Your team’s fastest way to learn

Do you need training for your team, fast? Secure your team’s skills development over the coming months and save up to 20% with the Firebrand Passport. Whether you know your training plans already, or you want the flexibility to choose courses for your team when it’s needed – you can ensure they’re always trained, certified and back to work faster.

How to get the Firebrand Passport

Depending on your up-front commitment, gain access to exclusive corporate rates. Find out more about the Firebrand Passport by completing the form on the right of this page.

Your team will spend less time out of the office and more time using their new skills – through accelerated courses from the likes of Microsoft, Cisco, CompTIA, Six Sigma, VMware and more.

Why Accelerated Learning?

The Firebrand Passport secures the benefits of all-inclusive Accelerated Learning for your team:

• High-quality training, delivered at twice the speed by expert instructors
• 12-hour training days – students stay focused through our lecture, lab, review delivery
• 24-hour lab access
• Courseware and exams included – students return certified, proving what they’ve learnt
• Food and accommodation included
• Certification guarantee

The Firebrand Passport can be applied to courses from Firebrand partners including: APMG, Axelos, BCI, BCS, Cisco, Cloudera, CompTIA, EC-Council, GIAC, ISACA, ISO, ISTQB, ITIL®, Six Sigma, Linux, Microsoft, Oracle, PMI, Sarbanes-Oxley, Scrum, The Open Group, VMware and many more!

Terms and conditions

All training days must be taken within six months of the Firebrand Passport agreement being signed (or 12 months, with a commitment of £100,000+). Firebrand reserves the right to pre-screen all attendees to ensure that prerequisites are met.

Standard terms and conditions.

Does your staff need professional IT skills and certifications quickly, from the likes of Microsoft and Cisco? Maybe you need to develop your in-house project management skills, or protect your business through improved IT security?

Whatever training your business needs, Firebrand’s your fastest way to learn.

Since 2001 we’ve trained 134,561 employees from 1,000s of organisations, saving them more than one million hours in training time. Firebrand works with large and small organisations – from start-ups and SMEs, to more than half of the FTSE 100.

With a Firebrand course, your staff are back at work sooner - qualified with an industry-standard certification. Plus, they learn practical skills, from the instructor’s industry experience.

Get your employees trained, certified and back to work faster:

• They’ll learn more, by getting at least 12 hours a day of quality learning time in a distraction-free environment
• Courses are all-inclusive. One price covers all course materials, exams, accommodation and meals – so your team can focus on learning
• Know what your employees know, through certification. We test throughout the course, a technique proven to help students retain information. They’ll pass first time or train again for free, covered by our Certification Guarantee

Study with an award-winning training provider: we've won the Learning and Performance Institute's "Training Company of the Year" three times. Our Net Promoter Score of 42% is at the top of any list – compared to Virgin at 27%, BA at 11% and Cisco at 38% for example.

Save up to 20% on Accelerated Learning for your team
Find out more about Firebrand Passport

How to develop your team through Accelerated Learning

Whether your staff work in technology, IT security or project management – Accelerated Learning will help you bring in the latest skills quickly. Whatever you’re looking to develop within your team, we can work with you to get it done fast. This can be via our public schedule, closed courses, custom deliveries - or even through apprenticeship programmes.

The process starts with an initial conversation with your Firebrand Account Manager. Just tell us what you’re looking to achieve, and what skills are needed to do so. We’ll work within your budget and timescales, and map this against our portfolio of 100s of accelerated courses to develop the fastest way to meet your strategic outcome.

What’s your true cost of training?

You want your staff in the office, doing what they’re paid to do. An issue with training can be that employees can spend more time away from work than necessary, which comes at a cost. Plus there are the travel and accommodation costs, and the time away from work for the exam.

Not with Firebrand’s Accelerated Learning. Your employees are out of the office for the minimum amount of time, and you get your staff certified and working on new projects and systems faster.

