We are pleased to publish our seventh annual table of the UK Top 50 IT training providers.

How we compile this listing

As we have done in previous years, we gathered the revenues of companies with IT training businesses and excluded sales of training delivered outside the UK and non-IT related business from those companies that offer both types. We also exclude organisations whose revenue is derived principally from publicly funded training or from military/defence-specific IT training, training franchises whose revenues consist only of royalties and training brokers/portals.

Financial results for some of these organisations are on public record. In those cases, we have used the actual turnover figure for their most recently reported financial year. For organisations whose turnover is not published, we have made our best estimate based on the information available to us. For every company, we have indicated clearly whether the figure shown is an actual or an estimate. Actual (published) revenues are indicated as "A" - all estimates are marked as "E" in the Act/Est column.

Figures are UK revenues only, are rounded to the nearest £100,000 and relate to fiscal years ending in 2004 (i.e. accounts for the year ending sometime between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2004).

N.B. The 2003 revenues (used for last year's Top 50) of a few companies are now known to have been incorrect. We have not, however, altered those companies' 2004 rankings but the percentage change in revenue has been calculated on what we now believe last year's revenues to have been.

TOP 50 UK IT TRAINING PROVIDERS - 2005
Rank 2005		Company	FY2004 Revenue £m	Act / Est	Revenue change	Rank 2004
1		QA	26.6	A	8%	3
2		IBM Education Services	24.5	E	21%	5
3		Parity Training	23.8	A	-6%	1
4		Learning Tree International	23.7	A	-4%	2
5		InterQuad Learning	20.4	E	45%	10
6		SkillSoft	18.6	E	13%	7
7		SAP	16.6	A	-1%	6
8		Thomson NETg	16.2	E	-18%	4
9		Oracle University	15.7	E	8%	8
10		Spring IT Training	15.1	E	6%	9
11		Azlan	14.7	E	5%	11
12		Xpertise Training	13.2	A	22%	14
13		LogicaCMG	12.4	E	15%	15
14		Sun Microsystems	10.9	E	-5%	13
15		Global Knowledge	8.1	E	-9%	16
16		HP Education	8.0	E	14%	19
17		New Horizons	7.2	E	-8%	18
18		Remarc Group	7.1	A	15%	21
19		KnowledgePool	7.0	E	-49%	12
20		PeopleSoft	7.0	E	-8%	17
21		The Matchett Group	6.1	A	9%	24
22		Electric Paper	5.8	E	9%	23
23		DACG	5.3	A	-11%	22
24		The Training Camp	3.9	A	70%	0
25		Sage	3.6	A	9%	25
26		Key Training Solutions	3.5	A	51%	39
27		WDR	3.5	E	0%	28
28		BIC Systems	3.2	E	4%	30
29		Red Hat	3.0	E	12%	31
30		Steria Training Services	2.9	A	-24%	26
31		Computer Associates	2.8	E	27%	42
32		Learning IT	2.7	A	23%	27
33		Learn IT	2.6	A	-2%	32
34		PremierIT	2.6	E	-10%	29
35		iTrain	2.6	A	13%	41
36		Fuel	2.6	E	8%	36
37		Intechnology	2.5	E	25%	44
38		Tata Interactive Systems	2.5	A	3%	48
39		Xansa	2.5	A	19%	33
40		Getronics	2.5	E	0%	34
41		Host Computers	2.4	A	53%	38
42		BroadSkill	2.3	A	28%	0
43		WWP Training	2.3	A	-4%	37
44		StayAhead Training	2.2	A	5%	43
45		Epic	2.1	E	-16%	35
46		AdVal	2.1	A	-31%	0
47		Eclectic Group	2.0	A	18%	0
48		SAS Software	2.0	A	14%	49
49		Ajilon Learning	2.0	A	33%	0
50		Happy Computers	1.9	A	6%	45

Last year's Top 50 can be found here

Links to each of these companies' websites can be found on the Who's Who page.

Thank you

We would like to thank everybody - training providers and others - who has contributed to this project.

If you have any comments or if you believe any aspect of our information is inaccurate or incomplete please let us know by email or by calling IT Skills Research/Pardo Fox Ltd on 01483 454 363

IMPORTANT: This information has been carefully researched. However, we can not guarantee its accuracy or completeness, and we will not accept liability for any direct, indirect or consequential loss arising from its use.

Barrie Charles's commentary from the Top 50 article in IT Training July 2005

Return to health for IT training market
Last year the IT training market saw positive growth for the first time since 2000. Barrie Charles takes a look at the market trends that underlie this year’s ranking of the top IT training suppliers

In 2004, the IT training market returned to an even keel, with an increase in supplier profitability and fewer commercial failures,mergers and acquisitions. Nevertheless, the past 12 months have not been kind to everybody, and some companies continue to face difficulties.

IT Training’s market research arm IT Skills Research, which produces the Top 50 table each year, estimates that the market grew by around 6% in 2004. The figures, which include training on IT for users and all types of skills development for IT professionals, show positive growth for the first time since 2000. The turnaround has been particularly helped by an increase in professional and soft skills training for IT staff. Courses in project management, especially Prince2, and IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), have been particularly in demand. In addition, after the recession of the last few years, the fresh investments that organisations are starting to make in IT have also led to an increase in the need for training. As an example, IDC estimates that PC sales grew by 18% in 2004, and new systems inevitably lead to greater demands for people and skills.

