Highlights of SumTotal 7.5 include a variety of ecommerce capabilities for managing the transactions tied to selling, buying, delivering, and tracking training; new capabilities for distributing and administering global learning in multiple languages; and an array of reporting tools for analyzing, among other things, what people learn.


"We developed SumTotal 7.5 to give our clients a way to extend the management of training and talent beyond the walls of their organizations," said Dave Crussell, chief operating officer of SumTotal. "We believe there is a significant business opportunity to help our 1,500 customers - and many new clients - extend training to a wider ecosystem of constituents."


In 2006, the Santa Rosa, CA-based eLearning Guild, a worldwide association of more than 20,000 eLearning professionals, surveyed its members - a mix of executives, instructional designers and course developers - about the future of eLearning. The Guild found that 82 percent of respondents felt they would increase their use of eLearning in the next twelve months to provide education to their customers. Seventy-five percent of respondents said they would increase the use of eLearning to train channel partners.


With the ecommerce capabilities in SumTotal 7.5, employers can sell either a single seat for a training class or an entire learning and development program for tens of thousands of learners. SumTotal supports multiple payment methods, including credit card, purchase order, check, and cash. SumTotal 7.5 also gives administrators a single hub to manage training of all kinds, whether the training is for employees or paying customers.


For employers with a global audience of customers, employees, and partners, SumTotal 7.5 will give training administrators a way to create one, universal training record in a single language. With a few keystrokes, though, the administrator can translate this data into virtually any language the learners prefer. For example, with SumTotal 7.5, if a training administrator is creating an online catalogue of workplace safety classes in English, she can immediately convert this data into German, French, Japanese, or virtually any other language for learners across the globe to access.


"SumTotal 7.5 enables learners to find the training they want in the language they prefer," said Bill Docherty, senior director of product management. "But our software also ensures that administrators working behind the scenes can track this same data in one language and one system."