Innovative release from SumTotal aims to empower the self-developing organization through individualized development to maximize employee engagement and organizational capabilities.

SumTotal, a Skillsoft company, unveiled the SumTotal Talent Expansion® Suite Winter 2016 release. With this release, SumTotal fundamentally changes the way organizations approach employee development, simplifying the journey to becoming a Self-Developing Organization.

The innovative and intuitive capabilities in this release make it easier than ever to develop, promote, mobilize and reward the workforce. More than 80 percent of business leaders say developing the skills of their existing workforce through continuous learning and talent mobility initiatives is one of their top priorities.

According to PwC, 18th Annual Global CEO Survey, 2015, nurturing an adaptable talent pool will unlock up to an estimated $130 billion in additional productivity globally. The Winter 2016 release delivers tools that support the critical focus on growing and adapting the skills and capabilities of an organization’s workforce, while simultaneously encouraging talent mobility.

The SumTotal Talent Expansion Suite Winter 2016 release provides easy-to-use, personalized, actionable tools and insights that adapt to the changing needs and preferences of each individual. These solutions empower every employee in every role of the organization to pursue their own meaningful path for growth, without increasing the workload on managers and HR professionals.

Highlights of the SumTotal Talent Expansion® Suite Winter 2016 release include:

• Configurable Dashboards engage and empower your people to take an individualized approach to development by presenting comprehensive amount of critical insight in a simple, flexible and actionable manner – with multiple views that enable people to effectively balance personal, team and company priorities.
• Development-Focused Widgets equip users with the drag-and-drop flexibility to focus on the insights and actions most important to them in context of their career goals and aspirations. From optimizing performance in their current role to preparing for a move into their next role, it connects people to the most relevant actions and content to impact growth with a single click.
• Intelligent Learning Recommendations are delivered throughout the Talent Expansion Suite, leveraging ‘big data’ algorithm to surface learning activities and content that are personalized to each individual’s precise preferences – making it easier for people to adopt learning and content continuously throughout their work day when and where it can have the most impact.
• Enterprise Search re-imagines how seamless it can be to browse, discover and pinpoint the information and resources people need to accelerate growth, enabling users to search across the Talent Expansion® Suite and across objects – including learning, people and reports – from a single place.
• Theming and Branding delivers unparalleled point-and-click personalization capabilities that go beyond a simple logo on a page. This gives administrators the ability to create themes and pages from existing assets with a few simple clicks – a process that can be very costly.

John Ambrose, General Manager of SumTotal says,“Using our suite of solutions, business leaders can now build an organizational culture focused on empowering people – a culture that enables people to define and pursue a self-directed path for individualized development, continuous learning and career mobility, three of the critical components of the Self-Developing Organization.”

“This release marks a fundamental technology shift for SumTotal,” said Humair Ghauri, Senior Vice President of Products and Technology at SumTotal. “The cutting-edge open architecture, unified data model and ultra-modern user experience mean that the Winter 2016 release outperforms all current talent management solutions, many of which are based on rapidly aging workflow models.”

Analysts Speak: What do they have to say?

“The business value of seamlessly connecting talent and learning has long been realized. When an organization delivers contextual learning opportunities, it not only fosters loyalty and engagement among employees, but also builds bench strength and a leadership pipeline throughout the organization,” Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer and HCM Principal Analyst at Brandon Hall Group. “SumTotal’s latest release underscores the importance of integration across the entire HCM suite and will illustrate HR’s importance to overall organizational success.”

“The new normal for technology in HCM, manifested in predictive analytics and social media–style user interfaces promoting collaboration, facilitates a new approach. Organizations can now begin replacing tired, one-size-fits-all models for managing employee performance and learning,” said Brent Skinner, principal analyst covering human capital management for Nucleus Research.

“Taking these models’ place are trigger-based, in-the-moment conversations between managers and their employees. These interactions are less tedious and more intuitive and immediately applicable, integrating employee performance and learning more holistically with talent management overall.”

Read more HR NEWS in ASIA