TrustRadius Insights for Skillsoft Leadership Development Program are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Wide range of topics: Many users have expressed appreciation for the wide range of topics covered by Skillsoft. This allows them to explore various areas of interest and enhance their skills in different fields.
Curated content: The knowledge portals offered by Skillsoft, such as Management Development, Six Sigma, Professional Foundations, Sales, etc., provide curated content that is meaningful and relevant to the learning experience. Some users have found this feature valuable in accessing high-quality resources.
Diverse learning media: Skillsoft's use of various learning media, including eLearning courses, books, book summaries, and videos, has been seen as a positive feature by reviewers. It caters to different learning preferences and individual needs.
We needed an off-the-shelf solution to provide leadership training. Since we were a small company with an undersized L&D team, we did not have enough manpower to develop programs ourselves. Skillsoft Leadership Development Program bridged our content gap so that we could provide a rich experience to our employees in an appropriate timeline.
Pros
Variety of content types
A lot of Topics
Well developed eLearning programs
Cons
I was not a fan of their LMS
Their price point was hard to manage on a tight budget
A lot of their eLearning looked the same.
Likelihood to Recommend
This provider is great if you are looking for a turn-key solution to take the place of creating your content. Also, it is a great tool if you already have existing content but want to offer a wide variety of topics that you did not have in the past.
We use Skillsoft Percipio (SLDP and Business Expert collections) as a MOOC (open source content) for our leadership communities, depending on the users learning style they can search, find, and consume assets that work for them (courses, videos, books, book summaries, etc.). Whether users are looking for micro learnings or more complex learning options, they are all there. We have over 16000 learning assets to work with.
Pros
Search on learning titles
Search on learning type
Admin functionality
Ability to curate
Cons
Some of the "studio" videos seems too structured
Older content may not get replaced
Likelihood to Recommend
Great for aspiring and new leaders who simply need to search and find content. Both desktop and mobile work great!
We used Skillsoft across the entire firm to provide eLearning training to our employees.
Pros
I really like their library of leadership videos where leaders share their best practices. They're short and easy to use in a variety of settings (e.g. trainings, business meetings, etc.).
I find Skillsoft to have strong customer service. They do a very good job of listening to your needs and advising a variety of solutions within the given parameters.
Cons
N/A. I was quite happy with them as a provider.
Likelihood to Recommend
In addition to a strong leadership video library, Skillsoft has good training on management, performance management, etc.
We are currently utilizing Skillsoft as part of our library/learning program for corporate accounts. It addresses the issue of having a platform to provide the necessary training for our customers. It has been merged within our website so customers are still able to benefit from some of our more internal products as well.
Pros
The platform provides an extensive amount of learning material that our customers can take advantage of such as books, courses and practice exams.
The Skillsoft platform can be used on your desktop, laptop and tablet formats which make it accessible at anytime.
The magnitude and detail of the reporting that Skillsoft provides is great. I have yet to come across a scenario where the information i sought was not available.
From an Administrative standpoint, assigning anything within the platform is extremely simple and does not require any prior knowledge to use.
Cons
The platform does have room to improve their response time for assistance. Depending on the issue an internal "help team may be required"
They removed what was called "knowledge centers" which could be summed up as an accumulation of books, courses, exams, practice exams, articles and basically any asset within the platform surrounded by a particular subject. This was a great benefit to some of our customer. It was a one-stop-shop but now you would need to search independently for all of those assets.
Because the platforms library can be customized its a bit of a struggle to have certain assets changed or modified within Skillsoft. You basically are on their time when it comes to updates or any major changes you as a customer would like to make.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you had an individual, group or a multitude of groups that you would need to train, this platform can work wonder and minimal time to do this as well. You can basically assign your whole company a list of things at the same time rather than assigning each person each individual asset.
There would be a scenario when reporting is unexpectedly requested and its needed in detail so you can easily in minutes grab a report off all individuals/groups, what assets they started, stopped, when and where they stopped, if they completed something etc. Rapid reporting is my favorite part.
It is intended to be used across the whole organization, but only a few progressive departments use it. I use it to supplement courses. For example in a teambuilding course, instead of buying a book, I might compliment the course with a book from SkillSoft, or assign a reading from a book from Books 24x7.
Pros
Access to Books
Large Inventory of Courses
Anywhere Anytime access
Cons
Voice Narration for US. Some areas don't respond to other accents.
Easier names for reports, easier access to reports.
Likelihood to Recommend
Appropriate as a compliment to other training. SkillSoft is NOT to be the be all end all of training. NO training is. It is not appropriate without an assessment of what the employee needs to improve upon.
VU
Verified User
Administrator in Human Resources (201-500 employees)
Our entire organization used Skillsoft. We use it to allow for employees to improve upon any necessary skills that they might be lacking and to allow for personalized training on new software that we put out or implement. We also store libraries of content for course work so that other teachers can have access to that.
Pros
Skillsoft organizes trainings really well. The trainings completed are organized in an easy to use manner.
Ease of use - there isn't much training required for new users to jump right in and being using.
Adding new trainings or certifictaions is really easy to do within the platform.
Cons
Add simpler training for even less skilled employees.
