Organic Growth Masterclass: Learndirect, backed by Queen’s Park Equity

Having been investors in the education sector for many years, the team at QPE had built a deep relationship with Learndirect and its owners over some time, but it wasn’t until mid-2020 that the opportunity to invest and support the management team presented itself, Rodriguez says.

Prior to the investment, Learndirect offered a wide range of courses and management resources were stretched a little thinly across them. Together with management, QPE brought a discipline and structure that enabled Learndirect to focus on certain key areas to drive organic growth, he adds.

SALES AND MARKETING

“We helped to reorganise the business into dedicated faculties, enabling for structured sales and marketing,” says Rodriguez.

“This included an expansion of the sales team and creating specialised course booking advisors per subject area. The addition of new customer acquisition channels, including more social media presence, helped the business to grow and reach a new target market.

The team also identified early on that a more robust CRM should be implemented in order to bring more focus to digital marketing KPIs and to improve the overall digital marketing function. There was a constant focus on the improvement of our customer’s journey via forward facing websites and platforms. To support that improvement, from the front- end, we put investment into the technology that would provide quicker check-out speeds.”

IMPROVED OFFERING

“Our investment also supported the provision of clearer course content and outcomes,” Rodriguez adds. “The content development and faculty teams have continued to grow as the business has scaled. Where new content areas are added, we have hired specialty faculty heads in addition to acquiring talent, such as the integration of Animal Courses Direct to the group in 2021, and the Learndirect Animal Welfare faculty was created.

The finance function was enhanced in order to bring real-time data to the business enabling it to better understand its target markets and identify growth areas whilst maintaining a focus on customer satisfaction and retention.

We also helped to enhance the senior HR leadership team, which was vital for a rapidly growing business. In addition, the business became a Google business partner.”

INTERNAL DEVELOPMENT

Says Rodriguez: “Furthermore, we introduced Patrick Henchoz as chairman. Henchoz is a former chairman of Lifetime Training and has a wealth of experience in investing in and leading education and training businesses.

We also introduced a new CFO, Mike Beckett, to the business. Mike brought a wealth of experience to the finance function, having previously had roles with private equity-backed businesses in regulated industries including education.

In addition, the board appointed Louise Byrne as a non-executive director, who, until recently, served as a director of Google Cloud Learning, and is now chief of staff to the president of Google Cloud (EMEA).”