About a virtual office? A physical office space can place a huge expense on your business and in some cases, a physical office space is not even necessary for a business. Virtual Offices are a cost-effective alternative to renting an expensive physical office space. So, what is a virtual office? A virtual office provides you with a virtual presence at the location you choose. The virtual office allows a business to establish a professional image and provides complete flexibility. For example, a business owner might be running their business from home but they do not want to have the business address as their home address so they would opt for a virtual office to separate these addresses. What are the benefits of using a virtual office? If you rent your property, there’s a good chance that registering your company to that address will not be allowed under your tenancy – primarily as the landlord shoulders much of the liability should you rack up debt. Lastly, the landlord and next tenants may find it difficult to secure consumer credit on items such as tv’s or mobile phones due to the address if a business has been operating from that address and racked up lots of debt. Cut Costs – A virtual office is a much cheaper alternative to renting a physical office space. You might be spending huge amounts of money on a physical office space when you don’t necessarily need the space but need the benefits that a virtual office would provide. Make the switch to a virtual office and start saving today. Separate your business address from your home address – Registering your business at your home address can create multiple challenges. One of the main challenges is the business image. A home address creates an unprofessional image for your business which could affect your growth. The second major challenge is associated with privacy. Many business owners do not want their business registered at their home address because it can be intrusive on their privacy. A virtual office provides a solution to both problems because it allows you to separate your business address from your home address. Complete Flexibility – Virtual offices unlock the door to flexible working. With a virtual office in place you can choose to work from anywhere in the world because you aren’t locked into one location. Set up a virtual office and start working from your ideal location. Have a regional presence – many organisations tender for local authority or other government funded bids. Without an address local to the region often precludes organisations from applying for the tender. Additionally, if you’re a business looking to operate within the UK, having a virtual office is a very effective way of creating a global brand. Check out our virtual office services today.

Loyal customers are a lot more likely to buy more than new customers. This in turn is likely to lead to a higher stream of revenue in the long-run. So how can customer retention be achieved? Well, one of the main factors involved with customer retention is relationships. This is primarily focusing on developing the relationship between your clients and your brand. In order to do this, we are going to be looking at relationship marketing to ensure your clients remain loyal to your brand. For relationship marketing to work, we need to focus on long-term results. The key is to build a meaningful relationship over a long period of time. This is often established when the customer receives extra value for engaging with your brand. For example, you could offer clients loyalty points when they make a purchase from you, this way customers start to feel an attachment with your brand. This is good for you because you are building up customer loyalty, however, we want to be able to create something bigger than this. Thanks to social media, we now have the luxury of being able to connect with any brand we love. With this in mind, we want to be able to bring loyal customers together as part of a community surrounding the brand. This is done through social media marketing, which aims to send your brand message out to a large audience. As a result, you will increase your brand exposure which is extremely beneficial for customer retention because your social media page will hold content that adds value to your clients. Once customers know about your social media page, they will be able to access resources like competitions which are the perfect way to build relationships with your clients because it is a chance for you to give back. #CustomerRetention #Hospitality #Marketing

