on experience trying what they have learned in a safe environment. There are many additional features that set us apart, thought the ones outlined above offer a quick view into the most distinguishing capabilities of our strategy.

DC: What is in for Skillsoft technology in the coming years?

Mr. Mike: The use of machine learning to more adequately remediate or prescribe content based on a learner’s particular interest, capability or unconscious aptitude is in our pipeline. Another area of great interest is to deploy a more modern approach to learning where each learner will have a custom container of all their learning paths, content and activities and be able to keep all the work they put into this in a notebook or some similar artifact. This allows the learner to retain their learning record regardless of what company they work for, or what platform they consume learning content on.

DC: Technology and product development initiatives by Skillsoft’s Team?

Mr. Mike: We are currently working diligently to build features and capabilities around our Skillsoft Aspire journeys and how learners can have smooth, effective and well-designed role-based continual learning. We will be adding more social features and meaningful credentials that are truly resume-worthy.

DC: How is Skillsoft adhering to compliance requirements of companies from different markets?

Mr. Mike: All of our content is compliant with accessibility standards or we provide a VPAT to inform our learners what they are receiving. We believe that all people should have access to our learning content.

DC: Strategy to reorganize the IT, Certification and Developer collection to focus on a comprehensive and all-inclusive Technology and Developer portfolio?

Mr. Mike: The strategy to reorganize our Technology& Developer content library was simple. IT and Certification are terms associated with antiquated technologies and ways of thinking. Instead, we need to think differently to deliver products and services that meet the demand of today’s modern customers and future customers. Technology describes anything that is technology-oriented, and Developer describes the individuals who are building with these technologies. In today’s world, organizations understand how their former back office developers need to work with their product and service developers, and DevOps has helped inspire organizations to think this way. The reorganization of our content library now reflects what is happening in the market rather than clinging to the IT formation of years past. Going forward, we will continue to provide the day-to-day training enterprises need to master technology and will offer more content on emerging subjects that help organizations move forward.

DC: Product customization and personalization to address the diverse demographics and unique requirements of different segments of corporate?

Mr. Mike: We do offer the ability to filter our content by expertise level--Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. And in the near future, we will be offering pre-assessments so we can more readily place a learner into a sequence or journey where they truly belong. Right now, each learner in our platform can find a course and immediately take the assessment test to figure out if they need to take the course or if they have the requisite knowledge. We also provide content space for each of our customers to add their own personal content that they want their learners to consume, and with the ability to customize a channel; our platform and content can truly serve the unique needs of learners.

DC: Computer Economics found that AI is the last priority for enterprise investment spending. How can that be when AI, data, and analytics are some of the hottest trends in technology today?

Mr. Mike: I believe this is simply a cart-before-the-horse issue in that too many companies wand to build AI products and services without the requisite data infrastructure built out. So, we are missing the part that truly puts the I in AI. Intelligence comes from a well-honed data infrastructure that allows for real-time data ingestion and processing that in turn dumps into a machine learning effort that finds the actionable insights that will feed true AI products and services. I am not convinced that most organizations have their Data Science set up as a science and as an effective front-end to AI.

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