Buckinghamshire Business First
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Buckinghamshire Business First provides business support services to nearly 10,000 members in Buckinghamshire. It launched a new website in 2016 to better connect members and allow them to promote their businesses. The website also provides tools to help businesses, such as a diagnostic to identify areas for improvement. Buckinghamshire Business First aims to address skills gaps, access to finance, infrastructure issues, and other challenges local businesses face over the next six months through advisory services, workshops, grants, and incubation space with on-site support. It targets helping over 660 businesses with diagnostics and providing grants and support to over 100 businesses to facilitate growth.
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Buckinghamshire Business First
- 1. Is there a solution? Growth Hub Sustainability 11th May 2017
- 2. Tell me about the new website… Buckinghamshire Business First Welcome to Buckinghamshire • Excellent road, rail and air networks • Oxford – Cambridge – London Arc • Buckinghamshire has the 3rd highest productivity among the 39 LEPs • GVA grew by 5.1% in 2014 • 42% of population have a degree • 2nd highest level of start ups BUT….. • Average house price in Bucks is £397,613 • Near full employment • Highest population of micros in UK • Lowest no of scale ups in UK with only an additional 2 from 2012 – 14 • Only 75 businesses with more than 250 employees
- 3. From humble beginnings Established in 2011 for the benefit of the Buckinghamshire business community by 10 business leaders, £100k and a team of 4. Buckinghamshire Business First is now approaching 10,000 members strong.
- 4. Our community • We have approaching 10,000 small, medium and large business in membership • Penetration of private sector workforce in Bucks has reached 67.28% • Over 2,000 unique visitors to the website each week • Over 7,000 published profiles in our business directory • 150 Investing members… £60k of investment from membership packages
- 5. In the last 5 years…
- 6. In the last 5 years…
- 8. Encouraging members to work together Our brand new website launched end in 2016 with a whole new look and lots of features that allows our members to do more business both locally and nationally. Invested members can add feature rich content to the website, manage preferences, promote their products and services and provide support to our membership.
- 9. New investment packages Membership is free but by co-investing in Buckinghamshire Business First local businesses and strategic partners can become more actively engaged with our community.
- 10. Full of clever stuff Members can sign into their personalised dashboard to receive tailored news, events, contracts and offers all based on business interests. The more members use the site the more intuitive it becomes.
- 11. Member profiles Members have control over their business profile online and are able to: • Set preferences and add interests • Add content including testimonials, jobs, events & contracts • See how many times their profile has been viewed • Measure how content is performing
- 12. Feedback so far
- 13. Virtual Adviser New online diagnostic launched last week: • Provides members with bespoke report highlighting areas for improvement & links to events and resources to help • Linked to ERDF/ ESF funding schemes • Information fed back into CRM to help inform future support and strategy for the Growth Hub
- 14. First Stop Shop – partnership is key
- 15. The Gaps • Skills – Matching scale ups with employees with the right skills • Aspiration and leadership skills • Export gap – finding new markets • Finance gap – raising capital and being investment ready • Infrastructure gap – Massive shortage of commercial property • Digital gap – Up skilling our micro businesses
- 16. Next 6 Months ERDF funding will support…. • 1:1 business advice providing 12 hours of intensive support • Needs Analysis – Virtual Adviser • Opportunities to more easily work with HEIs for R&D, knowledge transfer • A new Investment Readiness service • Grants to incentivise growth activity, service take up at universities and reduce energy usage • Additional Incubation / co-working space with on site business support
- 17. The Offer cont……. We will target marketing to businesses which are: • Identified scale up cos • Cos in recognised growth sectors • Established businesses • Turnover of more than £250,000 • We will further develop our business community and encourage peer to peer and mentoring support - this is often where the magic starts
- 18. Sector specialist adviser leads Business Support for Growth Rural Start Up Manu- facturing Life Sciences Inward Invest Retail Food and Drink Connectiv i-ty Tourism Digital Creative and Media
