TopHR: SkillSoft has over 10 years history, yet you chose 2011 toenter the Chinese market, why? How do you feel about the Chinamarket? And what’s your marketing strategy?

　　Glenn: I want to make a clarification here first. 2011 isn’t the firstyear we entered into China. SkillSoft first entered the Chinese marketback in 2002. At that stage, we had 2 Resellers. In 2009, we enteredinto an exclusive arrangement for our localized, Chinese version ofour courses with AMBOW EDUCATION. In parallel, a company called50LESSONS had entered the Chinese market localizing video basedmanagement content. In February 2011, SkillSoft acquired the assetsof 50Lessons and as a result, in 2011, SkillSoft now has a singlereseller for our courseware content and multiple Resellers for our50Lessons content.

　　TopHR: Besides 50 Lessons, have you localized other lessoncourseware?

　　Glenn: We continue to expand the business skills course librarythrough our relationship with Ambow Education. That libraryincludes four to five hundred courses and we are going to releaseanother 50 courses this year.

　　TopHR: What preparations have SkillSoft done in order to meet theneeds of Chinese enterprises? For instance, platform localization,courseware localization, local support, and so on. What are SkillSoft’sadvantages? Tell us why Chinese organizations should chooseSkillSoft eLearning?

　　Glenn: Our strategy with courseware is to ask Ambow to approachtheir customers after looking through the English business-themedlibraries and prioritize which of those titles are best for the Chinesemarket. So for example, we localized four to five hundred titles, butthe Business Skills library actually has around 2,000 titles. We tryto focus on the ones that would be the most appropriate for theChinese market and we work with local Chinese companies to localizethat content. So back to your point, it’s not just translation. We lookat the leadership program or the coaching program and figure howthat would be best delivered in China not in North America. Therewill be subtle difference so it’s true localization.

　　TopHR: Please provide a brief overview of SkillSoft's elearningplatform to our readers. We know that SkillSoft delivers a SaaSmodel to users, and SaaS platform needs a wide range of adaptabilityto meet customers’ demands. Some eLearning providers designedseveral versions for different sizes of companies. Does SkillSoft offerthe same options?

　　Glenn: One thing we haven’t done is localize our SaaS model we usein the English-speaking market. Mainly because it’s very complexand very costly. With SkillSoft courses, Ambow has its own hostingservice they use for that model. With 50Lessons video content, weare lucky to have, as part of the acquisition, 50Lessons platformwhich we are going to continue to use and is hosted here in China. Soas I mentioned before, it’s a double strategy. We have the localizedcourses which Ambow resells and we also have the localized videomaterials.

　　TopHR: With the change in people's learning styles and the popularityof powerful PDAs and wireless networks, has SkillSoft developed anyapplications to follow this trend?

　　Glenn: We actually have several PDA options. Let me show you acouple of examples on my cellphone. On my business card you willfind a Books24x7® logo. This is a SkillSoft product where we haveobtained the rights from leading book publishers, to digitize anentire book and convert it into an online format. You can downloadit and you can read it online. However, the whole philosophy is notto read the book from start to finish. It’s to go in and search on aparticular topic or a particular area that you need to read up on andlearn about to be productive at your job. So that’s very key to thatparticular solution. It’s all about search, not about reading a lot. Youcan have iPhone apps for books that enable you to do the exact samething. You could be on the road or on the plane. All you have to dois to search for that particular information. It’s a licensed model, soyou have to get a license from SkillSoft and download it. That’s justone example of what we have. You may also download the materiallike this… (showing us a video on his cellphone). This is a video wecaptured with a leading author. We actually released a hundredof these videos with subtitles last month. This video collection iscalled Leadership Development Channel (LDC). We released thesevideos in Chinese for the local market. These are great programsthat you would be able to utilize whether you are travelling or onthe road. We have videos like this on leadership, coaching, sales,etc., which are great tools for an individual. An example that I liketo use is that I could be a sales person meeting a new client. I couldrun a 3 to 4 minute video on objection handling, as an example, justto refresh my memory and boost my confidence before I go into asales meeting. The ability to have access to some basic knowledgeat my fingertips on a mobile device is fantastic. One of the greatuses of technology at the moment is for social networking, suchas using Facebook. We have Books24x7, our online library that Imentioned before and we have an application called inGenius whichis a social networking application as part of our Books24x7 productthat enables you to share interactively with your colleagues aboutthe book that you are reading or a paragraph that you just read in abook. So technology is really coming a long way to enable people tocollaborate and share knowledge. We are active on Facebook andTwitter which are great ways for promotion.

　　TopHR: As we know, SkillSoft is not only a supplier of an elearningplatform, but also a supplier of courseware, such as IT certificationcourseware, business courseware. Right now, what coursewaredo you market first in China? And will you develop the business ofcustomized courseware?

　　Glenn: I can get you a full list of customized business coursewarethat we have. But as for now, off the top of my head, I can tell youthat there are about four to five hundred titles in the collection, eachof which is about three to four hours in duration. So it’s about 1000hours content covering customer service, leadership, negotiation,project management. If we have a customer who wants us tocustomize an existing course or build something brand new for them,we would certainly do that.

　　TopHR: SkillSoft must have lots of global clients, please tell us aboutsome typical clients.

　　Glenn: Yes, we have many multinational companies in China thatare big users of our content. All of the major IT companies like IBM,Microsoft, Deloitte Consulting, PricewaterhouseCoopers, etc., all ofthose organizations that are based here. One of our biggest clients inAsia Pacific is TATA Consulting Services, a major Indian IT company.They have a license in excess of 100,000 users globally. There’s awhole range of other companies like Shell and Honeywell, our globalcustomers that have a presence in China.

　　TopHR: China being one of the fastest-growing markets in the world;there are lots of business opportunities. Young people in China,especially those working in big cities, are eager to learn more skillsand new knowledge. Employers are facing the challenge of how totrain their talent efficiently, and see positive impact with elearningfor their businesses. What is the SkillSoft’s blueprint in China in 5years? What are the challenges for SkillSoft?

　　Glenn: It would be silly for me to try to put an expectation on whatthe business would be like. There are certain reasons that I say this.Let me give you an example. We have had a presence in India for justover 10 years. But we’ve always had a presence via a reseller channelin India. Up until about two and a half years ago, we began toemploy staff to be based in India. During this time, we have managedto grow our business five times over! Because we gave it focus, wegave it attention and we put our own staff into a territory like that.We would like to think we can have the same kind of growth here inChina, if not bigger, because the thirst for knowledge is unbelievable.I can certainly say this from personal experience. When I see Chinesestudents studying abroad, they are so diligent and focused on theireducation and trying to be the best. And I think, as you pointed outbefore, with technology today and the thirst for knowledge thatChina has, it’s a nice situation to look at 2 economies like India andChina who are in this fierce race to see who is going to come out ontop. The huge difference in the development of China in the last 2-3years, needless to say 5 years and the adaption of English languagewithin China has changed so much. So I think this rapid growth andchange in China really makes me hopeful for what we can do in thenext 2-3 years. Unfortunately I cannot put a dollar figure on what itcould be. Because whatever I say, it could be wrong.

　　I first visited China in Shenyang in 2004. And when I went back laterin 2-3 years, there were new buildings and soccer stadiums. soothegrowth is phenomenal. I went to Beijing 3 weeks ago and I talkedto a Chinese who has lived in the US and came back 3-4 years later.I asked him about the biggest change he witnessed there. He told methat he could no longer recognize the place he lived.