When it comes to marketing it can be very challenging to find a medium where you can communicate with your target audience, and as a result, there is a major concern that the return on investment won’t be worth the effort and resources you invest. One of the most attractive marketing campaigns is a coaster campaign. Communicating with your target audience through coasters offers a lot of benefits that will ensure you get a strong return on your investments. Let’s have a look at some of the highlight benefits. High Rate of Retention One of the biggest challenges in marketing is creating the material that is compelling enough to allow your target audience to remember the message that you are delivering so that they will take action at a later stage in the buying process. Coasters will provide a simple solution to this problem. Pe People on average spend 45 minutes in a bar which means they have the opportunity to spend 45 minutes absorbing the information on your coaster. Therefore, they are more likely to notice the coaster time and time again, especially when the coaster is placed directly under their drink. The more times a consumer is exposed to marketing material, the more likely they are to remember the message. As a result, the retention rate of a message on a coaster is over 60%, making them highly effective when it comes to improving brand awareness. Increased Exposure Bars have a high number of different people that pass through every single day. This is a huge opportunity for your business if you were to have your message on the front of a coaster. On average there are 4-6 people around a single table in a bar. That’s 4-6 different people absorbing your message over a long period of time. When combined with the high retention rate of a coaster campaign, you can start to see the potential value they offer for your business. Combine online and offline marketing It is very rare to find a piece of marketing material that will allow you to deliver your message both online and offline. We have designed a unique dynamic coaster that allows you to do just that. We add a unique QR code to your coasters so that your target audience can quickly scan the code and see all your latest offers online. If they don’t have a phone on hand to scan the code, they are still able to absorb the message that is displayed on the coaster. Learn more about our dynamic coasters here. #Coasters #Marketing

Working from home can benefit both businesses and employees to improve the output and impact of the company. In today’s world, the development of technology has made it more possible to run a business from any location. This presents a great opportunity for you to better your business and employees. Increasing Productivity of Employees Studies have found that employees who work from home are 13% more productive than those who work in the office. If you are looking for a way to improve the productivity in your business, offering your employees more flexibility in their job and the environment they work in could be a good starting point. Working from Home Is More Possible Than Ever Before In the UK, 87% of adults used the internet daily in 2019. Almost everyone can access the internet in today’s modern world which means you can complete many jobs from the comfort of your own home. Internet access allows communicating with colleagues and the sharing of resources. The most prominent industry for working from home is the tech industry, however, there are more and more industries that are adapting to the internet to allow you to work from any location, for example, expenditure on digital marketing is expected to reach $380 billion in 2020 so more businesses are turning to digital marketing as their main channels for marketing and this is a job that can be carried out from any location in the world. Cutting Costs If both you and your employees work from home, it can help your business to cut costs as you don’t have to pay for office space or office supplies. Saving on office space and supplies can save you a large chunk of money which can be allocated to greater purposes such as investing in your employees and customers to make their experience unforgettable. Saving on these items essentially gives you more flexibility when operating your business and it can be common for businesses to be unnecessarily renting an office space, so be sure to think about whether you need a physical office space. Hire the Best Talent Operating a remote work programme means you will be able to hire people from all over the world and this broadens the talent pool from which you can recruit your next big employee. Hiring the best talent is an obvious bonus for your business and the quality of your products and services will give you that competitive advantage over close competitors. Remove the Commute When you work from home there’s no need to commute. This is possibly one of the most important points that could benefit you and your business. Reports have found that an average of 54 hours is spent commuting each year because of distance and traffic. That’s 54 more hours you could be spending innovating your business, building customer relationships or even dedicating more time to yourself to rest and recover. Regardless of how you re-allocate this time, it will most likely be better than sitting in traffic. Summary There are many pros associated with working from home and some of these can help to transform your business, however, it’s not for everyone so it is important to weigh up this decision to see if it will benefit your business. Working from home not only benefits your business, but it also benefits you and your employees as flexible working has been linked to a higher level of productivity. If you are thinking about working from home, you might want to consider adopting a virtual office. Virtual offices provide you with a professional address for your business and this offers privacy for you as your house address will not be associated with your business. Click Here for more information on virtual offices.

