With OutStart, Cummins Powers the Exchange of Two Kinds of Knowledge
03 Avril 2008 - 1:37PM
PR Newswire (US)
BOSTON, April 3, 2008 /PRNewswire/ -- Cummins Power Generation, the
Minneapolis maker of electrical generators, decided people need to
exchange two kinds of knowledge -- structured and informal -- to
work with its products. So the company has purchased OutStart
TrainingEdge.com software to deliver on-demand training and spark
collaboration, in one place. The goal is to upgrade the way the
Minneapolis company, a division of Cummins Inc. (NYSE: CMI),
teaches its global network of employees, distributors and customers
about its products. Initially, the software will deliver on-demand
training courses -- which Cummins Power Generation
(http://www.cumminspower.com/) calls "structured knowledge" -- to
employees, dealers and customers. The online training focuses on
the company's products and services. But TrainingEdge.com
(http://www.outstart.com/product/OutStart_TrainingEdge.html ) also
rips a page from the social networking playbook by serving up
online communities, wikis, and tools for finding and interacting
with experts. Communities, wikis and expertise exchange spur the
trading of what Cummins Power Generation calls "informal
knowledge." Think of this as the online equivalent of asking a
colleague in the next office for the best way to solve a problem,
or searching a stack of business cards for an expert you met at a
seminar. Cummins Power Generation plans to unveil TrainingEdge.com
to its employees and customers this spring. The Minneapolis company
isn't alone in investing in software for unlocking the knowledge
that's in people's minds. AMR Research expects companies in the
United States and Europe to spend $73 billion through 2008 on
software for capturing, archiving and sharing knowledge. Cummins
Power Generation's Training Manager Geraldine John said, "We will
use the tool to disseminate product knowledge to our sales and
service channel. The content hosted on TrainingEdge.com is integral
to our product qualification programs." TrainingEdge.com will help
Cummins Power Generation do this in several ways. For instance,
before launching new products, dealers can tap into
TrainingEdge.com to learn about service and maintenance. Employees
can also use the software to view their on-the-job certification
requirements. And customers can take training online, which will
serve as a prerequisite for hands-on courses. "We're very excited
about online collaboration through communities and expertise
exchange. We aim to put that in place after the structured
knowledge piece is launched," added John. "We believe it will be
powerful to have an environment that connects employees and dealers
with either peers or experts. We see our employees, dealers and
customers using the collaborative tools in TrainingEdge.com for
sharing ideas and trouble-shooting. This will be the first time our
dealers will have a method for connecting outside of emails and
phone calls." "People don't consume knowledge in a document-centric
way," (http://www.learningsystems08.com/outstart ) said Massood
Zarrabian, president and chief executive for OutStart. "Your
performance isn't going to improve by reading pages and pages of
documents. Your performance will improve with collaboration,
exploration and experimentation, which you initiate. And Cummins
Power Generation is designing its knowledge exchange with this in
mind." "Most traditional learning technologies separate structured
and informal learning to the point of sometimes creating separate
content silos," added Bryan Chapman of Chapman Alliance
(http://www.chapmanalliance.com/), a training industry consultancy.
"What makes TrainingEdge.com unique is its ability to centrally
locate both types of learning, creating a single site where people
can either contribute knowledge or access knowledge via their
participation in an online community. Almost all employers have a
vision for developing something like the solution Cummins Power
Generation is planning to implement. It's impressive that Cummins
is making that vision real." About OutStart OutStart software
powers formal and on-demand learning, knowledge sharing and
community/expert collaboration solutions that enable knowledge
workers -- employees, partners, and customers -- to perform their
roles far more efficiently and effectively. AgustaWestland,
Autodesk, British Telecom, CVS Caremark, the U.S. Navy, Verizon
Wireless and others rely on OutStart to increase individual and
organizational performance, improve knowledge transfer and lower
operating costs. Located in Boston, Mass., OutStart has offices
throughout the U.S. and Europe and can be found on the web at
http://www.outstart.com/ DATASOURCE: OutStart CONTACT: Bill Perry
of MARCH 24 Media LLC for OutStart, +1-614-975-7538, ; or Kerri
Renshaw of OutStart, +1-617-897-6800, Web site:
http://www.outstart.com/ http://www.cumminspower.com/
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