Skillsoft’s Percipio platform, which will be available for SAP SuccessFactors in four different bundles, provides a modern approach to curating content, and will be of value to channel partners helping customers with digital transformation strategies.
Corporate learning provider Skillsoft has announced an enhancement of their relationship with SAP. It will see SAP sell an SAP Solution Extension that integrates SAP SuccessFactors and Skillsoft’s Percipio learning experience platform. The SAP Content Stream by Skillsoft solution will be available as of October 14, with four different bundling options. The announcement was made at last week’s SAP SuccessConnect event in Las Vegas.
Skillsoft is a long-established player in the corporate learning space, in business since 1998. Percipio is the latest version of their original platform, while SumTotal, a talent management Learning Management System [LMS], which Skillsoft acquired in 2014, is their other brand and one-third of the business.
“Skillsoft serves three segments,” said Manuel Dufresne, VP, Strategy & Corporate Development at Skillsoft, who heads up their strategic and corporative development, which includes M&A, strategic partnerships and developing partner business. “One is business customers looking for leadership skills, one is around technology and developers, and the third is compliance training, including HR. We bring to market solutions that always include a combination of content and platform, and are ubiquitous and platform agnostic.”
Skillsoft’s relationship with SAP is an established one. Skillsoft is one of only five SAP SuccessFactors extension partners and the only content provider among them.
“We have had the relationship for a long time, and SuccessFactors was integrated with our previous platform,” Dufresne said. “This is the first time we have had a tight integration between them and our new Percipio content delivery platform.”
The new relationship is a deeper one, that goes beyond the simpler integration on the older Skillsoft platform, and provides a strong Go-to-Market relationship.
“Our old platform was really what would now be considered to be old-fashioned content, where you link to it, and it ported in assets that needed to be curated,” Dufresne indicated. “With Percipio, we aren’t just linking content assets, but also bringing curation that goes with the content. You can search and find channels, curated paths that help learners achieve specific goals. We have books, audio books, virtual labs, and all of that is brought into the Skillsoft experience, with the curated paths providing a much broader experience. The search is made in such a way that it brings the most relevant content to the learner.”
SAP SuccessFactors has its own native learning capabilities, but the Skillsoft one has the deeper focus that comes with specialization, and has a different philosophy as well.
“The SAP SuccessFactors LMS is a top-down assignment, which doesn’t really platy to learner engagement,” said Robert Hartsough, Skillsoft’s SVP Global Content Sales. “We draw the learner in and engage the learner with more of a bottom-up experience. We also provide AI-suggested learner solutions that don’t exist elsewhere in the market. That’s a game-changer.”
SAP can resell the new Skillsoft SAP Solution Extension in four different bundles once it goes live on October 14. They are the Business Essentials Edition, the Leadership & Digital Transformation Edition, the Productivity & Collaboration Edition, and the Technology & Developer Edition.
“This is a great opportunity for specific categories of partners – system integrators and learning management specialists,” Dufresne said. “It helps them position themselves as digital transformation advisors, as part of a broader digital transformation program. Partners can help them craft the right learning path with this, and we can help them to sell their services.”
