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Business Support

Reasons to feel proud.

As businesses prepare to emerge skilfully from one of the sharpest recessions in our history, Alastair MacColl explains why it's crucial they continue to seek support and prepare for the future.

The economic downturn has been particularly fierce in its testing of the North East business community. But we should feel proud at how the region has worked together to ride out the storm and prepare for growth.

North East firms are determined to succeed, despite issues faced, and have continued to seek support to help maximise their potential. In the last financial year 34,000 businesses were assisted by Business Link and 4,384 new businesses were created - a 15% increase on figures for the previous year.

 

In fact, since what is widely regarded as the start of the recession in 2008, the number of entrepreneurs that Business and Enterprise North East has helped to set up has risen sharply, proving just how tenacious and resilient businesses here really are. For many businesses, the downturn has been the start of an important journey, in which every part of their business has had to be re-evaluated.

 

The recession has highlighted to everyone the need regularly to reassess every aspect of the way our organisations run. From cash flow control to operational efficiency, on every level businesses have had to tighten up and explore ways to raise efficiency and improve impact.

 

Business and Enterprise North East has made it a priority to simplify and integrate its portfolio of support services, to ensure a process that makes the customer journey as straightforward as possible, and to ensure businesses get all the help they need to remain competitive.

 

During times of relative prosperity, you could run a successful business without relentless striving to improve every area of it. For years, you could stick to tried and tested ways of operating, without pushing to re-evaluate and re-assess the ways in which you work. But no longer.

 

This downturn has shaken up the way we do business, and I genuinely believe this can make us stronger in the future. What’s important is that we should all really embed some of the changes we have been forced to make during the downturn, and build them into our everyday practices - making us leaner and better. Indeed, some of the simplest measures that the region’s businesses have taken during the downturn are the ones that should continue to represent a big competitive advantage.

 

Regular reviews to monitor performance at every level of the company are now essential. In the current climate, I think business leaders have taken much tighter control over day-to-day running of their organisation, and are much more aware of what is going on, from shop floor to the boardroom.

 

Businesses have had to become really innovative, exploring new ways to differentiate their product or service from that of their competitors, and exploiting the opportunities in new markets. Encouragingly, during the first half of this financial year, more than 200 businesses in the region received significant help with their export drive via our UK Trade and Investment team. Adopting simple but inventive new practices has allowed many businesses to gain a competitive edge and improve their performance and profitability, even during the downturn, both in domestic and international markets.

 

It’s important the region’s enterprises should continue to embrace innovation and implement change to help them stand out from the crowd, beyond the recession.

 

Besides making changes to their operations and practices, many businesses have focused on people and skills as the key to surviving the recession.

 

This will help the North East business community to exploit the opportunities that still exist - and that will multiply when upturn arrives. Staff training and skills development has been one way that businesses in the region have sought to protect their organisation. For a modest investment in training, employers have been able to “multi-skill” staff, and thus deliver real, long-term benefits to their operations. It has never been more important to invest in skills.

 

Not only can investing in staff development boost morale, but for those businesses that have made the tough decision to make redundancies, training their remaining staff can plug any skills gaps that exist in the business.

 

And employees with more skills can bring real value to the enterprise, long term. By investing in people, and equipping them with a variety of skills, you can bring a new dimension to your team, without having to recruit. It can be the key to an even more efficient and competitive business.

 

Alastair MacColl is chief executive of Business and Enterprise North East - which runs the Business Link service in the North East, the Regional International Trade Office and the North East England Investment Centre.

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