It’s not surprising therefore that recruitment is also reviving, with the SSL/Computer Weekly survey showing a two-thirds increase in advertised IT professional vacancies last year compared to 2003. Within the training market, the trend away from a total reliance on classroom delivery continued, with the IT Skills Research survey of training buyers showing a drop from 61% to 57% of their total spend. The use of open public scheduled courses declined even faster, as companies made greater use of single-company tailored offerings, which can often provide more of the required skills in less time for lower overall cost.

Online training continued to grow, according to the University for Industry who reported that 63% of large organisations now make use of at least some e-learning. Respondents from such companies claimed that they expected the proportion of e-learning to grow from 14% to 33% over the next two years as classroom training declines from 69% to 52% of the total. But behind this switch is the increasing acceptance of the need for blended learning. Research by Balanced Learning (which covered all training, not just IT) showed that around 9% of training last year was blended, but that this was expected to grow to 18% in 2005. Informal learning is another buzzword, with a greater emphasis on communities, reference material, coaching and knowledge chunks, rather than full courses.

A further key shift taking place is the move towards greater management control of training.The anarchical days when individuals were free to book whatever they liked from whomever they wished are over for most large organisations. The IT Skills Research Buyer’s Survey showed that the training department now chooses the supplier in 52% of cases, compared to 42% in 2003. The percentage of companies who use a single or just a few preferred suppliers also rose from 59% to 70%. Greater centralisation provides more opportunities for efficiencies, and the trend towards increasing automation and the outsourcing of functional elements continues. It also means there is greater buying power,with the ability to extract higher discounts. As training professionals rather than individuals or business managers become more involved in the purchase decision, they are looking to ensure a better return on investment.

The suppliers

So if buyers have been changing how they buy and what they want, what’s been happening on the supplier side? The first thing is that many breathed a sigh of relief as growth returned to the industry. There were no failures among last year’s Top 50, and only one major acquisition: Oracle’s $10 billion purchase of PeopleSoft was completed on 7 January 2005 (although the merger of the two massive organisations is still in progress). Despite the lack of failures, however, many suppliers are not out of the woods yet.

Leading players QA and Parity Training, for example, both reported negative P&Ls in 2004, while Learning Tree’s corporate parent reported a loss from operations for the first time. In addition, share prices for most quoted training providers remained in the doldrums. Part of the problem is the increasing commoditisation of the technical training market.The widespread use of vendor-produced courses and oversupply in the market has led to significant price-cutting. Once upon a time, any set of public scheduled events with an average fill-rate of more than eight delegates usually produced a nice profitable business for the provider. Now much greater emphasis must be placed on the utilisation of classrooms, instructors and other resources as aggressive players attempt to gain market share, at least in part, through discounting. As a result, many suppliers are seeking to diversify into managed training services (MTS) and project training, where they believe they can gain greater account control and make a better margin.

However, these sectors are also seeing increased competition, and suppliers who do not manage to trim their costs or provide uniquely attractive offerings face difficult times ahead. Training departments are increasingly looking to cut their own internal costs, and this is one of the reasons behind the increase in outsourcing to MTS suppliers. It might not be long before MTS revenues account for half the turnover of companies such as QA and Parity Training, so we’ve chosen to look at this sector in more detail. On page 49 of the magazine, we provide a view on who the top 10 MTS providers are and how the market is developing.

But returning to the Top 50,what are the major changes? For a start, there’s been significant shuffling among the top five. QA appears at number one for the first time in IT Training’s ranking, while IBM has jumped three places to number two, thanks to some significant project revenues. Parity Training and Learning Tree both dropped two places, whereas InterQuad stormed up five places to number five, thanks to a 45% increase in revenues . Elsewhere, Key Training Solutions did well,with a 51% growth in turnover resulting in a jump from 39 to number 26, while Xpertise Training moved up from 14 to 12 following a 22% growth in revenues.

Most notable among the new entrants is The Training Camp, the bootcamp technical training provider, who came from nowhere to number 24 following a 70% jump in turnover. The other new entrants are Broad-Skill, Eclectic Group, Ajilon Learning and AdVal, which supplied figures this year for the first time. Among those who have disappeared from the Top 50, DevelopMentor, SCC Training Services and Tech Connect all hover just beyond number 50. Vega has also fallen outside the table following further consideration of how much of their business fitted within our definition of the IT training sector.

Lastly there have been a couple of changes of name following mergers with other businesses: Pink Roccade is now known as Getronics and NetConnect has become Intechnology.

The future

So much for the changes, but what does the future hold? The slow return to growth and better profitability look set to continue. IT Skills Research’s quarterly survey of market conditions is showing increases in both revenue and profits for the first quarter of 2005, with the majority of companies reporting a year-on-year improvement. As usual, some players will fare well going forward, while others will find the challenges harder to overcome.

© Haymarket Management Publications / IT Skills Research / Pardo Fox Ltd 2005