Sumtotal Delivers Industry’s Only Unified Talent Development Suite

SumTotal® Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUMT), the market leader and global provider of talent development solutions, today announced the 8.0 release of the SumTotal Talent Development Suite , bringing a unified approach to the critical components needed to successfully address businesses’ Talent Development challenges. From easy-to-use self-service user portals and informal learning to rich content creation and content management to industry-leading learning and performance management, the SumTotal Talent Development Suite combines the power of best-in-class applications with the simplicity of a single solution.

“We are proud to be the first company offering a complete, unified solution for Talent Development that provides all the critical components to help companies leverage the talent strategically within their organization,” said Don Fowler, chief executive of SumTotal. “SumTotal has brought together a powerful, yet simple solution so that organizations no longer have to compromise on capability, scalability, deployment methods or ease-of-use. Organizations can now focus on developing their talent and employees at all levels without having to cobble together point solutions.”

New Unified Suite Harnesses the Power of Talent Development
With the benefit of over 20 years of experience and best practices across industries, SumTotal 8.0 puts best-in-class capabilities in the hands of managers, employees, and administrators. It allows organizations to tailor their talent solutions to drive their unique business needs, instead of having to tailor their business needs and processes to fit their talent solutions. Supported by SumTotal’s innovative Anytime, Anywhere Access capabilities and a unique integration framework, the SumTotal Talent Development Suite provides the power to automate the most complex processes, the simple interface for users and administrators to start now, and the luxury of not having to compromise one for the other.

SumTotal 8.0 will introduce a number of new features including:

* Self-service user portals, including a unified dashboard, task-oriented home page, drill-down reporting, giving power at the users’ fingertips, increased ease of use and ability to start anywhere.

* Informal learning management, using collaboration, ready-access to experts, global search of informal content, communities-of-practice and affinity groups, and offline access.

* Rich content creation and management with content deployment to mobile devices and deep OLSA integration for auto-population and deep search of SkillSoft learning catalogs

* Industry leading learning and performance management including unique assignment, workflow, and activity architecture that adapt to specific business needs and comparative calibration and ratings for easier, faster and richer performance assessments


“Sum Total has noted the pain points their customers experience and report, and provided new system functionality to meet business and end-users needs,” says Donna Nelson, manager, learning management system, from APL Limited. “The new features, such as the assignment by audience, the out of the box integrations, professional look/feel, and reporting functionality are very important and useful enhancements.”

“With 8.0, SumTotal has unified a complete talent development solution that simplifies and enhances the process of ensuring organizations have a steady supply of talent,” said Josh Bersin, president of Bersin & Associates, an independent research firm. “This release helps organizations easily bring together components from a variety of sources to build a rich talent profile for all users, while also providing the tools and workflows to drive the development of those users. With innovations in informal learning, mobile delivery, content search, and user experience, SumTotal provides a solution to companies who are trying to solve imminent business problems without having to compromise on capability or usability.”

For more information about SumTotal’s talent development solution, please see: http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/lp/SumTotal8.html. In addition, SumTotal is providing a series of web seminars starting with implementation best practices. For more information, go to http://www.sumtotalsystems.com/talent-webseminars.html.