Did you know that you gain an extra 27.7 minutes each week in a leap year? It’s true! In a leap year, you gain 27.7 minutes extra every single week and you could be utilising this time to get ahead of the competition. There is a total of 53 weeks in 2020 which means you and your business will gain an extra 24.5 hours in the year to get ahead of your competition. Charles Darwin once said, “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”, so be sure to make the most of the extra time you have in a leap year. We’re going to be showing you some of the best ways you can make use of your extra 24.5 hours to better your business and get one step ahead of the competition. Opportunity #1 – Take your website to the next level Studies suggest that 64% of businesses now have a website and this number is only to increase which means it’s critical for you to have a website that looks the part. But what are some of the key elements that can help you to separate your website from the competition? Top elements to differentiate: Blog SEO Design Value Function These are some of the most important elements that can influence the success of a website. Your audience will expect these elements to be of good quality as these feed into the overall user experience when someone visits your website. Loading speed is vital, so at the very least you could be dedicating your extra 27.7 minutes each week to improve your loading speed because I can guarantee your audience will be expecting a quick loading speed. Alternatively, if this is something that you don’t need to focus on then I would recommend developing the amount of value that you offer users on your website. You can add value to all of your users through blogs, vlogs and support so it is definitely worthwhile contributing an extra 27.7 minutes each week to content creation. Opportunity #2 – Deliver excellent customer service A lot of us are time-strapped and it can be difficult to complete some of the smaller but more meaningful tasks that can really make a difference to the people around us. Responding to customers feedback can be just that. Often during busy periods, you can start to receive a lot of feedback that requires your response. The importance of responding to this feedback is huge because you can start to build more meaningful relationships with your customers which can often result in them becoming advocates for your brand. Making the most of the extra 27.7 minutes you have every week can give you a chance to open up your emails or hop on social media to start replying to some of the comments that people have been leaving with you. You don’t need a lot of time to do this so it is the perfect task to complete at the end of every day when you’re finishing up at the office. Opportunity #3 – Motivate Your Team Using the extra 27.7 minutes each week is a great opportunity for you to find different methods to motivate your team. This is definitely worthwhile as team morale and employee well being is so important in today’s workplace. In fact, a motivated team is said to have a boosted performance of up to 44%. On the other hand, you could also allocate time to sit down with your team face to face to discuss how they are currently feeling about work and the workplace itself. You could even tell them that you are incorporating an open-door policy where employees can drop by your office whenever they want to discuss something that could potentially improve the organisation or even support them to complete their job if they are finding certain aspects to be challenging. Opportunity #4 – Self Development Setting aside extra time every week to focus on your self-development can be a real driving force in your future success. Firstly, it’s important to understand your goals so that you can start equipping yourself with the right skills to help you reach these goals. Self-development is also important because every industry is always developing. The technology you use is constantly upgrading and the behaviour of your customers is shifting, so it’s important to stay on the front and continue learning each day. Having an extra 27.7 minutes each week is a huge help for you in your efforts to become better equipped. Summary There are hundreds of opportunities presenting themselves to you every single day which you could seize if only you had the extra time. We’ve picked out our top four areas that we believe you can get on top of this leap year with an extra 27.7 minutes each week. If these are things you’re already in control of then we highly encourage you to explore your challenges to see how you could be making the most of a little extra time this leap year.

COVID-19 has caused a range of problems for businesses across the globe and it’s no surprise to see many of these businesses moving out of their office space to cut expenses. The challenge is that many of these businesses are losing their professional business address and many small businesses are having to register their business at their home address. What is a registered office? A registered office is a cost-effective alternative to having a physical office space. You can register your business at a location for a monthly cost so that your business has a professional address that can help when doing business. Overall, the idea of a registered office is to help you save a lot of money whilst maintaining a professional business presence. The Benefits to Your Business A registered office is super cost-effective when compared to a physical office space. During this challenging time which all businesses are going through, it’s very difficult to cover expenses. A lot of small businesses have lost a lot of their customers as they can no longer sell their products or services. If you’re currently facing high expenses, it could make a lot of sense to switch from renting a physical office space and start using a registered