Yesterday it was confirmed by Mark Prisk, the business and enterprise minister, that Business Link is to be shut down.
“The regional Business Links have spent too much time signposting and not enough time actually advising,” Mark Prisk told Real Business yesterday. “We’re going to wind down the Regional Development Agencies, and as part of those, we’ll be winding down the regional Business Link contracts.”
To replace the current Business Link service, Mark Prisk proposed a two-pronged approach, led by a state-funded online service and the private sector. “We can deliver a lot more online and make better use of the private providers. The vast majority of private businesses don’t use public services [for advice]. We need a 21st century approach to business support.”
In the early days of our business we took advantage of the Business Link voucher scheme and benefitted from several hours free business advice from WENTA, one of our local providers in Business Link’s brokerage service. At the time there was no way we could have paid for expert business advice, so this was a great help. But other experiences left us feeling that Business Link itself was just a huge beaurocratic organisation, with other smaller companies generally providing the service or the advice.
The best thing about Business Link for me was their website – and the worst was being passed from pillar to post, with no-one wanting to take ownership of a query and merely passing it on to another region or agency. At times the Business Link ’machine’ just seemed too big and out of touch with its customers. The free courses they ran were good but unless you were a complete start-up were often of little or no use. A year into trading and there wasn’t a single course that was suitable for our level of experience, that we would be likely to gain much from.
Personally I think the decision to axe Business Link is a positive one. There are plenty of excellent private service providers who will benefit from the opportunity to tender for contracts previsously overseen by Business Link, and having more providers will generate competition and hopefully a higher standard of support and advice for new and growing businesses.
What is your experience of Business Link? Has your business benefitted from advice, funding or courses? Would your business be operating without them or have their services completely passed you by? We’d love to hear your experiences.
I suppose I see this from the other side. MadDad is an accountant and does a lot of work with people who business link have referred. He works with them to get them a business plan and cash flow forecast prepared and then will assist them in securing funding. The firm he works for have helped start up numerous companies this way.
For these small business, it ensure that they were receiving good advice from a trusted source for a great value. Business Link helped fund the cost of this with the business paying a proportion, as the work was done at a reduced rate.
Often people just don’t know where to go for the initial advise and support that they need.
But this is just one side of it, it is sometimes also seen as jobs for the boys and MadDad doesn’t go to any of the events etc, but one of the partners in the firm does. Sometimes it isn’t what you know, but who you know.
I am all in favour of a streamlined service, which helps new enterprises without becoming sluggish and too public sectorised (if that makes sense)
I’m sure there are better and more effective ways of advising businesses.
My concern. Is that it has become an institution. And for many it is their first port of call.
We actually rewrote their guide for women on how to start a business as it was terrible! (Download it for free on our site) But they were too disorganised to disseminate it.
Never have I come. Across such a disoragined organisation! Gives civil servants a bad name.
I have availed myself of several of Business Link’s offerings over the past 2 years or so. I agree with you about the course offerings that are not directed at my level. The one on search engine optimization had been proposed by my BizLink advisor, but when I attended, I found that most of the discussion was way above my head. However, as I became more knowledgeable, I found a few courses that helped. The best bit of any of these courses was the opportunity to ask questions and listen to other people’s questions and answers.
The frustrating bit was not the courses, but the networking events. They were poorly organized and communicated to attendees. I found them a huge waste of time and a lot of new businesspeople thrown into a room together, with little chance of meeting the person whose business card you picked up. Additionally, after putting my business card in slots for other attendees to find, I saw BizLink staff go around with a black bin bag, remove cards that were not taken and discard them. Surely, it would have occurred to them to have a giveaway of something quite nice, only for guests who stayed until the end. I’m assuming that they had a lot of no-shows.
I do use a local business assistance centre, which always seems to need more funding. Perhaps the demise of BizLink will be in their favour.
I found them invaluable when I was thinking of going into business – I got lots of free advice and mentoring and they really helped to convince me that I could go into business, and that I didn’t need to be some sort of superwoman.
I haven’t used them since but I found their website really useful and I’ve appreciated getting a friendly phone call every few months to see how I’m getting on and if there’s anything they can do to help me.
Maybe they overstretched themselves with what they were trying to do?
Agree with your point about being for complete start ups.
Sure the events are free but it’s not hard these days to find a “motivational/inspirational speaker” for a gig is it ?
We had a “healthcheck” a couple of years ago and I think the guy learned more about webmarketing from us that we did from him.
His “advice” was a 1 pager about the basics of search engines
“Once upon a time, there were three search engines, google, yahoo & msn…”
I know that’s anecdotal but it’s also my experience.
Agree with Nadia about public sectoring and when booking in on an event one time, I was asked for my age, gender, ethnicity and annual income – before I spoke to the right person.
It seemed to me that they were concentrating on providing proof and ticking boxes than actually doing – and that isn’t very enterprising.
I’ve found them to be very variable,
When I first started up back in 2002 I had a consultation with my local BL but it really was not of much use at all.
I’ve also attended a few of their workshops over the years, some of which were excellent!
It’ll be a shame to see them go if they are not replaced by something aimed at local people. One of the things the workshops were good for is talking to other local small business owners, in addition to the topics covered on the day.
I have mixed feelings about the demise of Business Link. The voucher scheme and website are great, but the advice session I had when I started out as a freelancer in 2000 was so bad it was like something out of a sitcom!
I’d like to see a more entrepreneurial approach, one that has lots of solid and useful advice and training, but is much more inspiring and motivating than the old public sector style style Business Link. There are so many of us providing support, encouragement and ideas to new businesses – Mums the Boss, Iddictive, Mums Club and Enterprise Nation to name a few, that it shouldn’t be hard to do.
I found the advice and help we got from Business Link in Halton, when we were applying for a Regional Selective Assistance grant to support a £500k investment, was invaluable. When I sought help from Business Link elsewhere, worked in different region, the service was poor. So what I’m saying is that it all depends on who you get – in Halton we had an advisor who was worth his weight in gold. Also, I think the website is a very useful resource.
I am glad to see the back of them, as one of the commenters mention ‘jobs for the boys’ and many of them not capable and had never worked in a small business or even tried setting up their own.
Their failure to meet the needs of any business that already had a business plan or wasn’t a start up, is legendary.
It needs reform and for everyone one business that got good advice there is possibly another 10 that failed through lack of support or correctly experienced advisors.
The question is, whatever it is replaced with will quickly become the same if safeguards are not put in place.
I have only had bad experiences of them in the past and wouldn’t have dreamed of approaching them to help with myboyswear.com Had 2 websites built in the past with their assistance and both companies went bump leaving me with no support and eventually no website. Always felt that any support came through companies that they had an interest in using rather than the best company to help me and my business.
I have recently started my own Bookkeeping and Management Accounting business in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, and have to admit that the final push and ultimate decision to ‘take the final leap into the unknown’ came from a Business Link funded course.
The course was run over a 3 day period, for women by women, and I found it invaluble.
I may have been lucky, the trainer was excellent, full of great ideas, encouragement and support, and without the funding from Business Link the course would never have taken place.
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I have to agree with Cathy – maybe it did bite off more than it could chew. Trying to be all things to everyone was always going to a stretch, and as is the case, when it’s good, it’s great. When it’s not good, well…