RISK have been one of the leading construction industry health & safety training providers operating UK wide since 1998. Their training courses are renowned for being practical, entertaining and realistic 'to the real world'. Providing construction industry courses and qualifications from leading awarding bodies CITB, NEBOSH and IOSH means they have a wide portfolio of courses to manage. Add to this almost a dozen training locations across the UK and a course frequency of between every two-four weeks. You begin to get a feel for the administration required.
The greatest risk was competing with training brokers
As a provider RISK had to manage the course materials, tutors, delegate bookings, venues and marketing for every course they held. However, their market share was being eroded by ‘training brokers’ who simply passed on delegates without any of this administrative burden. With much lower overheads and being focused almost entirely upon marketing and sales, the ‘broker model’ was much more agile. Mike Adams, the MD of RISK, had recognised he needed to change things to halt this business model eroding his margins.
A fresh look at how the business needed to operate – everything needed to be challenged
Having worked with Quiet Storm I had confidence they could help us reach the right solution. As registered Growth Coaches, I was able to work with them under the government funded GrowthAccelerator programme. This enabled me to have one-to-one coaching to develop the new business strategy using their Storming® process. With their understanding of my business challenges, coupled with a vast base of marketing experience – I was able to develop a new business model.
A reduction in costs, faster answers and total accountability
The process has enabled us to transform the business from one primarily managed by individuals and all of the challenges which come with it; to a business with a central information system, and devolved responsibility. The result is I have more time to work ‘on the business’ as I’m free from working in it.
Leadership and Management Training has given us the skills to manage the flow of enquiries
The online system is the hub of a network of search engine optimised ‘course focused’ websites. These promote the specific qualifications and relevant courses being run. All bookings are feed directly into the portal automatically. If the portal indicates a course is profitable but not at maximum delegates, we engage with location & qualification targeted Google Adwords to ‘top up’ bookings.
Systems running the business – people running the systems.
The information management system makes job roles and responsibilities clear. It provides all our key success metrics and makes it easy to manage our business. Most importantly of all, sales have increased and the management team feel confident we understand how to manage both the quality and quantity of enquiries. This means we can sustainably grow the business.