BUSINESS WEST – CONNECTING BUSINESSES inspire Tender alert service


If you’re looking for new contracts, we’re here to help! Finding the right tenders for your business can be complex and time consuming, especially when looking internationally. Our Tender Alert Service gives you instant access to public sector opportunities from the UK and Europe. Every day notices of hundreds of


public sector contracts worth more than £100,000 are published in the Official Journal of the European Union. Opportunities range from public bodies such as national and local government and NHS trusts to higher education institutions in the UK and Europe. We will work with you to help you


create a unique company profile, taking into account your target countries and types of contracts relevant to you. Our Tender Alert Service will bring


you notifications of the latest opportunities (and UK sub-threshold tenders) relevant to your business, emailed daily or weekly, helping you to grow your business in new markets. Kevin Copp, of The Worklife Company, said: “The service offered by Enterprise Europe Network South West, is a real boon to productivity. We receive regular emails notifying us of tender opportunities that are tailored specifically to us. We have received help to fine tune the searches and find the service of great value.”


Visit: www.enterprise-europe.co.uk The value of innovation


By Liam Corcoran Innovation Marketing, Business West


Value; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something. When looking at your business, what do you value? Is it profit? Is it customer satisfaction? Value can come in lots of different forms, and each will be unique to a specific business. Some would argue the only real way to


create value is through innovation. But innovation is not a standalone development linked to one department; it involves a whole ecosystem, often spreading further than your business alone. That means value can be achieved in lots of different ways, and can fundamentally change the way a company operates both internally and externally. Below are a few different ways innovation can help you create value in your business.


Risk-taking culture Not every innovation works out, and risk- taking doesn’t come naturally to everyone. But the two go hand in hand. While many fear failure, you need to be willing to step out into the abyss and try something new. Richard Branson is the master of risk


taking. If it’s not Virgin Start Up, which provides loans to entrepreneurs taking their own risks in starting a new enterprise, it’s Virgin Records. At a time when the record market was near


impenetrable, Branson launched Virgin Records, a huge risk at the time. To make it work, he took further risks in signing little known or controversial acts, something not done at the time. But it paid off. The ability to constantly innovate means your company will never be complacent.


weekly to formally capture and review data and set the week’s goals. As we focused on increasing confidence and integrity so everyone became more informed and in turn more powerful. Ask yourself: How do you communicate?


Where do your ideas come from? When self confidence and trust grow within, people start looking to improve their environment. We researched shamelessly both inside and outside our sector for best practice and brought it home. As we grew in confidence and knowledge, so did the business. Ask yourself: How do you encourage new ideas?


Did we get it right all the time? Any organisation is a living system in continual motion, some days we sped along, others not so much. Our priority was to focus on moving forward and accepted that springing forward can only be achieved by taking a step back. We grew to trust each other and love our work


and employee engagement was high. We excelled in delighting our customers and our reputation and business grew. I learned that if I focused on looking after my team they became good communicators and confident decision makers. Ask yourself: How do you measure your company’s well-being?


Empowerment To innovate, you need an empowered team. A great leader will drive empowerment among their staff, not fear. A clear objective that applies across departments will ensure everyone works to achieve one solution. While you need to encourage empowerment, it isn’t something that can just be expected. You have to create a culture where staff are inspired and motivated to solve problems using their own drive and initiative, thus enabling you to better react to customer feedback or spot market needs. Google has done this incredibly well by allowing spaces and channels for empowerment. Google Café encourages cross-department interaction, staff can directly email the company’s leaders, Google Moderator is an innovation management tool that allows anyone to ask a question, TGIF is Google’s weekly all-hands meeting where anything can be discussed. The list goes on!


Agile decision-making A lot of value in a company comes from time, but so much is wasted within a company. To save time, look at your decision making


and how that impacts on the company. One good way of addressing this is considering the four Rs: Relevance – Why is this an important issue? Responsiveness – What are the options? Resilience – What could be some of the disruptions?


Resourcefulness – What are the best use of your resources? If you can answer those questions quickly


and effectively, they will save you time in the long term, providing you with value.


Top marks for reward system


Tots Up Big Red Bus reward chart and accompanying app was founded in 2016 and founder Sally Marks believed that, as a new business, the difficult part of launching the new product would be the development stage. However, having successfully secured funding


for development through a crowd funding campaign, she soon discovered that targeting the correct market was the real challenge. Featured on Plymouth University's GAIN 20, innovate2succeed's (i2s) David Riddell spotted Tots Up and approached Sally to offer support; specifically innovation in sales and marketing, understanding funding and grants, and strategic business development. Enterprise Europe Network's (EEN) i2s


specialist was appointed to help support strategic direction, who guided TotsUp through ensuring the business was flexible and allowed for continuous improvement based on the customer. For Access to Funding, the programme


helped Sally understand appropriate funding, how to find suitable partners for joint bids, and showed her how to write winning bids. In addition, i2s provided invaluable advice on


Sally's marketing strategy, utilising social media for customer feedback and implementing


innovative techniques for attaching new customers. The customer feedback allowed Sally to change the way she marketed her product. Sally said: "The innovate2succeed advice was excellent. It has given me a much better understanding of my future strategy. "I had never had any business coaching


before and being able to take advantage of that free help was amazing. “At the beginning of the year, I wouldn't have


been in the position to fund that level of expertise. The innovate2succeed funding has been invaluable."


Visit: www.innovate2succeed.co.uk SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017 insight 17


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