Business Link East - Business Start up Award

Whether you are thinking about working for yourself, have just started a business or are already running one - full or part time,
no matter how small, Business Link is your place to go for help and advice to get it right.

For budding or new business owners, Business Link offers a whole range of bite-size briefings and workshops. These start at the very beginning, covering topics such as ‘Business Ideas’ ‘Starting Your Own Business’ and ‘Business Planning’. The workshops go on to take entrepreneurs on a start-up journey with introductions to the key business disciplines, including ‘Practical Selling Skills’ and ‘Managing Money and Making a Profit’.

Championing Business Link’s start-up services is a team of enterprise awareness managers, each of whom has extensive experience of running their own businesses and who understand the challenges and excitement involved in getting a new business up and running.

As new businesses become established, they can go on to access one-to-one support through the Business Link Business Adviser service. Whether generalist or specialist sector advice is sought, this team of professionals works with small and medium sized businesses in the region to help them grow and sustain. The advisers spend time looking impartially at business operations and can then diagnosis problems and recommended external suppliers from Business Link’s supplier brokerage database to address any issues. Research shows that businesses who use professional, external advice are more likely to increase turnover and profitability than those who do not.

With all this help freely available from a single source, it’s no wonder that Business Link is the place for the region’s new and established business to go for support and advice. And so we are delighted to be able to offer this 2008 award for Business Start Up.

The Business Link East Business Start Up Award

This award will be won by a successful and outward looking new business that has established its position within the marketplace through a mixture of sound business techniques, innovation, creativity and entrepreneurialism.

The judges will be looking for evidence of success in the following broad areas:

• Identification of market opportunity, sound planning and development of the business.
• Progress against plans and a clear commercial understanding of product, competitors and markets.
• Evidence of commercial success in delivery of key objectives of the business plan, including sales, revenue and profitability.
• Evidence of forward planning for sustainable business growth and success.