CASE STUDY

Driving down the cost of European training for a leading multinational

  • Having partnered with the client for over seven years, our on-site team now provides a fully-outsourced, holistic managed learning service, for 21,000+ employees across Europe, managing 80 percent of their £10m+ external training spend.
  • We’ve rationalised their European supply chain from 800 training suppliers to 400 providers, while consistently maintaining a high quality of delivery.
  • Our team delivered an 25% saving on external training costs in the first year. Subsequent years have seen an average annual saving of 15%.
  • Last year, new improvements to the way that training is scheduled and procured, and how events are marketed and attended by participants, delivered an additional saving of £1m.

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 fulfil 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 rationalise 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 realised 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 optimising 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 analyse 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. 

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