Take a look at this True Cost of Training Calculator, based on one person attending our MCSA Windows Server course. See the difference made to the bottom line by the reduced time out of the office, and our all-inclusive delivery.

Roll this out across your team and you’re saving 100s of hours and £1,000s.

Save up to 20% on Accelerated Learning for your team
Find out more about Firebrand Passport

How does Accelerated Learning compare to traditional training?

Save up to 20% on Accelerated Learning for your team
Find out more about Firebrand Passport

We work directly with IT and training managers at the world's biggest companies. We help them develop their training strategy, to grow their business. Here's what some of them said about training with Firebrand. For more stories, please go to our case studies page.

How Utilita used Accelerated Learning to support its rapid growth

Utilita is a prepay gas and electricity supplier. After steady growth for several years, the business has doubled in size over the last two years. When Phil Roberts joined as the Head of IT, he realised that the team didn’t have all the skills needed to support and drive the business’s rapid growth.

Phil explains: “At Utilita, we know that people are the business’s most-valuable asset. We decided immediately to invest in the team’s skills development, and we needed to do so quickly.”

Phil liked Firebrand’s Accelerated Learning model. His team would be able to learn a wide-range of IT skills, while only needing to be out of the office for short bursts of time. This meant he was able to schedule the training alongside his team’s projects, and not affect the output of the team.

“I’ve been on lots of traditional training courses before. The training’s generally dragged-out over weeks and months, and I’d lose interest. Training can just be an expensive distraction. I liked Firebrand’s business model - the speed and quality, with a mix of both formality and informality,” Phil says.

Understanding what Utilita needed

At the start of the project, there were several sets of skills needed within the IT team. It was made-up of three junior technicians, who had previously received no formal training or certifications.

Initially, Luke - Utilita’s dedicated Firebrand Enrolment Consultant - met Phil to discuss his vision for the development of the team. He then spent a day with each employee at the Firebrand training centre, to build a training pathway for each of them. Phil explains: “Luke took the pain away from planning the training. It was important that he understood the business – plus, Utilita understood the impact of not doing the training.”

This started with each team member confirming their baseline IT knowledge with an accelerated Microsoft MTA course. Firebrand combines official Microsoft courses into certification programmes, which are delivered at twice the speed of traditional training. The Utilita team each gained three Microsoft MTAs in just one week out of the office.

Becoming a world-class IT team

Once the team had learnt the fundamentals, each member went down a different training path. This ensured the team has a broad skills base, which also aligned to each of their strengths. Additional Microsoft skills and certifications gained by the team now include: Azure, Office 365, SharePoint, SQL Server and Windows Server.

The team has widened its knowledge through further training and certification including: CompTIA, Cisco, ITIL VMware and IT security.

Phil concludes: “We now have no IT issues due to lack of knowledge. In fact, we’re now fixing issues before the business sees a problem. We recently had a two-minute downtime for a problem that would have caused a week’s downtime before. The training has more than paid for itself already.”

“We’ve completely rebuilt Utilita’s IT infrastructure. This meant a lot of new skills needed within the team. We could have achieve this through hiring, but wanted to invest in upskilling the team we already had. Everyone’s realised the benefit of Firebrand’s training.”

For more stories, please go to our case studies page.

How BT iNet trains its staff months faster with Firebrand

BT iNet is the networked IT Specialist of BT Business that provides engineering, project management and sales support services across the country. The company came to Firebrand with the need for a bespoke training programme that would satisfy two requirements. One: to provide a refresher for all Cisco Unified Communications engineers and consultants, and two: cross-skill the engineers with Cisco Routing & Switching skills.

Glyn Kennett, Head of Deployment Services, explains: “BT iNet is a flexible group of technical specialists, prepared to respond quickly to handle any project. As a result, we must keep up-to-date with the latest Cisco technologies and trends.”

