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TopClass Proven to Directly Impact Sales and Speed Time to Market

Dublin, Ireland - August 13th, 2003 - WBT Systems, one of the world's leading providers of Enterprise e-Learning solutions, today announced a wide range of customer successes in Sales Training Deployments. Over the past number of years, WBT Systems has developed products to enable the fast conversion of content and web delivery of that content to mobile workers. A number of global sales organisations have selected the TopClass e-Learning Suite, including Credit Suisse, Diageo, Volvo, Valero Energy, the Liberty Group and Baloise Insurance.

In today’s fiercely competitive market, product innovation and speed to market are key competitive factors. This poses substantial challenges in terms of educating sales teams on product features and advantages and driving the company’s brand awareness in the market. The implementation of TopClass has consistently shown that these challenges can be met. In every case TopClass has helped to drive direct top line growth, while at the same time dramatically cutting the cost of training. The feedback from the field has also been extremely positive and has shown a higher level of participation, retention and certification.

One of the main product features to have contributed to this success is TopClass Mobile. This module allows the sales team to take their training course while on the road, without the need for a network connection, and give an identical learning experience to the online equivalent. This might be the entire course, or just some elements of an overall blended program. In addition, any test results can be synchronised back to the database at the push of a button, ensuring overall training records are intact.

Diageo, the world's leading premium drinks business with 25,000 employees in over 180 international markets, chose TopClass because of its leading rapid content development tools and mobile capability for training delivery to staff while on the move. These features decrease the time to market by allowing training to be created faster and delivered more efficiently, while the mobile capability ensures that Diageo's mobile workforce can gain crucial product knowledge without being taken out of the field. "With the introduction of new products, time is of the essence. The TopClass e-Learning Suite has proven to be ideal for getting a dispersed and disparate set of employees aligned and educated on a new product," said Deepti De Soyza, e-Learning Manager at Diageo.

Credit Suisse is in the process of deploying TopClass to provide sales training to the Group’s 4,000 strong sales team, and legal and compliance training to all 50,000 staff. “We chose WBT Systems because of their understanding of our business. The commercial, competitive and regulatory environment that we play in is very complex and WBT Systems understand this. They are helping us to respond to these challenges with innovative solutions to cut costs and improve efficiency,” said Anthony Cerquone, Head of Talent Development and Leadership Technology, Credit Suisse Financial Services.

Volvo CE, one of the largest providers of construction equipment in the world, has selected TopClass as their global e-Learning solution, to provide sales, service and product training to their worldwide dealer network. “Sales training has always been a key priority for Volvo CE and our objective was to get the training to the right people and radically reduce the cost of training a new sales person. Using TopClass we were able to do this,” said George Lilly, VP Marketing, Volvo CE. “By providing the dealers with relevant, easy to understand training, we have increased their knowledge of our product range and freed up their time to spend more time selling - increasing market share by over 30%.”

Liberty Group's Sales Development and Accreditation Department implemented TopClass with the help of IOCORE, WBT System's partner in South Africa. Using TopClass and Liberty’s "@liberty to learn" web site, a combination of paper-based and online learning is offered – a blended approach for the self-directed learner. “We saw the monthly average for a new recruit go from one policy sold to three,” says Natascha Baker, Development Consultant with Liberty’s Sales Development and Accreditation Division.

Valero Energy Corporation, one of the top marketing and refining companies in the United States, has selected TopClass as its e-learning and content management solution for its retail marketing division to train more than 10,000 employees at its 1,400 company-owned retail stores. “Because of its ability to transfer a large volume of content quickly and in a standard format through the use of TopClass Publisher, we could deploy it quickly,” said Judy Grover-Allen, Valero’s Senior Manager of Retail Support Projects. “Already, we have seen a real savings in terms of dollars and time and we have realized a 100 percent return on our first-year investment.”

The Baloise Insurance Group currently uses TopClass to deliver sales and product training to its employees. "We needed an e-Learning solution which would enable us to quickly reach high performance and proficiency levels and as a result gain competitive advantage through increased top-line revenues. WBT's TopClass solution meets our needs by providing for adaptive, individualised learning paths based on its extremely powerful Learning Objects architecture," said Georges Bornschlegl, e-Learning project manager, Baloise Insurance Group.

"The business case for e-Learning has never been stronger. With these success stories, WBT Systems has demonstrated that through the use of TopClass we can deliver a real Return on Investment that goes far beyond reducing the training budget, leading to significant increases in top line revenue growth,"said Declan Kelly, CEO WBT Systems.

About WBT Systems

WBT Systems is one of the leading providers of Enterprise e-Learning Solutions in the world. WBT Systems' TopClass e-Learning Suite™ enables the rapid creation, deployment, and management of knowledge delivery across the enterprise. It is a robust, easily deployed, web-based Learning platform with over two million users worldwide. Our implementation experience spans a variety of industries, including financial services, healthcare, government, and pharmaceuticals, across blue chip companies such as Alexander Forbes, Allergan, Basler Insurance, Belgacom, Credit Suisse, Danish Confederation of Trade Unions, Diageo, Dow Chemical, Eurocontrol, Liberty Group, University of Chicago Hospitals, U.S. Department of Defense and Volvo CE.

Established in 1995, WBT Systems is the leading European owned e-Learning platform vendor in the world. With headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, WBT Systems has offices in North America based in Waltham, MA and in the UK (London) and Germany (Düsseldorf). For more information see www.wbtsystems.com

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