office. This could save your business a lot of money and potentially save your business in the long run. Protect your privacy. If you are a small business currently registered at your home address you may feel that your privacy is slightly invaded. Your business is pointing everyone towards your home address so it’s important to separate your business and social space. Never miss a delivery – With a business address at a business centre, you will never miss a delivery. A business centre will always be available to receive your delivery, all you have to do is collect your mail from the business centre which can be more convenient for you if the business centre is local to you. How Do I Setup a Registered Office? The SME Centre of Excellence provides a registered office service for as little as £15 per month. To get set up all you have to do is visit our website and fill out the enquiry form. One of our team members will be in touch within 24 hours to provide you with all the information you need to get setup. Find out more about registered offices HERE

We’ve already covered analysing your market to understand if there is enough scope for you to develop your idea, make it a long term sustainable business and be profitable enough to give you the lifestyle you’re looking for. But how do you actually validate your idea, once you have passed the market validation checkpoint? In this article, we’ll be discussing two straight-forward methods you can use as a budding business owner or early stage business owner – because let’s face it, most of us miss this part out right and just dive straight in! So, validating your idea – why is it so important? Well, you’ll be putting hours and hours into this project and unlike Kevin Costner is Field of Dreams “if you build it, they will come” we want to have the best chance of our fledgling business to become strong. Building something to see if people will buy, just isn’t going to work any longer (and it’ll save you hundreds of hours of stress and late nights!). Audience Engagement Our first method is – engage with your audience and run some basic validation tests. Once you have a good idea of who your customer is – you need to now go and have introductory conversations with them. Remember, you are not selling your product or service at this stage, but you are looking to understand areas such as: their buying habits or triggers who they buy from currently why they buy from that provider any pains or irritations they feel when buying the product or service what they are looking for when buying (pain relievers) Face to face interviews are considered the best form of data capture for a number of reasons including, you can view their body language, you can more clearly hear the tone of their voice, you can ask follow up questions and you can get an all-round better understanding of how your potential customer reacts to questions posed. Using the telephone is probably the next best alternative, however, bear in mind that you won’t be able to notice any body language occurring, so really listen to the responses and how they are being phrased. Video calling someone would be a great middle-ground alternative as the technology is suitable sufficient to allow this easily. Still within this section are surveys. There are multiple providers of surveys including SurveyMonkey.com, freeonlinesurveys.com or Google Forms. Whichever provider you choose, you’re trying to convince, someone you don’t know, to engage in a survey – so you may wish to think about creative ways you can achieve that! Take a look at this video to help you understand why it’s best not to ask friends or family – try to get impartial information, real information that will help you determine whether your business idea has a future. When surveying people that have closely matched characteristics to your intended audience, the more information you can gather, the better. Asking 5 people is unlikely to get you the depth of information you need in order to effectively develop an appreciation of whether your idea is strong enough. We would aim for a minimum of 50 people to survey in order to develop a strong enough data set for which to analyse. Landing Pages The second method to consider is – develop a landing page. You can start with a simple landing page. It’s a lot less time to build a simple landing page than creating a whole business around a set of assumptions. Before you start building a landing page, translate the features of your product into customer’s benefits. Using these benefits, you can quickly begin articulating a really compelling offer. Be sure that your landing page will have: Your total offer with short descriptions of customer’s benefits; Order form, subscription form or phone number that visitors can use to take the first action on a page – be clear on your call to action. Your goal is to measure and check if there is enough interest in the problem for your customers. The best way to measure the interest will be the conversion rates. You can calculate the conversion rates by the following formula: Conversion rate = The total number of visitors / The number of visitors that take the action For example, if you have generated 1000 visitors to your landing page, and 50 of them ordered your product or subscribed to your list to receive the information when they can buy the product, or call you on the phone, your conversion rate will be 50/1000 = 0.05 or 5%. If your conversion rates don’t pass the process, you will need to go back and improve the offer. Mailchimp.com offers a landing page solution on their free plan – so if you already have a free account, you can simply use Mailchimp to validate your idea. If you don’t have an account, it is pretty simple to set one up – and we would recommend you do so as you will more than likely be using Mailchimp as a tool to capture emails and then re-market in the future.

