Business Support
What
The objective of the business support activity is to increase the productivity of 500 SMEs within the ERDF Package areas. This will be measured by increases in sales and up to 175 new jobs created in the supported firms. Examples of appropriate support for each business include:
- High Growth management and Intellectual Property advice
- Using digital media to access new markets
- Marketing and PR workshops
- Exploiting opportunities created by strategic conferences in specialist sectors – networking and meet the buyer events
- Export guidance from university experts to business in overseas markets
How
Business support will be delivered by a process of analysis, engagement and action by MB staff, who will coordinate market intelligence, mentorship, peer support and use of sector experts to develop support for SMEs with growth potential in a target sector supply chain. Conferences will be used as platforms to link to investment. The aim is to increase SME capacity to compete in target sectors by exploiting conferences staged in the project area (meet staff) to provide SMEs with face to face contact to access new markets or increase sales (invest staff).
Who
- Analysis to be delivered by the Invest team project staff with a major source of data being provided by local authority officers (inward investment, economic statistics teams) in the partner Local Authorities
- Engagement to be delivered by Marketing Birmingham staff, through a combination of mentorship and peer support and some support sub-contracted to sector specific experts to develop supply chain support
- Action a) Supply Chain Support route - mentoring and bespoke support for that sector as below, led by the Invest work stream
- b) Conference support route – Brokered by Meet staff to support SMEs to access events and conferences will include 1:1 support time and will include post-event mentor support / specialist sector-specific advice to be brokered / provided by Invest staff.
Business support will be lead by the MB Investment. The Marketing Birmingham Operations and Policy Manager provides co-ordination and project leadership across all worksteams and will manage the joint working with the Black Country and Solihull Coordinators, who are managed by their respective Local Authorities, but work directly Marketing Birmingham. As in each workstream, a multi-skilled team will support the design and production of the marketing and communications.
Walsall Council are reorganising their business support team to maximise impact of inward investment to the supply chain SMEs, including linking to the Black Country find it initiatives, the project will contribute to the costs of this team.