A recent survey from industry analysts, Bersin & Associates, found that 68% of knowledge workers now feel that their biggest learning problem is an "overwhelming volume of information". Similarly, one of the key challenges learning and development professionals face today is how to make use of informal learning and use it to generate valuable business and performance-based information.

Kallidus 8 helps learning professionals manage this information by enabling them to specify an environment for their learner that combines their own formal learning and performance operations with links to external tools, informal or otherwise. This means that a far wider range of learning can now be delivered within a structured and easy-to-navigate environment. In this way, informal learning can operate seamlessly with more formal learning, such as instructor-led training, eLearning, and blended learning.

Kallidus 8's new 'iGoogle style' web-gadget-driven interface raises the bar on the learner experience, bringing it into line, navigationally, with the web's most popular sites. The new interface will also enable the administrator to easily specify user profiles, which provide their own set of windows and tools.

Perhaps even more important in the long term, however, is that Kallidus 8 has a greatly extended reporting capability. The new reports enable users to capture performance and learning data and represent this information in tabular and graphical formats. This will allow learning professionals to capture the most powerful metrics - combined from all their activities - and deliver that data straight to the organisation's top executives to create real business value.

The launch comes at a time when there is a clear market demand for new ways of learning and reporting on such learning. A survey of over 100 senior L&D managers held only this month by e2train in partnership with the Learning and Skills Group found that 87% of respondents believe there needs to be a stronger link between learning and development and core business processes and strategy. The survey also found that over 60% of managers had a positive attitude towards learning as long as the benefits are clear.

Linking learning closer to organisational needs was also deemed to be the single greatest personal learning challenge faced by L&D managers today (28%), followed by increasing L&D's profile within the organisation (17%) and social learning and the use of Web 2.0 tools (16%). Some 45% of respondents said they would provide more comprehensive or more frequent reports to the board if they had the necessary tools to do so. Currently, learning is reported on and discussed at boardroom level by the majority of companies on a monthly (35%) or quarterly (39%) basis. Only 7% of organisations have no board level discussions regarding the value of learning.