I recently sat down with Kirsty Chadwick, founder and CEO of The Training Room Online (TTRO), and heard a story that perfectly captures the crisis facing enterprise learning today. Her client, a multinational company in a highly regulated industry, had spent 15 years accumulating digital learning assets across 35 operations, 3,000 job roles, and multiple jurisdictions. The result? Complete chaos. Critical safety training was scattered across systems. Compliance materials were impossible to track. And with licenses hanging in the balance, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
After three months of manual mapping with Excel spreadsheets and consultant teams, TTRO had only managed to organize content for 16 roles across 5 sites. The math was brutal — at that pace, organizing the entire catalog would take decades. That’s when Chadwick proposed something radical: stop trying to solve this problem with human effort alone. Instead, build what she calls a “capability intelligence engine” powered by AI to dynamically create personalized curricula for every individual role at every proficiency level.
The Question Nobody’s Answering
The corporate training market is forecasted to grow, yet most organizations are still drowning in content they can’t organize, skills they can’t track, and compliance requirements they struggle to meet. The learning technology landscape has become a battlefield of competing platforms, overwhelming choice, and unfulfilled promises.
The market is dominated by giants offering one-size-fits-all solutions:
- Docebo brings AI-powered personalization and predictive analytics to enterprise learning, with seamless integrations into Salesforce and Slack.
- Cornerstone Galaxy promises to identify skills gaps and development opportunities while serving 125 million users globally.
- AllenComm creates transformative learning experiences for critical organizational priorities with clients like Delta and LEGO.
- ELB Learning delivers VR training, gamification, and authoring tools with impressive innovation.
- SweetRush has built a reputation for immersive learning experiences through compelling narratives and gamification.
- CommLab India specializes in rapid learning strategies and cutting-edge technologies for fast, scalable delivery.
The Partnership Paradigm: Why TTRO Takes a Different Path
TTRO has spent 17 years building something distinctly different. Operating from South Africa with offices across the Middle East, UK, and New Zealand, they’ve chosen depth over breadth, focusing exclusively on large enterprise and government clients who need genuine transformation, not just another vendor.
Their approach rests on three strategic differentiators that address gaps their competitors often leave open:
- AI-Powered Capability Intelligence Instead of selling pre-built AI tools, TTRO works within clients’ existing technology constraints. For the mining client, this meant building custom small language models within their approved Azure environment, training them on specific organizational content, and creating dynamic personalization that traditional LMS platforms simply can’t match. The result? Problems that took months to partially solve manually are now handled dynamically at scale.
- Technology-Agnostic Integration Rather than pushing proprietary platforms, TTRO partners with established players like Moodle while offering expertise across Articulate 360 and other industry-standard tools. They openly acknowledge what they don’t build in-house, focusing instead on making diverse technologies work together seamlessly—a refreshing transparency in an industry notorious for vendor lock-in.
- Deep Regional Specialization While competitors chase global scale, TTRO has built unmatched expertise in high-growth markets. Their work supporting a government sponsored Vision 2030 human capability development programs demonstrates understanding that goes beyond translation to genuine cultural and strategic alignment. This regional depth, combined with experience managing multi-jurisdictional compliance requirements, creates competitive moats that platform-only vendors struggle to cross.
Four Organizations That Need This Approach
TTRO’s model resonates most powerfully with specific organizational profiles facing complexity their competitors aren’t equipped to handle:
- Global Companies in Highly Regulated Industries
- Operating across 20+ countries with varying safety regulations
- Managing 1,000+ job roles with distinct competency requirements
- Facing license-threatening compliance risks
- Why TTRO works: Their capability intelligence engine automates competency mapping across jurisdictions while their 15+ year mining relationships provide unmatched domain expertise
- Government Entities and State-Owned Enterprises
- Executing national transformation agendas
- Requiring language-first content with cultural authenticity
- Balancing modernization with traditional learning approaches
- Why TTRO works: Established presence in and experience with deep understanding of regional transformation programs and government procurement processes
- Multinational Corporations Undergoing Digital Transformation
- Struggling to organize decades of accumulated training content
- Needing to work within approved enterprise AI frameworks
- Requiring partner-level strategic thinking, not vendor execution
- Why TTRO works: Their consulting-first approach and flexibility to work within existing tech stacks, plus proven ability to untangle complex content ecosystems
- High-Compliance Industries in Emerging Markets
- Operating where regulatory requirements are rapidly evolving
- Needing locally-relevant content that meets international standards
- Requiring on-ground presence for relationship management
- Why TTRO works: Physical offices across four continents provide local expertise while maintaining global quality standards
The Strategic Reality Check
TTRO represents a fascinating middle path in an industry increasingly polarized between massive platform vendors and boutique creative agencies. They’re not trying to be a one-size-fits-all all platform solution, they lack the infrastructure and global sales machinery. They’re also not competing with creative boutiques on storytelling and gamification aesthetics.
Instead, they’ve identified a specific niche: complex enterprises in high-growth markets who need strategic partners capable of solving problems that pure technology or pure content creation can’t address. Their willingness to build custom AI solutions within client constraints, rather than forcing proprietary tools, shows pragmatic flexibility that resonates with enterprises.
The challenges are real for TTRO. Limited North American presence means missing a large corporate training market. Dependence on long-term client relationships creates vulnerability if key accounts shift strategies. And as larger vendors add AI capabilities and regional presence, TTRO’s differentiation could erode.
Yet their recent momentum suggests they’ve found product-market fit at exactly the right moment. As Chadwick noted, after two years of restructuring paralysis, enterprises are finally moving forward with transformative learning initiatives. The question isn’t whether AI will transform enterprise learning—it’s whether organizations will choose partners who can navigate the complexity, or vendors who simply add to it.
Brandon Hall Group™ is leading the charge in helping the industry tackle these critical AI questions. We are gathering leaders from across the industry at the Boca Raton Innovation Campus to unpack the transformational impact of AI on HR, Learning and Talent. Through interactive panels, keynotes, and networking sessions, discover practical strategies for building trust, managing performance, developing skills, and creating ethical frameworks in the agentic AI era. Learn to lead hybrid teams of humans and AI agents effectively. Join us on October 16 and 17. More information here.
For enterprises drowning in content chaos, struggling with multi-jurisdictional compliance, or executing national transformation agendas, TTRO offers something increasingly rare: a partner who admits they don’t have all the answers, but has the expertise and flexibility to find them. In an industry full of platforms claiming to solve everything, sometimes the most powerful solution is a partner willing to solve your specific something.
