Notes: Bringing together 3 Authorities Bedfordshire County Council and South & Mid Beds District Councils very, very different in terms of approach. South Beds very proactive and pro-growth, excellent relationships with businesses, very small area but some very large businesses - Mid Beds totally the opposite! New Chief Exec very pro businesses culture but some real barriers in terms of internal culture – size a big issue, enforcement – we have around 11,500 businesses. Massive jobs growth targets – we need to get the basics right - red tape, enforcement, compliance key words for many officers!!!! Do we actually know what our businesses want – do they know?? The don’t self select, they tell us we are not providing what they want, understanding gap.
Difficult to know which way round to put questions 1 & 2! Questions 1 We have no idea what marketing messages, budget, time, issues etc our business facing teams are have We do not know which businesses teams are engaging with, why they are important to each service and whether there is any duplication / cross over We do not know as a Council what are our highest priority activities – 27,000 new jobs for me but what about other teams 4.We believe that there is little understanding across services about what other business facing teams do and how they interlink 5.We believe that there is little understanding of service & officers individual roles in terms of growth (Culture) 6. There is almost NO knowledge in Business facing teams of the support offer wither public or private Question 2 What do they expect – where are the gaps? What does efficient look like to them? Do they know what they need in terms of support, do we patronise them?? Questions 3 Key question for me Why aren’t they banging at our door telling us what they want Why are they not snapping off our hands for FREE support activity
Help – Highlighted some of the issues and started to research discovered the Business Matters Project and were inspired by Rita and the Teams work. However, it still did not tell us WHY businesses are not breaking our door down to work with us. LIVEWORK – our research partners – offer a unique approach and really focus on service design and marketing solutions bases on sound research. They are helping us address the why to put engagement and satisfaction at the heart of what we do. We are still at the testing stages but we are getting there.
We haven’t finished the project yet! However, from the research so far we can make these assumptions.
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