IMPRESSIVE SALES GROWTH STORY ACROSS THE GLOBE AS THE COMPANY TRANSFORMS ITS OPERATIONS FOR ACCELERATED GROWTH
Thomas International, who help people achieve more by better understanding themselves and others, enjoyed accelerated growth globally across 2019 as a result of several business transformation initiatives commenced after Palamon Capital Partners’ investment in the business in 2018.
Almost 1,000 new customers were won globally by Thomas in 2019, accompanied by a 10% growth in product usage across its existing customer base. It saw a 15% increase in its average deal size, whilst subscription usage surged to 35%.
In October, it announced the acquisition of Team Services B.V., which, trading as Thomas International Nederland, was the exclusive distributor of Thomas International in the Netherlands. The Dutch business added to Thomas’s existing portfolio of owned businesses across Europe and expanded its global operations to direct presence in 8 countries including Belgium, France, UK, South Africa, Australia, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. In May, a new partnership was signed in Poland with Gi Group Sp.zo.o. Thomas continues to work with a global network of partners to ensure coverage of all targeted growth regions.
Official recognition of this international growth followed with the announcement that Thomas had been ranked in the 5th annual Sunday Times WorldFirst SME Export Track 100. This award recognises Britain’s small and medium-sized (SME) companies with the fastest-growing international sales over the latest two years, during which Thomas enjoyed an amazing 58% growth in international revenues.
Thomas continued to strengthen it senior leadership team throughout the year with the appointments of Joe Sanchez (International Sales Director), Jonathan Hall (UK Sales Director) and John Webster (Chief Marketing Officer), all of whom bring extensive experience in delivering profitable growth strategies in the technology sector. It also continued to invest in the hiring of talent well beyond its senior team with key hires in software engineering, product development and data insights. To further facilitate its shift towards a more modern, agile and collaborative working structure, it completely restructured, redesigned and redeveloped its three offices in Marlow, London and Witney.
Technology was a key area of investment focus in 2019 with the completion of its phased migration of existing products and services to the Cloud. This foundational element of Thomas’ digital transformation strategy provides the agility needed to accelerate delivery of innovative, customer-focused services. In September, a more accessible and flexible learning experience for Thomas customers was introduced through the launch of online learning courses for Thomas’ solutions. Then in December, Thomas launched a new range of Candidate Feedback Reports designed to help organisations win the war for talent in today’s increasingly competitive recruitment market.
2020 promises to be the biggest year yet for Thomas in terms of the launch of new platform innovations, further global partnerships and a strengthening of Thomas’ global market position. Thomas believes in unlocking the potential of every individual, team and organisation by making the complex nature of human behaviour, aptitude and personality easier for everyone to understand, and is committed to its vision of a world of higher human achievement through helping people to develop a greater understanding of themselves and others.
Guy Ballantine, Interim CEO of Thomas International, said: “2019 has been an incredibly busy and productive year at Thomas, in which the business has continued to grow whilst transforming the way it operates. That achievement is thanks to the hard work and dedication of our employees and partners, and the loyalty of our customers. Looking ahead, we believe that our singular focus on delivering the most exciting technology and service innovations our market will have ever seen, underpinned by the expanding global reach of our Brand, will make 2020 a great year for both Thomas and our customers.”
