History
Appleton Greene is one of the world’s leading corporate training firms, delivering hundreds of standard and bespoke training services to an expanding client base world-wide. Appleton Greene was first established in 1989 and has operated as a private partnership until 2014, when the company was finally incorporated. Appleton Greene continued to grow and develop, by becoming incorporated as an international professional firm with a registered head office in the Cayman Islands and trading from central serviced offices located in New York, Geneva and London, venturing further internationally with registered learning providers, program directors, accredited consultants and clients located within most major cities worldwide.
This contributes to a combined enterprise of around 750 learning providers, 300 program directors and 500 consultants, servicing 7,500 clients or employers through 500,000 contacts within the Appleton Greene global client network. Appleton Greene also has access to millions of corporate training and consultancy decision-makers worldwide within: Customer Services; E-business; Finance; Globalization; Human Resources; Technology; Management; Legal; Marketing and Production.
Our Origins
The firm of Appleton Greene has its origins in a number of countries. The original Appleton Greene practiced in the United States and Switzerland and was established as a private partnership incorporating only a handful of dedicated partners. The original vision was to develop bespoke training programs for corporate clients, depending upon their individual requirements. We always wanted to focus upon professional programs, rather than academic programs, because this enabled us to ensure that the programs were practical and could be used as key corporate objective vessels. It was important for us that our programs featured clearly defined critical success factors which could easily be measured by designated key performance indicators.
All of our programs were originally implemented on the client’s premises, so at that time we considered that having a physical presence in each of the countries that we were servicing was important. The success of the programs prompted us to open a new office in London and we had plans to open other offices as sustainable growth was achieved.
International Growth
Whereas our focus was developing business primarily within the United States and Europe, we started to indirectly develop new business within other international locations. Given the fact that many of our clients were global or international organizations, this meant that we had to adapt. We decided to offer online corporate training as an optional alternative to traditional training and within the space of one year, the majority of our clients were electing to choose this option. The online corporate training option meant that there were fewer workshops on the client’s premises, reducing the amount of time that needed to be allocated by clients and their employees. It also meant that a more sophisticated support structure needed to be provided online and this enabled us to reduce our on-site workshops to one day per month and provided clients’ employees with more time to implement what they were learning into the workplace.
This also meant that we no longer needed to have a significant physical presence in each of the countries that we wanted to do business with and in order to grow. Over time Appleton Greene began to operate more virtually and no further offices were opened as a result. Indeed the physical offices that we already had in New York, Geneva, and London reverted to serviced offices allowing us to use the office facilities as and when we needed to. The majority of our employees, learning providers, and consultants work remotely from a variety of international locations now and this has enabled us to grow at a much faster pace while reducing our fixed costs and ensuring that our costs remain variable in line with market demand.
This also changed the nature of the programs that we developed, emphasizing the need for programs that were more process-orientated. This effectively reduced the amount of client instruction required and encouraged client’s employees to be more proactive and innovative. It also made it easier to achieve commitment and ownership from clients and their employees, which in turn led to greater success.
Building a Global Firm
Appleton Greene very much evolved as an international corporate training service provider. The online revolution enabled us to operate on an international scale without having to grow physically and this meant that more time could be allocated towards new program development and implementation, which suited our artistic corporate nature.
Growth began to be dictated by the human resources that we had available to us, the number of qualified learning providers, consultants and support staff. Appleton Greene has always been entirely self-financing and our growth rate has therefore been influenced only by the quality and quantity of the human resources available to us. Many of our learning providers and consultants operate independently and only allocate a portion of their time to Appleton Greene as a result of other commitments or a desire to retain a healthy work-life balance. Our emphasis as an organization has always been on quality over quantity and if this means that our growth has been restrained as a result then we are comfortable with that.
Corporate Integration
Appleton Greene today is a fully integrated organization, registered in the Cayman Islands and with central serviced offices in three major international financial centers: New York (USA), London (UK) and Geneva (CH). It also has learning providers, consultants, and clients within most major cities in the United States, Europe, Switzerland, Canada, Middle East, Africa, India, Pakistan, China, Japan, Far East, Australasia, South America and the Caribbean. It has a profile, in terms of the range of countries and the services that it is able to supply, while operating as virtually as possible. Appleton Greene is engaged with governments, industry representative bodies, as well as professional bodies, and associations.
Appleton Greene finally made the transition from a private partnership to full incorporation as a private limited company in the Cayman Islands in 2014. Appleton Greene has a very talented team of around 200 internal employees, including 7 Authorized (CLP) Professors, 14 Authorized (CLP) Tutors, 7 International Consultancy Officers (ICO), 12, Client Support Managers (CSM), 8 Client Quality Managers (CQM), 57 Professional Research Editors (PRE), 24 Video Development Specialists (VDS), 32 Marketing Campaign Managers (MCM), and 30 Finance and Administrative staff. Appleton Greene also has a gross annual turnover of circa $420m and is entirely self-funding.
Our strength is in the quality and variety of human resources that are available to us either internally or independently and the diverse international cultures from which they come. Their commitment towards developing and implementing innovative, unique, process-orientated corporate training programs of the highest standard, enables us to achieve and maintain sustainable growth on a global scale. It is therefore our people who make Appleton Greene what it is today.