How Utilita used accelerated training to support its rapid growth
Utilita is a pre-pay gas and electricity supplier. After steady growth for several years, the business has doubled in size over the last two years. When Phil Roberts joined as the Head of IT, he realised that the team didn’t have all the skills needed to drive rapid growth.
“At Utilita, we know that people are the business’s most-valuable asset," Phil explains. "We decided immediately to invest in the team’s skills development, and we needed to do so quickly.”
Phil liked Firebrand’s accelerated tearning model. His team would be able to learn a wide-range of IT skills, while only needing to be out of the office for short bursts of time. This meant he was able to schedule the training alongside his team’s projects and not affect team output.
“I’ve been on lots of traditional training courses before. Training is generally dragged-out over weeks and months, and I’d lose interest. Training can just be an expensive distraction. I liked Firebrand’s business model: the speed and quality, with a mix of both formality and informality.”
Phil Roberts
Head of IT
Understanding what Utilita needed
At the start of the project, there were several sets of skills needed within the IT team. It was made-up of three Junior Technicians who had previously received no formal training or certifications.
Initially, Luke (Utilita’s dedicated Firebrand Enrolment Consultant) met Phil to discuss his vision for the development of the team. He then spent a day with each employee at the Firebrand Training Centre to build a training pathway for each of them.
“Luke took the pain away from planning the training. It was important that he understood the business; plus, Utilita understood the impact of not doing the training,” Phil explains.
This started with each team member confirming their baseline IT knowledge with an accelerated Microsoft MTA course. Firebrand combines official Microsoft courses into certification programmes, which are delivered at twice the speed of traditional training.
The Utilita team each gained three Microsoft MTAs in just one week out of the office.
Becoming a world-class IT team
Once the team had learnt the fundamentals, each member went down a different training path aligned to their strengths, ensuring the team has a broad skills base. Additional Microsoft skills and certifications gained by the team now include Azure, Office 365, SharePoint, SQL Server and Windows Server.
The team has broadened its knowledge through further training, including CompTIA, Cisco, ITIL, VMware, and Cyber Security.
“We now have no IT issues due to lack of knowledge. In fact, we’re now fixing issues before the business sees a problem. We recently had a two-minute downtime for a problem that would have caused a week’s downtime before. The training has more than paid for itself already.
“We’ve completely rebuilt Utilita’s IT infrastructure. This meant a lot of new skills needed within the team. We could have achieve this through hiring, but wanted to invest in upskilling the team we already had. Everyone’s realised the benefit of Firebrand Training!”