Epic expands Services division

Epic Group plc, the UK's leading e-learning company, has launched its new Services division with the appointment of Paul Peplow in the newly-created post of Director of Services. The move builds on the existing success of Epic's consultancy, collaborative support, hosting and testing business - widening the range of services offered to include e-tutoring and face-to-face training. Through this move, Epic enhances its ability to offer clients a full range of services to support performance improvement through learning.

Paul Peplow brings a wealth of experience to his new role. Previously a UK managing director of Europe's largest training organisation, he has also held commercial and training responsibilities in leading blue-chip multinationals in financial, FMCG and pharmaceutical sectors (including Diageo, GlaxoSmithKline, Lloyds TSB and NatWest). His brief will be to take control of the current services and shape the expanded offering.

Donald Clark, CEO of Epic Group plc said: 'This is a natural step for Epic. We have successfully expanded our business into products in response to real customer demand. As the e-learning market matures, we have responded by increasing our learning services. Customers want more sophisticated services. They want integrated solutions'.

Epic's consultancy service has already delivered research, strategic learning consultancy, return-on-investment modelling, blended learning design and evaluation to a range of private and public sector clients.

Epic will also offer integrated learning solutions with communications, knowledge management and face-to-face components, all designed to enhance the e-learning deliverables. These will be symbiotic with the e-learning.

Collaborative learning is being provided through Arena, a collaborative learning environment currently used in both the private and public sector to provide learning, messaging, discussions and other community functionality. E-tutoring will also be offered through Epic's collaborative learning software. This builds on Epic's experience in designing online tutored solutions to sustain motivation and momentum in e-learning courses.

Online technical support and maintenance will also be available through a dedicated team, along with hosted learning solutions.

The e-learning testing business (currently the largest facility of its kind in Europe) will continue to offer compatibility and interoperability testing using the SWAT bug database software on a wide range of kit, browsers, operating systems and networks.

A localisation service will build on years of Epic experience in cultural adaptation and translation into more than 20 languages.