PeopleSoft Acquires E-Learning Firm Teamscape
Thu Aug 1, 4:07 PM ET
Richard Karpinski, InternetWeek
E-business vendor PeopleSoft said it has acquired e-learning vendor Teamscape Corp. and will use its technology to expand its suite of tools to help enterprises manage in-house and Web-based learning programs.
The vendor announced the PeopleSoft Enterprise Learning platform in April and starting working on the project in January. The company will integrate the Teamscape products on a functional level and tie them into the overall PeopleSoft technology framework as well as its existing work in this area and deliver the new product by the fourth quarter, said Doug Merritt, vice president and general manager of PeopleSoft Human Capital Management.
E-learning is an important new market for PeopleSoft, and "we want to make sure we have a 1.0 release that looks more like a 2.0 or 3.0 release," Merritt said. While some startups have targeted e-learning and some leading-edge companies have made some enterprise-wide deployments, Merritt believes the mainstream won't be ready to make a big jump into e-learning until 2003 or 2004.
Teamscape sold two core products, Teamscape Learning and Teamscape Reports, that delivered out-of-the box education tools to help companies better train their employees and track their progress.
PeopleSoft's new Enterprise Learning suite will aim to deliver learning opportunities to employees in a variety of formats and from a central location track and measure program effectiveness.
E-learning is "becoming one of the really important pillars of a full human capital-management system," said PeopleSoft's Merritt. Indeed, e-learning doesn't sit alone, but links tightly to other processes such as recruitment, incentive, and compensation management and more.
"We've been hearing over and over that organizations truly now appreciate the interconnectedness and the cross-business integration of all of these business functions," Merritt said.
PeopleSoft made its name in human resources and people-management platforms; adding e-learning to the mix is a natural extension, given today's emphasis on training and development of new employee skills, Merritt said.
PeopleSoft applications are "the natural owner of workforce and employee data," he said, "and we think over time our ability to deliver [e-learning] is absolutely critical for customer satisfaction." |
