Having acquired Altron People Solutions a year ago, LRMG has incorporated this into a business unit called Impactful Specialist Solutions – aimed at aligning HR, IT and the skills and training required to consistently develop talent in a business.
There can be little doubt that digitisation is transforming the way training and skills development is conducted and delivered. Moreover, digital is today, the bridging conversation between human resources (HR) and information technology (IT), in respect of how it impacts talent management, lifelong learning and the user adoption of technology solutions. Bridging these two critical areas is exactly what LRMG had in mind when it undertook the acquisition of Altron People Solutions (APS).
According to Ricky Robinson, founder and CEO at LRMG, the company launched in the late 1990s as a business providing talent acceleration systems and services to assist its clients to achieve success by helping them grow and develop talent within their organisations.
“We then moved into an arena we were unfamiliar with – a course manuals business – designed to assist customers with specific areas of IT training for their employees. This was done at the behest of a key client, CS Holdings. They then evolved into Bytes – and then later, Altron People Solutions,” he explains.
“We grew this division as this partnership thrived over a period of more than a decade, developing the relationship as they evolved from client to genuine business partner. This was because we became their go-to provider of course material, providing seamless delivery anywhere and at any time, also developing content that was futuristic in approach.”
Tuning into the market
He says that, for LRMG, the focus always lay on how the company could help its clients assist their end-customers to do their jobs better. The organisation’s ability to tune into where the market was going thanks to its partnership with the company that became APS – was also vital, enabling it to consistently develop new content to suit new markets, such as creating comprehensive learnership manuals
Madelise Grobler, an Executive at LRMG, notes that this helped take the company to the next level in terms of developing assessments and assessment guides, as these had to be aligned to the NQF and SA Qualifications Authority (SAQA) qualifications.
“Ultimately, we ended up delivering around 2 000 learnerships per year, mainly in the urban and peri-urban areas, and these were typically some form of IT technician, end-user or system support training, which enabled youths from around the country to access relevant skills and qualifications.”
“The acquisition of APS meant that we were able to add user adoption training - ensuring that a client’s employees understand how to utilise a new technology deployed at their organisation - to our existing talent management and learning solutions. Because of the impact we could see this combination having on our clients’ businesses, we chose to name the new business unit Impactful Specialist Solutions.”
An ongoing impact
Grobler adds: “The fact that we are experienced in the people side of the business, but also understand the IT landscape means we are positioned at the centre of a triangle composed of human capital, technology, and learning, and can thus ensure that the correct skills are delivered to the right people, at the most appropriate time.”
According to Robinson, in a modern and rapidly transforming world, companies need to invest in lifelong learning for their employees, helping them to craft a learning path – with the requisite skills and training – that will enable them to continuously grow their career.
“If you do this with the right intention, and over the long term, your business will not only obtain the benefit of bringing in new talent excited by the potential career paths, but will also help you to nurture, retain and grow your existing talent,” he says.
“Relevance is a key word for us, in that we aim to be relevant to our customers both today and well into the future. They in turn wish to be relevant to their clients and their people need to continuously look to acquire future-fit skills for their own relevance. It’s this virtuous circle with impact in the epicentre.” Grobler agrees, noting that what Impactful Specialist Solutions does is about so much more than merely supplying courses. For us, it is about understanding the customer, and then providing an aligned IT and HR strategy, one which delivers the necessary training to ensure the client is able to grow their business and take it to the next level.
“We listen deeply to the market, using the knowledge gained to project where things are going, and then design relevant solutions accordingly. However, what enables us to have a genuine impact is that we don’t just sell clients the solution – our focus is end-to-end, including innovation, creation and design of the solution, as well as its proper integration into the client’s business, thereby affording them the greatest chance of success,” she concludes.
