Harbinger Raptivity, last year’s Software Satisfaction Award winner for learning applications, faces a challenge for this year’s prize from Atlantic Link’s Content Point and digital publishing’s Corporate Language Training. John Stokdyk reports.

Now in its fourth year, the Software Satisfaction Awards scheme is based on an online questionnaire. In this year’s voting, nearly 500 members cast votes for their learning software. In the talent management category, which links learning and personal development to corporate objectives and succession planning, the iCIMS Talent Platform has been shortlisted alongside Carbon360, an online assessment tool from Element 78 Solutions.

The full shortlist and further details of the ceremony taking place in London on 8 October is available from the Software Satisfaction Awards website. Prizes will be awarded in 17 product categories covering accounting & finance, CRM/customer management as well as training/HR applications.
 
The sizeable learning software response sets the scene for an interesting three-way show down in October between Rapitivity, a learning management system, while Content Point represents the profession’s authoring wing. The Corporate Language Training is a dark-horse candidate that made it on to the shortlist thanks to a strong vote from learners.

Left behind in the chasing pack were Adobe’s eLearning Suite, Camtasia Relay, the Kallidus LMS from e2train and Kaplan IT Learning’s SST Trainer. Moodle, which got a strong write-in vote in last year’s questionnaire fared less well this year with only a handful of users taking part. But those that did record their opinions on the open source LMS gave it high marks.

Talent management, which crosses the boundary between the training and HR communities, remains something of a minority interest. With a much smaller sample, only iCIMS and Carbon360 recorded statistically significant samples. Experts and software suppliers have consistently argued for the need to manage talent and succession effectively during the downturn, but their advice appears to be falling on deaf ears for the moment. We look forward to seeing whether a revival in the economy is matched by interest in tools that help implement a strategic approach to learning and development.