The Global Media Weekly for executives and entrepreneurs

Moving beyond B2B media

B2B media companies might have missed some sparkling corporate news this week. A six-year-old, UK-based company called Learning Technologies Group Plc (LTG) announced that its 2019 revenues had increased by 38% and EBITDA by 58%. Naturally, shareholders loved it and LTG’s market cap leapt to £1bn, making it one of the largest (and fastest growing) companies on London’s AIM secondary stockmarket.

It is a leader in the growing global market for “digital learning and talent management” at a time when corporates and public organisations face increasing challenges in finding, keeping and developing the right people.

CEO Jonathan Satchell says: “We help systematise the process of putting the best people into the right roles, transforming large organisations’ ability to scale, and flex to meet future market opportunities”. The company is exploiting the growing complexity of work and the corporate realisation that training and development is a continual requirement at all levels and in most industries. It has become so much more than just appraisals and training courses. Digitalisation connects workaday functions with re-skilling and continuing career development

LTG divides broadly between a Software and Platform division (70% of revenue) selling long-term SaaS licences, and a Content & Services consulting division. Six years of growth and seven acquisitions have resulted in a group employing more than 700 people across Europe, the US, AsiaPacific and South America.

Satchell once sold mainframe computers to advertising agencies. But his route into LTG came after 10 years during which he transformed the Executive Business Channel from a video training company into a producer of custom e-learning content. But the real clue to why B2B media should be interested in LTG is its plan now to develop content in many of the global markets in which it specialises: healthcare, pharmaceuticals, automotive, financial services, and energy.

The durability of LTG’s relationships with major corporations and its continuing role in the development of their key people may be expected to create valuable statistical indicators, must-have content and information. LTG will not, of course, be providing “industry news”. But the drive now to produce high-value content in specialist markets is an important development. It underlines the extent to which B2B media must increasingly produce workflow systems and solutions to compete. It must use technology to apply its knowledge, not “just” provide information.

B2B providers must dig deep in their markets to specialise and be versatile within defined verticals so that they can compete and/or collaborate with companies coming into their markets from diverse disciplines – like LTG. Currently some B2B media do just that, many don’t. The old habits of publishers die hard.

The visionaries among newspaper companies have long considered that their task was to “get tech” before tech companies “get media”. It was always a crude agenda but the rapid growth of LTG shows that the same applies to B2B media which once only had to “publish” information and leave the application and learning to their readers. Now, it must embed that information in the workflow of clients. It’s another reminder of the media shift from being producers of products to providers of services.