Driving down the cost of European training for a leading multinational

We provide a fully-outsourced managed learning service across Europe, which has helped this leading-edge, multinational engineering business to cut the cost and improve the quality of its training provision. Circa 80 percent of their external training spend of £10m+ comes through us, including personal skills, leadership, management, finance, IT, engineering, specialist training and higher/further education.

Prior to working with us, they were being overcharged by training suppliers and there was considerable overlap in the supply, with many different providers offering similar training. Working in partnership with them, we created a tailored approach for managing external training, and training-related services, across Europe, so they could fulfill their learning needs more cost effectively. We didn’t simply impose a pre-designed solution. We scoped the activity and agreed the subsequent processes and system requirements that would be needed, the management information we would provide, the implications for suppliers and the service level agreement criteria.

Early in the contract we were able to rationalize their European supply chain from 800 training providers down to 400. By introducing a more consistent process for training procurement, we delivered a 25% saving on bought-in training in our first year. Since then, we have managed more than £44m worth of training on their behalf and achieved savings of around £6m - an average saving of 15% every year - whilst maintaining a high level of quality. 

Our staged implementation began in the UK and Germany and then extended into the Nordics. As our partnership evolved, the client team realized that they could make significant additional savings and efficiency gains by allowing us to extend the scope of the contract to include scheduling the learning, managing delegate bookings and optimizing training occupancy across Europe. By improving the way that training is scheduled and procured, and how events are marketed and enjoyed by participants, we delivered a further £1m of savings last year.

In what is now a fully-outsourced learning operation, our on-site team sources, manages and administers training for 21,000+ employees across Europe. In essence, we provide a solution that can respond effectively to the varying levels of demand from their businesses. We also provide detailed, monthly management information, giving them greater visibility of their pan-European training activity. The information also enables us to analyze and forecast future training needs and likely volumes.

Previously, our customer had little sight of the quality of training delivery and spiralling cost. By providing visibility and consolidating the supply chain, we were able to ensure that the delivered solutions were of a consistent high level of quality and they achieved an improved return on investment.