*UKHotViewsExtra* Ten deals and Two exits – Capita Scaling Partner Three years on

It’s now over three years since we first started following Capita Scaling Partner (CSP) – Capita’s scale-up development unit (see here). 

CSP recently announced its tenth investment deal with smart Learning Experience Platform provider, Filtered. I recently caught up with CSP Co-founders John Downes and Matt Bunn, to learn more about their latest partnership and also to take a look back at the progress made at CSP over the last three years and understand what they have learnt building their portfolio of scale-ups.

Filtered – Learning Experience Platform (LXP) and Content Intelligence

Filtered is the first deal that CSP has done remotely with very little face-to-face interaction, given COVID, and the business has two distinct propositions that are of interest to CSP. Firstly, it possesses some ‘Content Intelligence’ technology that has already been landing well with industries that Capita is targeting. The ‘problem’ that Filtered is solving is that companies often possess so much learning content that they struggle to see the ‘wood for the trees’. This means that it can be hard to know what learning content is proving to be useful in terms of building the right skills, what staff are using and getting value from, and where there is overlap from different sources of learning content. It sounds like a small issue but can cost organisations millions of pounds a year in wasted investment, which Content Intelligence can help recoup. That makes it a potentially very valuable play to Capita’s Learning business, particularly as a good way to break into new clients.

The second element of Filtered’s offering is as a focused and tailored learning experience platform (LXP). The LXP space is crowded with some very large and serious operators playing in it. By way of differentiation Filtered takes a a skills and data-led approach that targets very specific use cases, for example, where a client is looking to upskill its digital skills in very specific areas. Filtered engages with the wider business at a senior level and starts by looking to define what exactly the skills requirement means for the client, defining what level of skills will be needed, then undertaking skills mapping within the organisation. They then go on to train the client’s content library partners to find the best content to deliver against that specific use case via personalised recommendations in the LXP. It’s a much more targeted approach, designed to measure and deliver higher return on investment.

Filtered has primarily partnered with CSP to get exposure to Capita Learning’s 200+ clients as a route to growth. Filtered is more mature than many of CSP’s previous investments having already done its Series A funding and well into growth phase.  A quick look at their website reveals existing clients includes the likes of P&G, Sutton Trust, Heineken, Arcadis, AstraZeneca, NHS and Siemens. Secondly, CSP can provide a route into Capita’s wider client base of 5000+ clients with CSP providing dedicated business development resource to augment Filtered’s SaaS sales force.

CSP - getting to Ten deals and Two exits

Given that Filtered represents CSP’s tenth deal to date, it’s worth looking back at how the business has developed over the last three years or so and what the founders John Downes and Matt Bunn have learnt, and how this is informing the evolution of the model……read more here

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Posted by Marc Hardwick at '08:31' - Tagged: bps   Capita   scaleup   partnership