Apprenticeship Case Study: Skern Training & Skills

Skern has been delivering excellence in its courses and services since 1976. With its name meaning ‘safe harbour’, they provide unique learning environments to develop individuals and teams from school leavers to senior leaders, delivered across the country. 

As an approved Main Apprenticeship provider, Skern Training & Skills (STS)offers both end-to-end apprenticeships in a number of standards as well as behavioural programmes to up-skill existing apprentices from early career to Board level.  In addition to Outdoor Apprenticeships, STS deliver apprenticeship training in Leadership & Management and Catering & Hospitality.">

In an ever-changing marketplace, STS realise the importance of blending exceptional training with agile business needs. Its offering is built for the future of businesses, designed in partnership with employers, through highly skilled and passionate delivery, excellent learner management systems and an ability to adapt and communicate seamlessly with learners & employers.

The challenge

To offer delivery of high-quality apprenticeships on a national scale and overcome the challenges of delivering training outdoors.

The solution

As a new apprenticeship provider, when we met, STS wasn’t using another system. The team had, however, invested a lot of time researching training management platforms and knew that they wanted an intuitive to use, single joined-up platform that was cloud based. With experience in using software to support delivery of their apprenticeships, the team had received demos from the main providers.

Steve Randles, Education & Apprenticeship Manager said

“From the first demo with Bud I was blown away by how easy it was to use. Everything that has always been a struggle on the other platforms I’ve used is so easy on Bud.”

For trainers and learners to have access to the platform on any device at any time and in challenging locations has been a game changer. Steve said “Our trainers and learners are finding Bud so easy to use. Learners can get straight into the platform on their smartphone out in the field, and because the User Experience (UX) is so good, they can find a task and upload their work in a few clicks.”

STS regularly collect feedback from learners; this is how they scored Bud:

• 32% rated Bud as excellent and 68% rated it as good>
• 84% said receiving info through the messaging system was good>
• 73% said uploading evidence was good and easy to do>

Bud has also improved business intelligence for STS, Alex Coyle, Head of Skern Training & Skills said “The business reporting and dashboards that Bud provides from a single source of truth is excellent. I can be confident that I am seeing an accurate view of the health of our training business.”

The people

Throughout the sales process, the team at STS felt well supported by Bud’s Business Development Managers. Alex said “Bud’s BDMs helped me to build the business case for the Skern board. They worked tirelessly to pull together supporting evidence, to demo and answer questions and finally to pull together the contract. And after we’d signed, the handover to the delivery team was seamless – nothing was too much trouble.”

As a people-centric business, the cultural alignment between Bud and STS was extremely important. Alex said “The aligned ethos of the two companies was really important to us, STS is very proud to be producing a quality product that focusses on our areas of strength. We wanted to work alongside a company that shows equal care and attention to detail for us as a customer and to all our learners and employers.” He went on to say

“Megan is our Account Manager; she’s been great. She manages and supports our relationship, she’s open and honest, able to challenge us, and we can rely on her to always find the answer to our queries. Norbert has been really helpful too; he’s supported us with some difficult API integrations and his communications are very clear.”

The future

When asked about the future, Alex was really positive. He believes that the association with Bud provides kudos and will give employers confidence that STS are a serious provider that is future proofed.Alex said

“The quality of Bud is well worth it. Bud is streets ahead of the rest.”

Brad Tombling, Customer Success Director at Bud said “It’s fantastic to see Bud being used to support the delivery of training outdoors. It proves how accessible the platform is and how easy it is to use. We’re really enjoying working with the team at STS. Some of the challenges they face are unique and it’s great to get feedback from their learners and trainers.”

The most complete training management platform

Does your training business want to reduce admin overheads, improve success rates and bring all your training and funding data into a single source of truth with full one-click visibility of trainer caseload, learner progress and funding claims?

Bud takes the back-end resource cost from your team so they can focus on what they are best at, and managers can have the information they need at their fingertips to make decisions to keep moving your training business forward.

Get in touch using the form below or contact us for a quick chat to discuss options

If you feel ready to take the next step, then book a zero-obligation, bespoke demonstration of Bud’s Training Management software for you and your team and see how you can directly benefit from using the platform.