“We’re also committed to improving the work-life balance of our engineers and consultants. We sometimes had situations where an engineer would need to drive from southern England to the north – because they were the only person available with the necessary skills. We needed to increase our nationwide spread of skills – to become even more efficient, and even more flexible.”

“BT iNet holds a huge range of Cisco certifications, because we see the importance in proving the competence of the skills across our business. In fact, we’re Cisco’s only partner in the UK to hold Masters certifications in Unified Communications, Security and Data Center”

All the skills at more than twice the speed

Glyn knew exactly what training BT iNet required – but it wasn’t what you’d find ‘off the shelf’. Glyn required flexibility, and provided a list of the elements of Cisco Routing and Switching that his team needed to learn. “The reason we wanted to run bespoke training is two-fold. Firstly, as a refresher to Voice Engineers who didn’t get heavily involved in that anymore, and secondly for the guys who have come straight into the Voice side of things, and don’t have an R&S background to draw upon” he said.

Glyn discussed his ‘wish list’ with Marcus Costerton, Firebrand’s Cisco Learning Consultant, and Dave Petts, Firebrand’s Chief Cisco Instructor. Firebrand then designed a course curriculum that provided all of the required knowledge, in the fastest possible time.

The biggest benefit to BT iNet was the speed at which the training would be delivered. Glyn describes: “The main saving was in the amount of days away from work. Having engineers out of the business for long periods of time is a considerable cost and inconvenience, so Firebrand’s approach of keeping this to a minimum was very attractive”

The easy decision: 45 or 120 days?

A traditional delivery of this course would have been eight days’ training for each of BT iNet’s 15 members of staff. With Firebrand, the course was only three days. This meant that the staff were out of the office for a combined 45 days, rather than the alternative of 120.

Glyn explains: “As a result of attending this bespoke training, we now have the opportunity to use our workforce more effectively. We’ve reduced the amount of travelling time for engineers, because we have the skills we need distributed across the country. A happier workforce, and reduced costs, equals a win-win for us.

He concluded: “Firebrand balanced being incredibly fast with the reassurance that they’re an official Cisco Learning Specialized Partner. So everything was official: the labs, courseware and instructor – which made it an even easier decision to make.”

Want to download the full case study? Get the PDF here

Save up to 20% on Accelerated Learning for your team
Find out more about Firebrand Passport

How 5G replaced its entire infrastructure with Firebrand

5G Communications is a UK-based telecoms provider and consultancy. When they first came to Firebrand, they were relying on external server support. This was both expensive and inefficient.

They made the decision to buy two data centres, upgrade their software and go virtual. By improving their legacy equipment, 5G could remain technology leaders.

They changed the entire network –replacing every single PC in the company. To enable this change, 5G needed to move to internal support. They started by completing a skills gap analysis, to identify key areas for study. It was then time to look at various training providers.

Why Accelerated Learning?

Following consultations with Firebrand’s Cisco Learning Consultant Marcus Costerton, it was Firebrand that provided what 5G needed - in the shortest time.

Andre Mellet, Technical Manager at 5G, explains: “We chose Firebrand based on time. Firebrand allowed us to study and certify faster than anywhere else. The hands-on approach meant that we learnt the practical skills in the classroom, which we were able to take straight back to the work place.”

5G sent their staff on a variety of courses to fill their skills gap: Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange and Windows Server; and Cisco CCNP. The biggest benefit to 5G was that this training was effectively free.

How the training paid for itself

The training investment meant they were able to halve their monthly external support fees. The money saved in the first year was redirected to training, and now all future savings can be spent developing the business further.

Andre concluded: “It’s unbelievable how Firebrand help you learn so quickly. The fact that all courses led to certification meant that we had proof that the students learnt everything they could on the course.”

5G is now in the process of hiring two apprentices, through the Firebrand Apprenticeships programme.

Want to download the full case study? Get the PDF here

Save up to 20% on Accelerated Learning for your team
Find out more about Firebrand Passport