Virtual offices are becoming increasingly popular in the business world. This is largely due to the unmatched degree of affordability and flexibility it provides to small and start-up companies. However, when it comes to the marketing side of business, the benefits of a virtual office are not quite so obvious. This is because these benefits are largely indirect. With the COVID-19 pandemic still sweeping across the globe (at the time of writing this article), we’ve seen a huge number of businesses having to change their models and re-evaluate how they can start to move forward in very challenging times. In this article, we’re looking at 3 main benefits virtual office address provides for your organisation. While we talk about 3 benefits here, there are many more that aren’t related directly to the marketing function of your organisation. Cost Savings One such benefit is that the immense cost-effectiveness of a virtual office means the savings on premises can be invested into your marketing endeavours. This benefit is especially important for small businesses and start-ups, as the marketing side of business is highly competitive and expensive. Renting or owning bricks and mortar is so expensive these days, many business owners are looking for ways in which they can completely irradicate the need for the expense of rent or mortgages. Businesses, especially smaller businesses are looking for dynamic ways in which to develop and grow their business, and this leads us nicely on to the second point….. A Virtual Office Gives Your Business Prestige Many start-ups and (to a lesser extent) small businesses register their business at a residential address for the purposes of business correspondence. This makes sense. It costs far less than using an actual business workplace and address to operate from. However, the major problem with this strategy is that it makes the credibility of the company appear questionable. This in turn makes it all but impossible to attain any level of prestige. In other words, the lack of a professional business address is detrimental to your business' image, severely limiting the level of effectiveness of your marketing efforts. With a virtual office, a professional business address is part and parcel of the business model. It provides an affordable and effective means for start-ups, small businesses, and entrepreneurs to benefit from all the kudos of a business address: a business address in a prestigious location and a professional presence in the city of your choice. As your professional business address (known as a virtual address) is used for your mail and can be displayed on your website, it immediately gives your business the impression of credibility and professionalism. The degree of prestige afforded to your business by a professional address allows you to market your products or services to a wider range of people. All of which will greatly boost the effectiveness of your marketing. A Virtual Office Protects Your Privacy In Marketing Last but not least, a highly beneficial aspect of having a professional business address is the privacy it affords. Any business owner who uses their home address for business correspondence has effectively given up their personal privacy in the process. A business registered at home is one that unavoidably publicises your home address wherever it makes a presence, such as online listings and correspondence. This can seriously compromise your personal privacy. Your personal details can be easily acquired by telemarketers and malicious individuals looking to exploit your data. A breach of your personal information can lead to a whole host of problems. In this way, all of your marketing efforts will come at a personal cost: for every time and every place you promote your business, you automatically make public your personal details. With a virtual business address, however, your business is registered at a professional address ensuring that your business is separated from your personal life. The beauty of this is you can still run your business from home, but your home address is not associated with any of your business activities or communications. Thus, your virtual address ensures that you keep your private address private. In conclusion… As covered above, a virtual office can greatly bolster your marketing efforts in a number of ways: Savings: by minimising your running costs, you can invest more funds into your marketing strategy. Professionalism: a professional business address combined with a professional receptionist service immediately gives your business an air of professionalism. This ensures that every penny you spend on marketing will yield substantially better results - and even more so if your business has a prestigious address. Privacy: In separating your business address from your personal one, you can be sure that your marketing activities will work entirely for your business, and not against you as the business owner. Check out our virtual office offering here the the SME Centre of Excellence or give us a call on 01661 823234 for a chat about your requirements.

If you’re thinking about starting a small business but an element of fear or uncertainty is holding you back, this article will help add clarity. There are many reasons why businesses fall short, so it’s important to have an understanding of some of the common errors so that your business doesn’t miss the mark as well. Insufficient working capital One of the main reasons that businesses fail to hit the ground running is simply down to poor management of working capital. Business owners should be aware of how much capital is needed to cover the day-to-day operations of the business. Without tight control and understanding of these costs, your small business could quite quickly run out of working capital, forcing you to shut up shop. If you are looking for support around managing your finances and working capital, our accountancy packages will support you to increase your business success. Overexpansion It can be very easy to get carried away when business is booming. The problem is that many business owners can end up over-expanding, put unnecessary pressure on the business. The second businesses start overproducing and supply outweighs demand, they’re in trouble. There are indications on when a business should begin expansion. This could include situations where a business is unable to fulfill customer demand. If you are thinking about expansion, you should carry out research to ensure that is the right move for the business going forward. Poor planning If you want to hit the ground running, you need a plan. Without a plan, you have no real sense of direction and this can be a major threat to the business. What are the benefits of having a plan? The first benefit, is the ability to map out priorities. With a plan in place, you know your end goal so you can start to map out the different actions that it will take to get you there. This will prevent you from wasting time and resources on activities that won’t benefit the business, which is often why many businesses struggle in their opening years. Creating a plan will also get you to focus on your USP (Unique Selling Point). This is critical if you want to stand out from competitors and ultimately, this is the unique factor that will attract new customers. Trying to cover every aspect of the business When a business first opens its doors, capital is quite hard to come by, so to keep costs low, small business owners will often take on all aspects of the business. In reality, we all have our strengths and weaknesses so sometimes it makes sense to outsource certain tasks. At the SME Centre of Excellence, we have a full range of wrap-around support to cover all your back office needs so that you can focus on doing the things you’re best at. Find out more about our support here.

