A combined 45 years in corporate training has taught Charles A. Shields and Lynsie Hall an important lesson: Leadership seminars are great for learning, but practice is more likely to result in change.

So the two experts in corporate training have developed OmniCoach, an e-learning system they hope will help people practice what they've learned, and take the two partners from the basement of a West Friendship home to the boardrooms of prominent companies.

But their task will be difficult. Several e-learning companies -- including some formed by prominent universities -- were among the dot-bombers that failed during the past two years. In addition, one analyst warned that in today's climate, customers are more interested in spending money on big, well-known vendors, not little guys.

"Companies are leaning toward brand leaders [rather] than the small upstart companies," said Trace Urdan, a senior analyst at ThinkEquity Partners in San Francisco. "A lot of buyers are very hesitant to work with vendors that may or may not be around, that aren't well financed, [and] that may not have sufficient resources to fund losses until they could be profitable."

But Shields and Hall believe their system will stand out among competitors'.

OmniLearn LLC, their Web-based training company, has a system that is cost-efficient for businesses and, they say, measurable in its effectiveness. The OmniCoach system allows each student to learn at his or her pace, and reaches them wherever they are -- at their desks through personal computers, or elsewhere through mobile phones, personal data assistants or pagers.

Shields and Hall, both executive trainers, started the business two years ago, and have spent the past year testing the product with Sunrise Assisted Living and nine other companies nationwide. With only a few contracts, OmniLearn is profitable, Hall said, and several of the companies involved in the trial have signed on for year-long contracts.

The company commissioned a staff of nine former corporate trainers and human resource executives last month as salespeople to help bring the system to more computers and PDAs. This year's goal is to train between 5,000 and 10,000 people, Hall said.

"We want to impact people, not once in that [training] setting, but through time," she said. "We can't make sure you're already learning and practicing unless we're able to touch you throughout time."

OmniCoach is like an electronic tutor that trains managers and employees on leadership and management techniques such as time management, critical thinking and problem-solving. The company also designs customized training programs.

The system assesses users' learning styles, gives lessons and later prompts students with a specific activity to put that day's lesson into action. The lessons take less than five minutes to read, and students can gain access to lessons or activities when and where they choose, Hall said.

The short lessons and mobile delivery are key, Shields said, so much so that the company has applied for a patent.

The system also tests users from time to time to determine whether the lessons have resulted in changed behavior, which is the goal of every trainer, and a selling point to any company, Shields said.

At a cost of about a dollar a day per user, the system does not have to be limited to senior executives, Shields said.

"We wanted it available to people who were not senior executives," he said. "It had to be convenient, it had to be effective and it had to be affordable."

The relatively low cost is partly what persuaded Sunrise Assisted Living to expand its the system from the 25 managers who were testing it to up to 250 managers nationwide.

"If you look at what we spent on training overall, this is a very small part of it. In the overall scheme, it's less than 10 percent of what we'll spend on training," said Alex Mabin, vice president of operations for Sunrise. The company is using the system as a supplement to its other training programs.

"It will enhance our other leadership training," he said. "For me, the money is very well spent for [the workers] to have something they can do when they have time to do it."

But turning that affordability into profitability for OmniLearn could prove difficult, Urdan said.

E-learning accounts for between $2 billion and $4 billion of a $56 billion training market, he said, and the good news is that e-training is a rapidly growing industry -- particularly at a time when companies are looking for a more cost-effective way to train their employees.

But companies in a squeeze for training dollars also are less likely to spend on training that is not mission-critical, he said.

"It's a 'nice-to-have' kind of a product, it's not a 'need-to-have,'" Urdan said. "If they have something unique ... the best potential future for them is to try to sell themselves or partner with a larger vendor."

That's not in the plans right now, Hall said. The company is focused on expansion -- for itself and for its clients.

Said Shields: "We really are interested in lifelong learning. There's always room for improvement."