North East startup secures global partnership with Sage

A North East startup business established to revitalise and redefine the traditional corporate training market has secured a partnership with Sage to design and deliver an innovative new programme to its 13,000 colleagues around the world.

SUB 10 has won the business competing against four of the UK’s leading e-learning companies to secure a contract with the FTSE 100 tech company to create its new Code of Conduct programme.

This partnership will involve the creation of a programme which will be delivered in six languages. The programme will be completed by November this year, with the potential to extend the contract with a further six modules into 2020.

The Sage contract is a major coup for SUB 10, based at Proto in Gateshead, and will help propel the business to the next level, allowing it to push on with plans to develop its own learning engine, intelliLEARN.

The business – founded by Peter Stephenson and Angela Ross, both highly-experienced and well-known names in training and e-learning – has scored a series of successes already in its first six months of trading, including recently being chosen as one of a handful of UK businesses to be accepted onto the prestigious global Microsoft for Startups programme, in recognition of its ambition and high growth potential.

It was founded in response to Peter and Angela’s realisation of the need to make corporate training more accessible and informal. SUB 10’s offering of 10-minutes or less digital learning modules, conveying information through interactive means like games and quizzes, combined with its use of cutting-edge technology like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), has proved hugely popular among businesses.

Angela said: “Sage is a market leader and significant business in the North East and we are beyond delighted to have been chosen to partner with them in designing, creating and delivering their Code of Conduct, being chosen ahead of some of the biggest players in the field of e-learning.

“While we may have only been in business for a few months, we are grateful to Sage for realising the value of our proposition and the potential our new approach to corporate training can have for a multi-national organisation like theirs. We are so excited to be given the opportunity to create this bespoke and accessible training programme for their 13,000 employees and can’t wait to get started.

“Our first six months have been beyond anything we could have predicted, and to win this contract also enables us to advance plans for our intelliLEARN platform sooner than we initially planned. We are actively recruiting to our team and are already planning for the next phase of growth – these are very exciting times.”

Charley-Jo Devlin, business integrity manager at Sage, said: “Like many of our customers and business partners, Sage began as a start-up business so when SUB10 came to us with a proposition that compared favourably to other offerings on the market, and they were also a local learning provider, it seemed like a perfect match. We’re excited to partner with SUB10 and to transform the learning experience for our colleagues.”

Carl Lovett, senior business integrity consultant, said: “When considering this new partnership, it was critical for Sage to find a partner that is agile, creative and innovative enough to help us realise our ambitions. SUB10 represented all that and more, with a real appetite to support Sage with our core pedagogical principles of serving modern learners using cutting edge techniques. The experience and enthusiasm Angela and Peter brought to the table also significantly influenced our decision-making process.”

Lucy Carlin, senior associate at Sintons and one of the region’s leading specialist advisors to tech businesses, has worked with SUB 10 since pre-launch.

She said: “After a very short time in business, this is a fantastic achievement for SUB 10 to win such a significant and sizeable contract, particularly from a company of the stature of Sage. Peter and Angela have shown such ambition and determination to redefine the traditional approach to corporate training, and it is great to see them being rewarded with appointment to such an exciting project.”