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Marketing
Affiliate Network
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Press Releases Back
To School For New Economy
Online barter e-marketplace forms strategic alliance with WESTON,
MA – July 28, 2000 – How do businesses thrive in the New Economy? To help members of its B2B trading network use these benefits for their employees—on a barter basis—BarterItOnline.com today announced an alliance with Nashua, N.H.-based SkillSoft, a leading provider of e-Learning services critical to corporate growth in the New Economy. “Web-delivered, self-directed courses and performance support tools have proven to be a cost-effective, efficient, and productive way of staying current and helping to produce bottom-line benefits,” said Richard L. Cravatts, CEO and Founder of BarterItOnline.com. “Company-sponsored education programs also have a high-perceived value among employees, and are instrumental in instilling loyalty, productivity, and retention in the workforces that have access to them.” SkillSoft's
courses will be offered in two products: ''The Professional
Effectiveness Library'' and ''The Business Education Library.'' The
first focuses on teaching communication skills. The second covers
technical business skills such as sales and finance. Some of the
individual courses are ''How To Lead A Team,'' ''High Impact Business
Writing'' and ''Sexual Harassment Awareness.'' “We
see being able to provide online corporate education and training to
our members and their employees as a perfect example of how barter can
be used to leverage a company’s growth,” said Cravatts.
“Bartering products and services from your company to help improve
the quality of your workforce makes good economic sense, especially
since America corporations are currently spending some $50 billion a
year on continuing education to upgrade their employees’ abilities
and skill levels.” And
while online education
has only captured a tiny portion of a global education
market pegged at $2 trillion, Framingham, MA-based IDG has
estimated that its share will grow to $15 billion by 2002. Other
analysts are enthusiastic about their projections for the future of
online learning, as well: ninety per cent of
businesses, corporations and higher education institutions, they say,
will be using the internet for online
learning in the next few years. “In
a time when a whole new industry is being creating online, it seemed
logical that options for bartering be applied to the New Economy,”
said Cravatts. “ For that reason we’ve included some innovative
services on BarterItOnline.com to help businesses ramp up quickly,
competitively, and in a way that conserves the sometimes limited
infusions of venture capital—online education being the key resource
for us to help strengthen our users’ businesses.” BarterItOnline
takes the unique step of creating a user-friendly business
‘portal,’ with tools and resources for doing business more
effectively–in this case, however, all the tools are related to
operating, promoting, making more profitable, and expanding one’s
business through barter. About
BarterItOnline.com Founded
in September 1999, BarterItOnline.com is a privately-held Boston-based
e-marketplace for B2B barter. Its management team, with members from
top financial, advertising, cultural, and high-tech posts, has been
active in using bartered media to leverage the growth of regional
businesses, while helping them to conserve cash and optimize sales.
Initial funding for the company came from Publications Management
Company, a regional publishing firm with a bartered media division. The
use of barter as a strategic business tool is well-established. The
Wall Street Journal, for instance, recently noted that
‘officially reported barter totals an estimated $16 billion a year,
or 0.2% of the total U.S. economy,’ and those numbers do not even
reflect the appearance of online trading. According to a recent study
by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Internet Advertising Bureau, barter
‘represented 7 percent of the $693 million in Internet advertising
recorded in the first quarter’ of 1999. About
SkillSoft SkillSoft
is a provider of total e-Learning solutions for Global 2000 companies,
covering a wide variety of critical business skills (commonly called
"soft skills"). All of SkillSoft’s courses and support
tools have been specifically designed to take advantage of the
benefits offered by the Internet and the Web-based environments of our
customers. This design enables users of SkillSoft’s products to
access the material they need, with the specificity or breadth that
they require anytime and in any location that they may need it.
Customers receive comprehensive learning and performance support
solutions for their workforce, comprised of a library of over 260
courses (over 3,000 learning objects) encompassing a wide array of
professional effectiveness skills, such as management, leadership,
communication, project management and customer service, as well as
business topics such as finance, marketing, sales and strategy.
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