Realise Training Group is a national training provider that delivers apprenticeships, adult education, and skills programmes to help people into work and support employers with workforce development. Its provision spans across 6 sectors; Early Years, Health and Social Care, Business Solutions, Transport, Public Sector and Smart Energy. In 2025, the business restructured from Realise Learning and Employment to become Realise Training Group, bringing six specialist divisions under one umbrella.
With operations across England and plans to expand into Scotland, the organisation is continuing to scale. “We’re growing year on year, and this year has been our most successful,” explained Dylan McCann, Bid Manager at Realise.
The Challenge: Finding a Single Source of Truth
Like many providers, Realise needed to underpin its bids with solid evidence drawn from labour market intelligence. However, until recently, the bids team relied on a patchwork of sources, with each bid demanding time-consuming manual research.
“The bid team was looking at different portals for all the data,” recalled Dylan. “They were going onto different websites looking for things like council statistics or qualification levels. They were using ten different websites to bring it all together”.
Having used Lightcast data in his previous company, Dylan quickly saw the opportunity to increase efficiencies in planning bids at Realise. “I was a big advocate of it because all the data is in one place. It’s just one website you go to, collect everything you need, and download it as PDF, Word, or Excel”.
How the Partnership Began
When Dylan joined Realise in September 2023, he brought with him first-hand experience of Lightcast from his previous role at another training provider. Having seen the difference it made to bids, he quickly identified the same need at Realise.
The bids team relied on multiple sources and portals for statistics, and Dylan knew Lightcast’s Analyst platform could simplify and strengthen this process. To secure buy-in, he prepared a business case for senior leadership. “The CEO and the directors were telling me that this is the year we’re going to grow. I had built a business case file in terms of why we should use Lightcast, and they were impressed. They said, ‘You know, why not?’”.
He also arranged a live demonstration for the bids team to see Analyst in action. “They were very impressed with it. From then on, we looked into signing the contract. Because Realise was growing, it was a good time for us to bring Lightcast on board”.
Realise adopted Lightcast in December 2023, just three months after Dylan joined, and the impact was instant.
The Benefits: Efficiency, Accuracy, and Stronger Bids
Where the bids team once pieced information from a patchwork of portals, they now have a single source of truth. “Rather than searching through 10 different websites, we’re just looking at one website. So it’s time-efficient and has everything in one place”.
That efficiency has directly translated into growth. Realise has nearly doubled the number of bids submitted in the past year alone. But it isn’t just about speed. Real-time, trusted labour market intelligence has also raised the quality and credibility of submissions.
"Most official sources aren’t updated in real time. With Lightcast, the data is up to date, and we can see that most combined authorities are putting it into their invitation to tenders and strategic skills plans. It’s good that we can reference that data as well.”
– Dylan McCann, Bid Manager, Realise Training
The granularity of the labour market data in Analyst has also proved valuable. From economy overviews to job postings analytics, the team can evidence demand in a way that resonates with commissioners. For example, when bidding for early years provision in the West of England, Realise was able to highlight that one of its employer partners ranked among the top three job posters locally. The results speak for themselves. By September, the team had already met its annual targets.
Impact in Numbers
Since using Lightcast, Realise Training has managed to successfully accumulate over £8m in monetary value in bids for 2025.
Most of the bids we have used for Lightcast for this year have been pretty successful. We hit all the targets given to us as a bid team by September. Lightcast data has been particularly helpful for Realise in West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA), helping the team achieve Adult Skills Funding (£2.5m) and Bus Training bids (£625,000).
Unlocking Wider Opportunities
For now, access is concentrated within the bids team, with five users across bids and one seat for marketing. But Realise sees potential for much broader adoption. “I know we have six business units within the company. If we grew our user accounts, those units could target specific locations and demographics,” said Dylan.
Other teams are already showing interest. “The adult skills team asked me for data to showcase demographics and qualification levels. If they had access, they could target specific areas and courses more directly”. Marketing, too, could benefit from using job posting data to identify key areas to target for campaigns.
Realise Training’s work with Lightcast has transformed how bids are developed, doubling output and strengthening the evidence base behind every submission. The team now sees the platform as essential to its growth strategy.
It’s been very useful, and the team has been praising it this year. Lightcast has definitely supported the growth of the company.
If you’re looking for accurate, granular data to support your funding bids, contact Lightcast here.