- 19. Support programmes provided by Buckinghamshire Business First 1:1 Support •Inward Invest •1:1 support with specialisms in manufacturing, life sciences, digital, retail, creative and media, start up •Low carbon energy advice •Hotline telephone support •Peer to Peer •Mentoring •Start Up advice 1:Many Support •Workshops •Networking •Focus on events •Sector based events Access to Finance Investment Readiness •GRANTS: •Leader •Low Carbon Workspace •Velocity Growth •HALO grants •Knowledge Transfer (Bucks 2020) Skills •Brokering university services •Training needs analysis •Opps in Bucks •Wannabe – the future workforce Connectivity / Digital •Superfast broadband Online Support •Virtual Adviser •Online Business Support Finder •Tools and Templates •Online calculators •Ask a member •Business directory •Procurement portal •Research •Enewsletters Workspace •Hot desking in the Hubs at Chesham, Aylesbury and Saunderton •Incubation space in Aylesbury and Saunderton
- 20. Outputs in the next 12 months • 660 businesses having undertaken a diagnostic for business needs analysis • 100+ grants provided to facilitate jobs and business growth • 100 businesses getting 12 hrs business support • 20 businesses started on a investment readiness programme • Increased incubation space for micro businesses backed up onsite business support • Demand led workshops particularly on exporting and sector specialisms
- 21. Supporting growth & excellence
Editor's Notes
- How our story started … Back in 2011 a group of local entrepreneurs and business leaders sat round a table to discuss how businesses could have a stronger voice at the tables that could encourage a more business friendly environment for Buckinghamshire. Our founder investors raised £100,000 and Buckinghamshire Business First was born, with a board of 10 local business leaders, a team of 4 and a membership liability of £1 each
- Our community now consists of over 8000 members who can now all take advantage of offers, events contracts and support and expertise from the community.
- Fast forward to 2016…. and what have we achieved? Buckinghamshire Business First now has over 8,000 members representing over 61% of the private sector workforce in the county. We have delivered grants of over £10 million – supported the contribution of an additional £11 m of GVA Helped connect over 65k homes and premises through the delivery of the connected counties project and are actively lobbying to get 100% of Buckinghamshire covered and up to superfast speeds.
- We have provided support to over 11,538 businesses, and supported the growth of almost 2,131 jobs locally and the introduction of 49 new companies through our inward investment support. As one local business told us “ just having you there as support has made all the difference” and that’s what we’re here to do. We have established three business ‘ Hubs’ providing free office space. BBF was commended in the House of Commons last year and we were a ‘Growth Hub’ before the concept of ‘Growth Hub’s’ existed.
- And for every £1 invested in BBF – we’ve delivered back £43 of investment of economic value in return last year. In short, we’re not doing too badly, but we want to do more.
- Which is why we’ve recently launched our brand new website which we think presents a great opportunity for members to get more actively involved on a win win basis. It’s been 5 years since we developed our previous website. This website has been in the planning for a year and in intense development for the last six months. We’ve involved a number of members and done a range of user testing along the way to ensure this site is capable of meeting the needs of our members. Members told us that they wanted more interaction with the Bucks business community, more business with local customers and visibility on local contracts so that’s what we’ve delivered.
- We have also introduced 3 co-investment levels that will provide you with greater opportunities to promote your business, network, win contracts, make special offers, host your own events, shout about your successes and much more through the website.
- Once you’re logged in you’ll get your own personalised homepage The site is intuitive so the more you use it the more tailored your experience will become.
- You also get to manage your business and personal profile. Tell us what information you’re interested in and … a great new feature is that you’ll be able to see how many times your business profile has been viewed by other members.
- Not only will your business benefit from investing in itself – you’ll also be able to pat yourself on the back and shout about the fact that you are playing an active part in helping other businesses and start ups to benefit from support of a movement which will ensure that Buckinghamshire remains in the top spot of locations to start grow and run a business in the UK ….