In case you missed the live event, be sure to listen to last week's UPK Customer iSeminar featuring Medtronic. This was the first iSeminar in our quarterly series to showcase UPK Professional (UPK and Knowledge Pathways). Donna Miller and Staci Gilbert gave viewers an inside look at samples of Medtronic's content as they shared their experiences, methodology and best practices for use of the solution. Here are some highlights of the call:

• Medtronic initially purchased UPK Professional to support a multi-year, global SAP rollout for 9,000 end users located in 24 countries.

• As time went on, they expanded their use of UPK Professional to include several of their other enterprise applications: PeopleSoft, Siebel CRM, Hyperion Financial Management, a number of SAP bolt-ons, Documentum, TrackWise, and many others.

• In combination with their Saba LMS, UPK Professional has allowed Medtronic to create, deploy, track and certify consistent end user training for critical transactions and processes across their organization worldwide - essential for a company in a heavily regulated industry.

• For key pieces of content or certain end user populations, some Medtronic business units localize/translate the global UPK content. Staci demonstrated examples of their SAP content which has been translated into Japanese.

• In the live SAP environment, end users rely on UPK's context sensitive in-application performance support. Medtronic has found this to be very helpful post go-live, giving just-in-time support so end users are confident in a new system or when performing tasks they don't often touch (at quarter or year end). UPK also serves as Medtronic's internal Google.

• Medtronic has realized savings on many fronts: reduction in support calls due to in-application performance support, elimination of their training clients, and speedier training (1.5 days rather than 5-7 days) of temporary workers by moving from ILT to a blended solution that includes UPK simulations for eLearning.

Thanks again to Donna and Staci for an exceptional presentation. They offered so many great examples for anyone who's looking for ways to get more out of UPK or interested in learning about UPK Professional: Knowledge Pathways.

- Karen Rihs, Oracle UPK Outbound Product Management