About The IT Service

Built on over fifteen years of doing this properly.

Founded in 2009 by Andrew Richards, who leads every client relationship personally. We build bespoke databases and train the people who use data – for organisations that take both seriously.

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Andrew RichardsFounder · The IT Service · since 2009Microsoft MVP · Access

How it started

What we set out to fix.

When Andrew founded The IT Service in 2009, two things in the industry frustrated him enough to want to do things differently. They pointed to the same problem.

01 / The first frustration

Training that stopped at the classroom door.

The courses might be excellent – but at the end of the day, the delegates were on their own. The instructor would share an email address, and that was it.

People would say “This has been great. But now I can see what’s involved, I don’t think we have the time or expertise to do it all ourselves. Can you come and help?” And the answer was essentially “No – sorry. We’re a training company. At the end of your course, our job is done.”

That really didn’t seem right.

02 / The second frustration

Courses built for the provider, not the client.

Too often a course was built around what was convenient for the training provider – a standard curriculum, a fixed "Level 1, 2, 3" agenda (because that's easy to sell), a room of delegates from different organisations with nothing really in common.

And all too often, a trainer who had themselves only been handed the course manual to learn two days earlier.

Hardly in-depth expertise.

Both pointed to the same thing

The client’s real needs weren’t the focus of the business. They were an afterthought. We set out to make those needs the only thing that mattered.

The database side of the business grew from the same instinct. Organisations with real data complexity needed someone who would take the time to understand what they were actually dealing with before reaching for a solution. That’s still how we work – and being able to communicate complex ideas simply flows naturally from the work we do in the classroom. It’s also the hallmark of real expertise.

Recognition

Andrew Richards is a Microsoft MVP for Access.

MVP stands for Most Valuable Professional. Microsoft’s letter of recognition describes it as “an annual award that recognizes exceptional technology community leaders worldwide who actively share their high-quality, real-world expertise with users and Microsoft.” It is not a certification anyone can sit, and not a badge anyone can buy.

Fewer than thirty people hold it for Access anywhere in the world, and Andrew is one of a handful in the UK.

Andrew’s profile in Microsoft’s MVP directoryAward year 2026 – 2027

Seventeen years, and counting

Names you’ll know. Problems you might recognise.

Since our inception in 2009, we’ve built databases for Imperial College London, the Royal Marsden Hospital and Marks & Spencer, and trained thousands of people in data skills across the public and private sectors.

Our clients have spanned universities, NHS trusts, government departments, arts organisations, retailers and professional services firms. What they share is that their data problems were real – not theoretical, not simple – and they needed someone who would engage with the substance rather than sell them a ready-made solution.

You might recognise the shape of them. A database built – or half-built – a long time ago that doesn’t quite work properly any more, and that nobody left in the building fully understands. A folder full of spreadsheets that have to be combined, reconciled and interrogated by hand each time – hoping that nobody’s quietly changed the structure of one and broken the formulas in another.

Andrew has worked across various aspects of IT since the mid-1990s. The technical depth is real – but the point of it is always practical. What matters is whether it solves your problem.

And about the training itself…

85Net
Promoter
Score

At the end of every course, we ask people the standard “would you recommend us?” question behind the Net Promoter Score. Nearly 2,000 people have answered. Across all of them our score is 76 – and 85 over the past twelve months. For context, anything above 50 is considered excellent.

You always know who you’re dealing with

A person, not a company.

Andrew leads every client relationship personally. The person you speak to first is the person who does the work – and the person who’s still there when questions come up six months later.

Anyone who’s worked with a larger agency and found themselves handed to a junior team after the initial meeting will know why this matters. We think it’s a feature, not a limitation. We work with a trusted network of associates on larger projects – so as your requirements grow, so does the team fulfilling them. But the lead, on every project, for every client, is Andrew.

Here about training?

If you’re considering training rather than a database project, we have a guarantee that might be worth reading.

Find out about our training guarantee →

Alte text for person image — Vanessa Briggs HR Projects and Training Manager
Gerald Eve

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