Likelihood to Recommend
Skillsoft is great for training employees when there are specific needs. For instance, if you have a need to have employees all trained in a new software that you plan to deploy, having them complete their training through skillsoft first saves time and money on in-house training. Employees can move through training at their own pace as opposed to an in-house trainer that trains everyone at one time. I find more skills are missed that way - people won't ask questions, but they are apt to go through the trainings at their own pace and pick up these skills.
I recommend products in their library to my customers. Fifteen years ago I was one of a few content developers for Skillsoft so I know the integrity of the instructional design and the quality of the product. Over the years, they have only gotten better and better and have some of the experts in the field as their subject matter experts. They run on all devices and you can even customize products from their library to meet your own needs. I now live in India and am having great response whenever I recommend Skillsoft to my customers and academic institutions as it is really the best out there. That is why they are the largest and most successful training company in the world and they earned it!
Pros
Best instructional design process in the world thanks to the vision of Sally Hovis.
Best thought leaders in the world in their respective fields contracted to handle the courses thanks to Lee Ritze
Best Learning Management System in multiple languages
Ability to customize your content and even put your logo in your training content
Wide range of product categories to choose from
Ability to get college credit, CEUs and certifications from leading organizations when taking certain training programs
Cons
I wish they could figure out how to use their older method of process simulation while keeping the flexibility of the mobile device size - it is not something they are doing incorrectly it is just the size of the icons get too small.
Sometimes their learning path seems tedious to the normal student, but as an instructional design professional I understand why they need to teach the way they teach.
Likelihood to Recommend
They have a large library - make sure you clearly study the library offerings and choose the courses that are best for you as you will never be able to use all of them. Make sure you survey your user base before purchasing the licensing of the library courses so the courses are 'marked' with an employee in mind to keep costs minimized. Only purchase the Books 24x7 if you have a large IT department - otherwise you might want to lease a smaller content portion. Their Leadership Development, Project Management, business series and critical thinking and technical products are exceptional.
We have offered SkillSoft to 100 users in our Technical Operations (manufacturing) function. Each user has access to 100 licenses. It mostly helped associates to read articles, listen to podcasts, and watch videos, and take quizes to improve their soft skills (communication, interpersonal skills). We also have selected project managers to participate the Project Management Knowledge Center with a goal of passing PMP certificate requirements. There is also a behavioral interview library we have offered to hiring managers to enhance their interview skills.
Pros
Skillsoft regularly updates its knowledge center with up to date courses and retires outdated materials.
Skillsoft has a dedicated representative to help resolve technical issues and create a client community to help clients with customized needs.
As it has 24x7 access our users can use the tool any time they have free time and learn as much as they can and save the progress.
Cons
I would love to see SkillSoft have live sessions. For example, user and instructor can have discussions through Skype or other online tools.
Some of the courses may take too long to complete. Suggest to split the course to several one or simplify the content.
Likelihood to Recommend
Key questions are:
What are your organization learning needs?
Do your employees prefer online learning?
Do you have ability to constantly check in and remind employees to participate the program?
Skillsoft is used by some to meet learning objectives and/or to fulfill short term learning needs. It is not used by many in the organization at this point in time. It is in consideration to be expanded and integrated in our learning management system offerings. Skillsoft is set to attempt to address the various learning needs to improve the business and our internal operations.
Pros
Nice quick videos to explain content
Quality content
Good presentation
Cons
Ever expanding needs to learn more and different content requires that its catalog of offerings to continue to expand
Likelihood to Recommend
Since I do not always directly use the Skillsoft software as frequently as my peers, I am not exactly sure all the specific scenarios where it is or is not best suited or appropriate. Same for the selection process, the software was selected without my involvement, so I am not positive on what was asked or under consideration when selecting the product.
We use Skillsoft as a part of our Learning and Organizational Development department at EnPro Industries. We've had an ongoing contract with them now for going on six years and have been very happy with their products and, especially, their service. We use their Business Curriculum library (online learning) and their Dialogue Design software to create custom content for our organization. We have also used their compliance/Academy product (we recently went with another vendor for the compliance portion, but still have the business courseware). The best and easiest part of working with Skillsoft is their people - my Learning Consultant and Account Representative team are a dynamic duo. We went through a recent revamp of our site and an upgrade to Skillsoft 8.0 and they answered every question or found someone who could and came in with helpful and creative suggestions. Speaking of the upgrade, Skillsoft just launched their new upgraded user interface, which makes them much more user friendly. As an administrator, Skillsoft is easy to use and teach others to use - everyone from our shop floor employees to our Executive staff worldwide uses it for their professional and personal development. All in all, I would recommend Skillsoft.
Pros
Customer service/Account representation
Provides useful information in the bi-yearly account reviews
Updates to courses/content
Cons
They are getting better, but keeping up with the IT times and keeping their site modern and user friendly
Compliance - we had 2 seperate interfaces between the compliance part (Academy) and the Business Courseware catelog and our custom content - this created a lot of confusion around what was what. Support and the usablility of Academy was not up to par with what we were used to with the normal SkillPort.
Technical support doesn't always have the answer
Likelihood to Recommend
I think Skillsoft is better suited for "office" employees - so who is your audience? Will you be creating custom content? If so, their Dialogue Design software is easy to use and publish to the site. Will you be a hands on, involved client? If so, they have great support and client relations. Do you like being involved in the industry? They have an awesome annual event called Perspectives with great speakers, demonstrations and people from around the world in the industry to network with.