The need for a website has become more critical now than ever before. Scenarios such as the COVID-19 pandemic have made it very difficult for businesses to continue operating and serving their customers. The businesses that don’t have a website have found this the hardest and many have forced to close. Websites act as your shop front, provide your customers with information and offer them a way to purchase. In this article, I am going to assess the reasons why every small business should have a website. If you already have a website you might find some useful pointers that you could apply to your site so there is value for everyone in this week’s article. Solution for businesses during the pandemic The first point I wanted to touch on in this article is the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the most important and most relevant as it is the situation that we all face at this moment in time. As I mentioned earlier, the pandemic has forced many small businesses to close, especially those that were not equipped to deal with customers digitally (without a website). Since the beginning of lockdown, it has become a lot clearer that going digital is the way forward if they want their business to survive and thrive. During the pandemic, lockdown and social distancing has prevented customers from interacting with businesses in person and people could no longer visit their favourite shops and restaurants etc. This situation has made the importance of websites ever more important. Websites offer customers a way to engage and purchase from your business where ever they happen to be which is perfect for a situation such as COVID-19. However, in a scenario like this, creating a website is not enough and some businesses will have to consider altering their whole operations process to cope. For example, if you are not in a position to deliver your products directly to your customer then it will be difficult to get the most from your website. It is worth reviewing your processes so that you can offer your products and services through your website as it will make your business more resilient to events that may occur in the future. Build awareness One of the largest bonuses to having a website is the added exposure it brings to your business. There are multiple ways you can achieve this increased exposure but they all require time and effort so this is not an instant win. The first way to increase traffic to your website is through SEO. For those who don’t know, SEO stands for search engine optimisation. This is the process of optimising your website so that it ranks higher in the Google Search Results for search queries that are relevant to your business. SEO is one of the most organic ways to grow traffic and exposure for your website but it takes a long time to see results and the process of SEO is very technical so you may need to hire an expert. Alternatively, you might want to take a paid approach by using Google Adwords. Google Adwords allows you to bid for keywords and keyword phrases so that your website will appear higher in the search results. This method is much easier and you can get results a lot faster which is perfect if you have just recently set up your website. Finally, websites give you the opportunity to be featured on blogs and influencer pages. There are thousands of blogs on the internet meaning there will be someone writing about the niche that your business operates in. If you can identify an influencer or blogger writing about your niche, you could encourage them to promote your website as part of one of their articles and this is a very easy way to gain credible exposure for your website and business. Get more customers Research has found that 63% of shopping begins online with an estimation of 1.8 billion people making their final purchase over the internet. Taking this into account, it is clear to see why businesses are switching from physical stores to online stores. If you are looking for a way to cut costs, you might want to consider using a website as your shop front and leaving the physical store behind. Having a website in place will guarantee you more customers especially if you are looking to expand your influence nationally or globally. Creating a website not only gains you more awareness, it also opens your business up to larger markets. Having a website in place also allows you to build an online sales funnel which is a significant part of finding more customers. You can use platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Google Adwords to direct traffic to your website and then bring them into a sales funnel. Tools like Cookies and Facebook Pixel allow you to track visitors to your website so that you can then re-target them as part of your funnel. Each of these steps helps you increase conversion and get more customers but this wouldn’t be possible without a website in place. Don’t worry about being able to take payments through your website, there are many easy tools to support you. Some of the best tools include; Shopify, WooCommerce, Stripe and Wix and they can all be used to either build your website or start accepting payments. If you are looking for support around taking your business digital, please contact one of our team here or take a look at our web design packages.

