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Success Story: Thomas Graham
Hannah’s Story: How Thomas Graham Transformed Learning with Access LMS Evo
When Hannah Maddocks (Learning and Development Coordinator) joined Thomas Graham, a family-run industrial supplier founded in 1892, she saw an opportunity to modernise learning across the business. Training had been paper-based, inconsistent, and difficult to track. By introducing the AI-powered Access LMS Evo, Hannah created a vibrant, central hub for learning, turning compliance into connection and transforming engagement company-wide. In just six months, Thomas Graham achieved 97% compliance, over 1,500 logins per month, and a culture was created where learning is genuinely look forward to.
Business size
~200 employees
Industry
Industrial Supply & Distribution
Location
Cumbria, UK
The challenge: When experience meets expectation
Thomas Graham's strength had always been their people. Employees who'd been with the company for years, sometimes decades, carried an incredible depth of knowledge about products, processes, and customer needs. But that expertise wasn't being shared effectively, and new starters were left to piece together their understanding through informal conversations and scattered documentation.
Training was manual, time-consuming, and inconsistent. Onboarding varied depending on which branch you joined and who was available to show you the ropes. Compliance tracking meant spreadsheets, paper trails, and crossed fingers when audit season arrived. The business had an old learning management system, but it sat largely unused — outdated, clunky, and offering nothing that made staff want to engage with it.
Hannah saw the opportunity clearly: Thomas Graham needed a modern, engaging platform that could capture all that institutional knowledge, standardise training across locations, and turn learning from an administrative burden into something people actually looked forward to.
Building something people want to visit
When Thomas Graham chose Access LMS Evo, it wasn't just about finding software that could tick compliance boxes. They were looking for a platform that could become a genuine hub for learning and communication across the business. As Hannah puts it:
"It's somewhere you want to visit. It's engaging, it's visual, and we want it to be the place where you go when you need to know something."
Working closely with their dedicated Customer Success Manager, Hannah and the team mapped out department-specific training needs and created clear learning pathways for every role.
The platform was customised with Thomas Graham's branding and structure, creating something that felt distinctly theirs. It wasn't "the LMS" — it became the place people went when they needed to know something, when they wanted to check their progress, or when they were curious about how they'd performed in the latest quiz.
Quizzes, as it turned out, became surprisingly powerful. Hannah introduced monthly assessments and video-based learning, adding an element of friendly competition that nobody expected would take off quite like it did. Suddenly, staff across branches were comparing scores, celebrating top performers, and genuinely engaging with training content.
"I think the biggest pull is bragging rights that you got the best score in the company," Hannah notes.
The Solution
Access Products Implemented: Access LMS Evo
Implementation Approach:
- Planning Phase: Identified department-specific training needs and mapped clear learning pathways.
- Implementation Phase: Migrated content to Evo, developed competency-based modules.
- Adoption Phase: Promoted friendly competitions and video-based learning to drive excitement.
- Optimisation Phase: Introduced monthly assessments and real-time reporting.
Key Features Utilised:
- Training Pathways: Standardised onboarding and development across all branches.
- Competency Checks: Ensured practical understanding, not just completion.
- Assessments & Gamification: Monthly quizzes and videos boosted participation and collaboration.
Customisation & Integration: Evo was customised with Thomas Graham branding and departmental structures to create a sense of ownership and familiarity.
Support Provided: The Access team provided onboarding guidance, technical setup support, and ongoing success reviews with the CSM.
The Results
Key Metrics & Improvements:
- 97% compliance achieved in six months.
- 1,500+ logins per month across the business.
- Faster onboarding and simplified audit preparation.
Business Outcomes:
- Stronger communication across branches.
- Increased motivation and friendly competition among teams.
- Learning culture now embedded throughout the business.
User Adoption & Feedback: Staff actively compete for top quiz scores — engagement is high, and learning is seen as fun and rewarding.
Unexpected Benefits: Evo has also become the company’s central hub for communication and updates.
Future plans
For Hannah and Thomas Graham, this is just the beginning. The success of Access LMS Evo has opened doors to new possibilities, particularly around using features like Access Spotlights for product updates and internal communications.
The vision is clear: make Evo the single source of truth for everything - learning, updates, knowledge-sharing, and communication. Transform it from a learning management system into the heartbeat of how information flows through the business.
As Hannah reflects on the journey: "If you want to reach a lot of people quickly and effectively, you should definitely consider it."
For a family business with roots stretching back to 1892, Thomas Graham has shown that transformation isn't about abandoning tradition; it's about equipping people with modern tools to carry that expertise forward. With Access LMS Evo, they've built a learning culture that honours their past while preparing for their future.
Access Learning empowers organisations to build engaging, compliant, and scalable learning experiences. Through solutions like Access LMS Evo, it helps businesses transform the way their people learn, communicate, and grow.
Access Learning provides L&D teams with full-stack tools to keep their organisations compliant and create a culture of learning. If you're interested in more, head over to our Access L&D suite page.
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