After Cornerstone, Dokeos and IMC, we proceed with our series of interviews by turning our attention on the side of the French vendors. Today, a vendor who keeps on advancing nationally and internationally, namely e-Doceo.

E-Doceo is basically and most especially renowned for its authoring tools, currently complemented by an LMS that I would have classified, in a former time, into the category “Rapid LMS”, for both its affordable characteristic and its usability around a tight functional scope. A limit which tends to be pushed further away after each version…

We have the great pleasure to receive today Jérôme BRUET, e-Doceo Manager, to talk about its solution.

Sébastien FRAYSSE (SF) – Could you give us a few trends about the evolution of the LMS market by the beginning of 2010? How is the demand evolving?

Jérôme BRUET (JB) – The demand is strongly increasing around 2 major axes. First of all, the middle market which gets equipped and which, thanks to the SaaS mode, is provided with an adapted economic model. Moreover, we increasingly work on migration projects. Effectively, a large number of companies are entering the second era of e-learning. A few years ago, they chose an LMS which allowed them to start their e-learning activity but they have, from now on, new requirements. These projects do not only require to implement the LMS but also to migrate legacy data.

SF – Before talking about your LMS, eLearning Manager, could you describe in a few words all the pieces that constitute you software offer?

JB – Our range is based on a principle of module both autonomous and complementary. We have authoring tools, « elearning animgalery » for rapid-learning and « elearning maker » for e-learning projects pedagogically more qualitative. These two tools can operate in a standalone or collaborative mode in connection with « elearning workflow ». Our virtual classroom, « elearning live », or even our training portal, « e-doceo training shop », are also preponderant products within our activity.

SF – What are the main assets of your LMS? How does it differentiate itself within an already very abundant market?

JB – Its ergonomy and usability are regularly praised by our users, but its major asset lies in its configuration flexibility. It allows a very strong adaptability to the configurations of our customers which are admittedly very varied. Furthermore, it is a very complete tool integrating the skills management, testing and accreditation, web 2.0, multi-site management, multi-language management or even an off-line player. Finally, the e-doceo range is also an undeniable asset for our LMS: in effect, the virtual classroom, the training portal or even the LCMS can be integrated to it with a few clicks. This is a guarantee of evolvability and consistency for our customers.

SF – The functional scope of eLearning Manager extends rapidly. Is there any contradiction with your goal to propose a simple and affordable LMS?

JB – When we edited the first version of elearning manager in 2002, this was effectively our primary goal: the provision of a simple and affordable product. This concept of a friendly LMS was completely different from what existed on the market at this time, that is to say very IT solutions with little pedagogy. Our positioning resulted in a rapid success with numerous accounts and notably with multinational companies. The necessity to make the LMS functional scope evolve has henceforth come from our customers, but we have maintained our original philosophy, ergonomy at the core of the application. Hence, we have today a very powerful tool, but most especially very modular. It gets adapted to its users.

SF – What about your next development axes? Are some new functionalities being planned for eLearning Manager? Is your range to be completed by new products?

JB – Sébastien, your blog is highly visited, you do not seriously think I am to unveil my road-map to you. More seriously, our R&D effort is permanent and is what makes e-Doceo different. We keep on innovating, our build teams have lots of ideas but our priority is to turn these good ideas into « user friendly » functionalities. We have planned to launch new products by the end of this year.

SF – Thanks a lot Jérôme for answering my questions. Just below, a few links to allow our readers to go still further:

• e-Doceo website
• e-Learning news blog by e-Doceo