Mark Hellinger

Mark Hellinger

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Mark is one of the training industry’s leading technologists. He has over 25 years of experience with a track record of building successful technology companies from early-stage private investment through IPO or acquisition. Prior to Xyleme, Mark was CEO of PRAJA, a leader in Business Activity Monitoring that was successfully sold to TIBCO Software. Previously, Mark was President & COO for ERP vendor Interactive Group, responsible for the global expansion that led to its IPO and subsequent sale. Mark is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

It seems to me that this is a good time to comment on the state of the Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS) market given the many changes in 2012.

Guest Post by Mark Hellinger, Xyleme President & CEO

A recently published report concluded that Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS) implementations using reusable learning object (RLO) models typically result in a small return on investment. I am not surprised. For starters, I happen to know that none of our customers participated in the study :-)

I remember the first time I went out on a sales call. I was a young engineer and I really didn’t know much about sales. After the call, the VP of Sales I was with gave me a book called “Prospecting Your Way to Sales Success”. It was a great story about the discipline sales professionals need to be successful. Contrary to what many people believe, the best sales professionals are not “the slick salesman” or the “tell them what they want to hear to get the deal” type.

I want to comment and discuss a real-world example of why XML and XML standards are fundamental to your strategy when selecting an LCMS. One of the great questions we hear when prospective clients evaluate LCMS solutions is “what is the role of XML in my decision”? Does it matter if I choose an LCMS built on a pure XML platform or one that is built on proprietary content formats?