Saturday October 5 2024
Swindon & Wiltshire News
A leading learning and development consultancy which has seen the tools of its trade progress from flipcharts to online technology is celebrating 25 years in business.
The RTS Group, based in Chippenham, began life as a niche agency aimed at serving the training and development needs of the automotive industry. It was founded by Chairman Richard Wells, whose career background was managing car dealerships across the South West.
The company now has more than 55 employees, 200 plus associates throughout the world and trades on every continent. It is planning to relocate within Chippenham to accommodate its growing team, which in the last few months alone has risen by 45 per cent.
To mark the anniversary, the company went offsite for a day for a team-building exercise and to celebrate the milestone.
“We’ve come a long way and achieved so much, since we started in 1989,” said Managing Director Malcolm Miller. “Back then, a projector was considered the height of technology and now we are designing and delivering great learning via the web, tablets, smart phones and more, to make the learning journey as engaging as it can be.
“However, we never forget that the best learning is often face-to-face, in classrooms, at events or in the workplace.”
rts counts among its clients brands including Mazda, Toyota and Mercedes-Benz. For these and others it delivers learning and development programmes to frontline, dealership staff to help enhance the customer buying experience and increase sales.
The business is wide-ranging: the UK-based parent company has offices in Spain and Germany and works across Europe and the Middle East; it has a FIMTRAC F&I and Compliance division, which specialises in finance, insurance and compliance learning; and there is RTS eSolutions, which devises technology-based learning programmes.
Earlier this year, rts’s FIMTRAC division broke into the Chinese market, to help manufacturers by developing programmes for dealership staff to increase finance penetration at point of sale – a model already successfully used by the company in South Africa.
“The future is certainly rosy for rts,” said Malcolm. “We are expanding all the time, both in terms of our geographical reach, clients and staff numbers. The scene is definitely set for the next 25 years, which I am sure will be as successful.”
