MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (May 20, 2004) -- SumTotal Systems (NASDAQ: SUMT), the industry’s largest provider of learning and business performance technologies, services and processes, today announced that Odfjell, the global leader in chemical transport, storage and related logistical services, has chosen SumTotal technology to build Odfjell Common Competence, a learning initiative designed to ensure employee readiness in critical areas throughout the company.
The Odfjell Common Competence program will support the company’s pursuit of certified Safety & Quality Management Systems (SQMS), ensuring that all employees – no matter where they are located in the company’s worldwide organisation -- are actively contributing to improving performance and SQMS procedures. Common Competence will establish a common learning culture for Odfjell worldwide, deliver consistent information and best practices to all employees, and provide the right information at the greatest time of need so that employees are able to do their jobs safely, accurately and effectively.
“Our corporate mission is to continue developing our position as a leading logistic service provider to the chemical industry by offering safe, reliable and efficient services in keeping with the highest quality, safety and environmental standards,” said Brit A. Bennett, vice president of human resources for Odfjell. “To achieve this, we expect our employees to be responsible for the quality of their own work, to know their responsibilities and the applicable procedures to make sure that no activities are overlooked or omitted by mistake, and to contribute proactively towards continuous quality improvements.”
To drive this level of readiness, Odfjell will use the SumTotal Enterprise Suite, including the TotalLMS, Total LCMS and TotalPerformance modules, to create, deliver, manage and measure targeted learning activities covering corporate policy, procedures and culture, as well as business, language and technical training. The company also will use the suite’s in-depth functionality to align the skills and competencies of different job roles with specific business objectives, delivering targeted, specialized training to employees based on function.
“SumTotal was able to provide a solution that both supported our corporate imperatives and made it easy to move to a Web-based learning initiative,” said Bennett. “The suite smoothly integrates into our current technology infrastructure and the modular platform will allow us to change and adapt the solution as our needs grow. We anticipate that the technology will have a long-term, significant impact on the productivity of our employees.”
“Changing economic conditions, fluctuating prices and the ongoing pressure to meet environmental, health and safety standards, make it a challenge to increase competitive advantage in the global chemical services marketplace,” said Andy Eckert, SumTotal CEO. “We know that a highly skilled, knowledgeable workforce is essential to both improving business performance and mitigating risk in companies like Odfjell, so we have designed our solutions to significantly reduce time-to-readiness in critical job functions throughout the enterprise in order to give them that important edge.”
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