Services

Our Support Packages

1st Wednesday Community
Be part of a group of business owners who get together each month in order to look at ideas and concepts that will be useful to your venture and to the way your business is perceived by others around you.

As it says in the name, we meet the first Wednesday of each month and bring you speakers and contributors who will give you both information and inspiration for you and your team.  Take a few hours just once a month to give yourself some good input.

Connections Community
Use our website to raise the profile of your business on-line.  Give us details of what you do, why you do it, who you want to reach and why you are the business that these people should connect with.

We will promote your story and get the message out about what you do and enable you to establish powerful connections with people who want to trade with you. The more presence your business has on-line the greater the benefit to you of this exposure. 

Telephone Support 
Being in business day-by-day, on your own, and in competition with other companies can be a daunting, and sometimes lonely process.  You might not need a consultant to work with you in your premises on a regular basis, but with the demands of your busness this support package allows you to have access to another opinion, to a fresh way of looking at the same challenges.

Use this service from YBS in order to get closer to your goals and intentions. Work with us when you need to.  Whatever the issue, don’t be afraid to call us.  Simply pick up the phone and discuss aspects of your business and gain from our experience and insight.

In-Depth Business Diagnostic Assessment
We will visit your business and produce a detailed and very specific report that looks at each aspect of your business.  Our consultant will take the time to understand and identify significant aspects of your venture, starting with an Overview of Operations, Trading Patterns, Client Groups, and Internal Structure, before moving to look at Planning, Management, HR, Finance, Production, Premises, Marketing, Sales, IT and Innovation.

From the understanding we gather about these aspects of your business we then move forward again to produce recommended actions.  These will be specifically focussed: Improving Profitability; Increasing Sales; Enhancing Business Capability; Routes to Market; and provision of further Information and Skill Enhancement.

Monthly On-Site Consulting Package
Having received a Diagnostic Report that covers all aspects of your business in one in-depth package you are now ready to benefit from regular monthly on-site support and assistance.  This will involve several hours engagement from an experienced consultant who has a strong grasp of your business and who will work with you and your senior team to move closer to the objectives you have for the operation.   The work we do with you in these monthly sessions will be directly linked to the Action Plans and Objectives which came from the Diagnostic Report, and are very closely tied in to the larger Goals for your venture.

Use our skills and experience to be present within your business whenever you want it.  We can be present at your own Monthly Meetings; to scope out Team development; to analyse your Marketing results and new directions or Sales initiatives; to be present for negotiations or sales meetings; etc.

Take advantage of this regular package of monthly involvement and use our time and skills in order to develop and grow your business positively and strongly in the direction you truly want to go.

Project Work Partnership
There will be times when you have to make significant changes to your business or to implement new directions.  It will often be the case that for essential strategic purposes you need to make a shift or do something new or different.  Such a change often suits a Project Driven Approach with specific scope, terms and deliverables.  To accomplish this we have our Project Work Partnership service, providing you with specialist consultancy expertise and skill relative to the requirement of the goals and outcomes to be attained. 

This process is committed to on a day basis with the size of the project initially scoped out in discussion and consultation with your senior team.  It can be of very high benefit to you to have an external project consultant driving and monitoring this project while you deal with day to day activity.

Once we have been appointed to deliver the project partnership we work with you to ensure you attain the results that are written within the first scoping exercise document.

One Year Business Development Group

This is a high impact programme that addresses both Your Business Growth and Your own Development as a Business Leader.
N.B: Participation in this programme attracts regional funding support.
 
Background
When speaking with many Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs), it becomes very apparent that they manage and operate their businesses with very little contact with other SMEs or business networks.  It is also very rare for SMEs to prepare and work to updated Business Plans or Cash Flow Forecasts which can reflect an unwillingness to set aims and objectives - and work towards their achievement.

Recognising these circumstances and to support aims of local enterprise industry organisations to reach targets in areas such as the Local Competitive Challenge, and stimulation of growth among small businesses, the Business Development Group (BDG) is a natural solution and delivered by Yorkshire Business Services.

Aims and Objectives

• The sharing of peer group skills and experiences
• Development and improvement of business performance
• Sharing of issues around the decision making process
• Creation and building of trust among group members
• Development of peer group support for achieving change goals
• Achievement of Group and Individual targets within 10 months, via agreed Action Plans
• Achievement of quantifiable outputs for both Jobs Created and Safeguarded
• Provision of advice to individual Businesses

How does the Group work and how can you benefit?
Between 10 - 15 small businesses meet monthly for a whole day and are facilitated at each meeting by the group Chairman.  A "board-room environment" approach is used to encourage members to take responsibility for the growth of their ventures as they review new and existing management ideas and techniques.

Participants are encouraged to speak openly about what is not working in their businesses.  Through the use of specifically selected topics of interest and some use of outside visiting speakers, the BDG offers access to trade knowledge and to best-practice examples that group members may otherwise not have access to.

Participants are from non-competing businesses.  The direction and focus of the meetings are kept on track by the facilitator who provides encouragement, motivation and administrative back up to the needs of the group.

How do You Qualify to join a Business Development Group?
The participants on the programme will be owner-managers and stakeholders in their businesses and will come from the North Yorkshire region.  We recruit the group of participants to ensure a real mix of business experience, innovation and experience.  None of the companies are in either direct or indirect competition to one another.  The programme is offered to companies from within the SME sector with 30 staff or less.

Some very successful and highly contributive participants will be from much smaller firms, able to bring a lot of energy, experience and insight.