Results Reveal Channel Training Priorities, Challenges and Key Investment Targets

Mountain View, CA – September 7, 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 first of six surveys designed to provide market data on all aspects of today’s corporate training challenges.

The first survey in the Training Challenges Survey Series, which focused on channel partner training, explored a variety of issues, including: percentage of current budget spent on channel training, planned investments over the next 12 months, importance of channel training as compared to employee and customer training, use of LMSs, and use of outsourcing. A total of 244 responses were received and analyzed by company size.

Following are survey highlights:

• 25.8% of companies with more than 5,000 employees plan on spending more than $500,000 on channel training in the next 12 months. 53.1% of these companies plan on spending more than $100,000 in the next year. Biggest spenders among respondents are computer technology companies; 35% of respondents from large computer technology companies say they will spend more than $500,000 within the next year.

• 30.4% of responding companies use an LMS to support channel training. Computer technology companies have a significantly higher adoption rate; 65% of these respondents use an LMS for channel training. Interestingly, of those companies using an LMS for channel training, 46.6% use a different LMS for employee training.

• Small and mid-sized companies place a higher priority on channel training than large companies – likely because they are more heavily reliant on channel partners for revenue. 21.3% of companies with fewer than 1,000 employees ranked channel training as a top priority; 20.8% of companies with between 1,000 and 5,000 also gave channel training top ranking. Only 9.9% of companies with more than 5,000 employees ranked channel training as the highest training priority.

• Respondents identified the major challenges related to channel training as: budget constraints (50.5%), lack of control (46.3%), distributed locations (42.1%), and staffing constraints (33.2%).

“We’ve seen firsthand some of the major challenges related to channel training,” said Mohana Radhakrishhnan, vice president of client services for Expertus. “Many companies have limited staff and budget resources, technology issues, and need for multi-language support. These challenges are exacerbated with extreme time to market and revenue pressures. The results of this survey demonstrate that companies of all sizes share these and related challenges.”

“We find that channel training is often outside the responsibility of corporate training,” said Doug Harward, CEO of TrainingOutsourcing.com. “This often means that learning management technologies are not used to advantage and consistency in course materials can be problematic. Training is often conducted informally, with no tracking or reporting.”

An analysis of all survey results is available at www.expertus.com/survey/results1/channeltraining.pdf.

The next survey in the series, which will be focused on global training, will be distributed in September. Other 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.