Quantum Group's product is, essentially, knowledge: we serve our clients by transferring the knowledge of our staff to their employees through training and helping our learners increase their knowledge as they work towards a qualification. Since knowledge consists of information, it is not surprising that we depend a lot on information and communications technology.

Even during the recession we have continued to invest in new information technology.

Examples include:

• A much enhanced web site with added functionality and content . More than a shop window, our new web site will enable clients to save time booking their course online - see below.
• New scanning technology - our expanding range of courses and learners on our programmes generates ever higher volumes of paperwork and coursework, which we must store securely. To reduce storage space and help us retrieve anything quickly, we now routinely scan coursework to dedicated IT systems.
• Better management of learner progression with OneFile - we use this state-of-the-art, secure and user-friendly site so that our learners and assessors can interact over the web, in addition to more traditional paper-based coursework submissions and face-to-face meetings. This means we can increase the quality of assessment and keep costs competitive.
• Managing our learners using the PICS Database. Our business growth has rapidly necessitated a major investment in the leading industry database system for colleges, PICS from Pellcomp. PICS is rapidly becoming our 'Enterprise Database', meaning that all staff can rapidly and securely access information about all our clients. This enables us for example to offer clients flexible pricing very quickly, taking into account the depth of our relationship with that client.
• Our trainers and assessors working away from the office need instant access to information about our clients and learners. We therefore provide them with secure internet access from laptops to our secure servers and intranet system.
• All of this represents major investment in a stable and adaptable IT infrastructure, supported by knowledgeable IT partners. We have a close working relationship with CaN IT  who support our systems.

Future plans

As we consolidate recent changes to our systems we will be implementing the following key projects:

• Adding dynamic features to our web site within a secure client log-in area, so that our clients can:
  • Book their staff places on our Mandatory Units Training courses in our Derby training facilities.
  • Tell us when training delivery at their premises would suit them.
  • Download up-to-date training matrices for all their staff, showing exactly which of their staff have completed which training courses.
  • Download and print certificates whenever they need to.
• Introduce tailored pricing for our clients.
• Extending our enterprise database to cover all our business activities.
• Adding a 'Customer Relationship Management' module to our enterprise database, helping us track more of what we do for each client, enabling us to offer higher levels of service and bespoke pricing.
• Telephony management for our telesales team.
• Developing tutorials and support to help learners complete their qualifications online rather than using paper.
• Piloting electronic and online delivery of our most successful courses to offer clients cost savings and greater flexibility.

However it is the quality of our people that is the ultimate source of our competitiveness.