Welcome to the SME Centre of Excellence – a resource for businesses of any size, sector, or stage of their growth to access unrivaled bespoke support to help them start, survive, and thrive. With the North East being known around the world for hundreds of years for its innovation and ability to create and inspire whole industries, we realise the need to offer support and inspiration to up-and-coming businesses to ensure we continue to lead the way into the future. The aim of the SME Centre for Excellence is to become the ‘one-stop shop’ for everything a business will need to achieve its ambitions. As well as providing the physical space for a business to operate, through our hot-desking and virtual office environment, we have devised a number of packages of support to equip entrepreneurs with the high-quality advice and resources they need at a very competitive price. Our packages can be entirely bespoke and focus on back-office functions including legal, HR, marketing, accountancy, and digital – all delivered by experts in their fields – to enable business owners to concentrate on running their core operations. We will also be developing a calendar of events, including surgeries, seminars, and workshops, with a host of industry-leading names sharing their expertise and tips for success. Our ethos is not just to deliver an outstanding results-driven service to each and every business we work with, but also to develop trusting, collaborative relationships. We want to deliver exactly what businesses require which is why we seek to build strong levels of engagement. If there is something we should be offering, we want to know what that is. If there is a specific requirement you have, we would love to hear from you. We are based in the heart of Ponteland, with great transport links from Newcastle, Northumberland, the wider North East, and even globally, given our proximity to Newcastle International Airport, so are easily accessible wherever you are. Whatever your needs as a growing business, we will have the resources and know-how to assist. Get in touch to see how we can help with your unique requirements. Contact Us Tel: 01661 823234 Website: www.smecofe.com Email: team@smecofe.com

Here we are again, delayed Brexit – but have you taken the time to consider how a Brexit delay affects UK business? Not a lot of micro or small businesses have (unless of course, you deal directly with Europe as part of your operation). According to the North East Chamber of Commerce, 42% of businesses have not yet carried out any impact assessment on Brexit. Certainly, the temperature within the small and micro business community is that “we’ll just handle whatever comes our way” however in the larger businesses, the confusion over Brexit is contributing towards a major headache around contingency. Many medium to large organisations decided to borrow money to stockpile raw materials during the previous delay – leaving them little cashflow to operate. This newly delayed Brexit can surely only compound the issues these organisations are facing as EU customers hold back projects potentially leaving the order pipeline dry. On a very direct level, Dominic Raab is quoted as saying that a delayed Brexit will cost the UK £1bn per month, but when factors such as EU grants to support farmers or regional development are taken into consideration – the figure is more probably around £774m per month. That’s still a lot of money that the UK is paying out because of the Brexit confusion. The cost to UK business has been monumental in terms of lost productivity (between 2% & 5%) but also covers areas such as: Investment (down 11%) Recruitment & retention (67% are struggling to fill vacancies) Growth & Development (net loss of between 1.5% and 3.9% GDP) Many businesses state that funds which ordinarily would have been used to support productivity, growth and recruitment simply haven’t materialised as companies scramble to develop plans for a no-deal Brexit. Between November 2018 and January 2019, 10% of CFOs and 6% of CEOs reported spending six hours or more a week on Brexit preparations. As an example, one of the most productive plants in Europe and certainly the UK Nissan, in Sunderland, have been reducing productivity levels and just this year reversed the decision to build the new X-Trail at the Sunderland plant and have decided not to build the Q30 and the Q30X models. So, while Brexit is having all kinds of effects on businesses, there are still opportunities to explore. For our economist friends reading this, there are probably huge opportunities to gain contracts working with large organisations or the UK Government using your skills and knowledge to support and advise. More widely, there is the expectation that job losses will occur due to Brexit – so if you’re already supporting businesses, there may be a market to support people to start their own business, develop training materials to sub-contract your specialisms or maybe even think about expanding your own business? As the currency exchange hits points that haven’t been seen in a couple of decades – other nations are finding the Pound attractive and PayPal has recently announced that SME’s from the UK who export globally have seen sales increase – great news indeed! There are huge opportunities with the likes of New Zealand, who already have trade agreements worth £3bn and potentially China who the UK could exploit in an export market.