ICL focuses on online training for trade boost

ICL has centralised its European training operation as the manufacturer attempts to drive three quarters of its business from online learning by 2002.

KnowledgePool, which was formed by ICL last week and is controlled from UK headquarters in Windsor, will focus entirely on the internet, moving away from a traditional classroom training model.

Paul Butler, managing director of KnowledgePool, believes demand for classroom-based methods will drop as it becomes a less attractive method of training, due to the relative costs and time involved. While denying that it is about to close any of its classroom-based operations, KnowledgePool has conceded that it will not be opening any more classrooms and existing ones will have a significant shift in emphasis.

"By 2002, we expect 70 percent of business to be online training. At present, less than 10 percent of our $96m European training revenue is from this sector," said Butler.

But Barry Charles, product development manager at QA Training, said: "While online training may be cheaper and useful for some subjects, there are still some areas where face-to-face training is very much essential, especially for complex ideas."

He added: "People need to have a mixture of different ways of doing things, so in that respect, we don't see KnowledgePool as a threat."