Training Industry

You ran the skills audit. You’ve got the spreadsheet. You know where your gaps are. So now what? This is where most learning and development (L&D) efforts stall. The insights feel obvious. And the hard part, actually doing something about it, gets pushed to next quarter. I’ve spent years building and running a learning and development program from scratch. Here’s what I’ve learned about turning a skills inventory into a plan that moves people forward.

Most learning and development (L&D) organizations are structured in one of three ways: a centralized model, where one team serves the entire organization; a decentralized model, where individual business units or regions manage their own learning functions; or a federated model, which blends centralized governance with decentralized content development and delivery. Each approach has advantages depending on an organization’s size, complexity and business needs.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — July 9, 2026 — Cresta, the leading customer experience AI platform, today announced the launch of Cresta Training Simulator, an agentic training product for human agents that replaces scripted role-play with live, adaptive simulations using AI agents. Training Simulator generates simulated customers based on a company’s actual customer conversations.

Leadership development equips leaders with many useful skills. They learn how to set expectations, coach employees, give feedback, hold people accountable, delegate work, solve problems and build collaboration. These skills matter. But the harder test is not whether a leader knows how to coach, delegate, give feedback or hold someone accountable. It’s whether they can choose the right response when the situation is messy, emotional or unclear.

Frequent headlines continue to share what many employees already sense: Organizations are trading headcount for computers. Oracle recently cut 21,000 jobs amid what analysts are calling a “SaaS apocalypse,” redirecting that capital toward artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. In many organizations, the message from the top is clear. Move faster and automate aggressively to get to the front of the race. I understand the pressure.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — July 8, 2026 — Sandler, part of Trilliad’s Sales Performance Solutions service line and a global leader in sales training and performance improvement, today announced the launch of the Sales Performance Ecosystem, a comprehensive system for defining, measuring, training and sustaining sales performance across the full revenue lifecycle.

Artificial intelligence (AI) enablement is sitting at the top of nearly every learning team’s plate right now, and the hackathon has become a go-to move: gather everyone in a room, hand them the tools, let them build. It’s a genuinely good way to generate energy. The problem is that energy is not the same thing as enablement, and a build event on its own is not a learning strategy.

Learning and development (L&D) leaders are often frontline influencers in shaping workplace culture through programs and development initiatives designed to improve engagement, develop future leaders and strengthen belonging — all in ways that respond to the varying expectations of a multigenerational workforce. One of the biggest challenges of this work is that culture is widely misunderstood and rarely defined in concrete, actionable terms.

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — July 8, 2026 — Performacentric, an AI-powered business performance company, today announced the launch of PerformU, an AI-driven learning platform built for small and medium-sized businesses. PerformU lets companies deliver custom learning material focused on specific business problems, then converts what employees learn into real-time performance improvement recommendations. The platform goes live Aug. 3, 2026, and SMBs can now sign up for the free pre-beta program.

Partner education efforts always start with good intentions but tend to grow stale. Partners are working across multiple vendors, balancing priorities and often lack the context and access that internal teams rely on. When learning is hard to navigate or disconnected from real work, partners fall back on surface-level knowledge, limiting how effectively they position and support your product.