We acquired Equatorial in 2018, and in the years since, the team has been fully and effortlessly absorbed and integrated into our group’s training division. In 2018, the two companies (Equatorial and Bittnet Training) generated education revenues of just under RON 10 million and a gross margin of almost RON 4 million. In 2022 the two companies generated revenues of just under RON 21 million and a gross margin of almost RON 12 million (exceeding the 2018 turnover!).
In the following, we present some examples where we have used the synergy generated by the two brands or the leverage of knowledge and skills that we have spread throughout the Group.
- ANIS project – we managed to win and successfully implement in an extremely challenging period, i.e. 2020-2021, the “Talent in Tech” training project, with ANIS as beneficiary, worth about EUR 350K, just because we combined Equatorial’s experience and expertise in managing projects on EU funds with Bittnet Training’s experience and knowledge in the IT market
- Changing market conditions over the last 2 years have generated the need to reinvent and reposition Equatorial as a company that helps develop the soft skills of IT Team Leaders with up to 3 years experience. This took place in 2022 with the roll out of the Learner Persona study which focused on understanding how IT specialists learn. The results have not only benefited the entire Education Division but also give us the opportunity to be uniquely positioned in the market to deliver complex education projects that combine the technical skills of IT specialists/engineers and the interpersonal skills of their managers
- Using Equatorial’s over 20 years of experience in working with the Board and Senior Management Teams of large corporations in Romania we have managed to redesign and reinvent the entire Education Division, since the early months of the pandemic. Today’s results and the re-enrollment on an upward trend are largely due to this new way of doing business, focusing on the process and getting predictable results with ordinary people, not with “superstars”. Using the same Equatorial expertise and lessons learned from the transformation of the Education Division, we are today in the process of implementing part of the Technology Division and we are confident that we will see the same kind of success in the Technology Division, but with significantly greater magnitude and impact due to the scale of the business.
- Successful projects with which Equatorial has won awards at HR or L&D community Galas have been replicated throughout the Group. This is how the “People & Culture” function was created, which since last year has been coordinating all recruitment and onboarding, personal development and well-being activities for all our colleagues!). Last year alone there were 3 internal Academies, one for all Middle Managers in the Group whom we consider the backbone of our organization, one dedicated to the sales force and one dedicated to support functions. The massive participation and the behavioural changes observed in the daily activity will produce visible results in the future, even if they are now intangible and difficult to communicate.
In such circumstances, the fact that Bittnet Training has a much wider access to customers, has one of the most modern work flow and process organization in the market, while marketing and sales processes have been integrated on the training division, makes that the overwhelming majority of the figures to be accounted for by Bittnet, while Equatorial has neither revenues nor significant costs.
Due to the integration of the Equatorial team, Bittnet Education grew from RON 10 million to 21 million between 2019-2022, in a context marked by pandemics, lockdowns, inflation and war. However, because we have not issued “enough” invoices from Equatorial, the auditors require us to treat Equatorial’s investment accounting as loss-making one.