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Deloitte Consulting has been a customer of SmartForce for the past seven years and over that time the company has been able to reduce its reliance on instructor-led training courses for its employees.
As part of the new agreement SmartForce will deploy a so-called "blended learning programme" for the firm, which will include collaboration tools and mobile learning capabilities, as well as instructor-led modules. The roll out, said the businesses, will tackle Deloitte's e-learning needs in functional business areas and processes such as IT, enterprise applications, sales and CRM, and business management.
The companies confirmed that the learning solution includes enabling technologies for "easy implementation and integration" with Deloitte Consulting's existing Learning Management System (LMS) platform. This, according to SmartForce, underscores the Irish firm's technological openness.
Candy Haynes, Deloitte Consulting's associate chief learning officer, said the company decided to sign the deal with SmartForce due to the breadth of the business' e-learning content, and she especially noted SmartForce's sales training and business management solutions. "Its ability to integrate with other learning systems and its ability to form part of a blended learning program with our chosen instructor-led offerings means that we can offer excellent learning programs for the organisation and adapt them as necessary," she added.
The new deal with Deloitte follows an announcement last month by the e-learning giant which claimed that the market for its products was stabilising. Stability is something that had been in short supply for the company in the first six months of the year.
In its latest results, SmartForce saw a major dip in revenues and gross profits, both of which dropped by around USD22 million, compared to the same period last year. But in those figures SmartForce's worst statistic was its USD37.7 million, or USD0.66 per share, loss. This was an incredible fall from a net profit of USD1.1 million, or USD0.02 a share, in the same quarter a year ago.
Still, with revenues up 3 percent sequentially in Q2 2002, the firm seems to be performing better. Its failure to meet guidance in Q1 forced the company to cut 20 percent of its staff, or just over 420 people. Its poor Q1 results also led to the collapse of its proposed USD284 million merger with Centra Software.
Since that time, SmartForce has announced its intention to merge with SkillSoft in a USD564 million deal and the company has said this process remains on track. That merger is designed to combine SmartForce's strength as a provider of IT, sales and CRM e-learning content with SkillSoft's strengths as a general business and professional skills e-learning company.
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