Happy Birthday to The IT Trainer.
7th April 2021
This week Sheffield based ‘The IT Trainer’ are celebrating their 17th Year in Business, an achievement of which Owner / Directors Fiona Jagger and Andy Hogg are justifiably proud.
What started off as a ‘back-bedroom’ business back in April 2005, with Andy teaching their first clients the fundamentals of Microsoft Excel, has expanded into a well known and well respected Training and Consultancy organisation, with 17 trusted colleagues delivering IT training and advice to over 180 major clients. Keen to know the secret of their success, SCCI questioned Andy about The IT Trainer.
“I won’t say our success is a secret, it’s about (a) listening to our client base and delivering tailor-made bespoke sessions and (b) having the ability to adapt and adopt. Yes, like every business, we have made mistakes, but we wouldn’t be an innovative and entrepreneurial type organisation if we didn’t try things that sometimes fail. It’s about learning from the failures and then focussing on the areas of the business which remain successful. We pride ourselves on our relationships with our customers, our suppliers and our sub-contractors, being honest and open with everyone we deal with. Typical ‘Yorkshire-ness’ I guess, we call a spade a shovel and there are no hidden agendas or politics in our business relationships, we just see it and tell it how it is.”
The 17 years in business has seen The IT Trainer extend their portfolio of products and services, adding customer branded e-Learning portal and Application Development to their existing IT Training solutions. This has meant a change in focus with many clients, illustrated by a change in their marketing strapline to ‘IT Solutions from The IT Trainer’. Andy again commented:
“We pride ourselves in understanding geek, but we don’t speak it! Prospects and customers will often approach us with an IT issue or for advice and guidance on how IT can provide them with a solution to a business problem, and even if we aren’t the solution providers, we have many trusted business partners and associates who we can recommend. It’s all about keeping our client base happy to ensure they come back to us again and many of our clients refer us in to businesses the know, which is great news for us.”
The IT Trainer has kept active during the pandemic by providing training via Teams, but like many other businesses, they are looking forward to returning to client sites in the near future. In the months pre-covid, they delivered sessions in Munich, Dubai and Casablanca and perhaps these locations are not in their immediate plans, they would however welcome the opportunity to deliver sessions throughout the UK.
For more information about The IT Trainer and how they can assist you with IT, please visit their website at www.the-it-trainer.co.uk, connect with them on Social Media, or just call Andy on 07785 536261 for an informal, no obligation chat.
Here at SCCI, we wish The IT Trainer all the best for the next 17 years in business.