I was in illustrious company earlier in the week when I was invited as one of the leading business organisations to the Small Business Summit at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) - http://bit.ly/9mG8bs.
Vince Cable, Mark Prisk, Lord Young, Francis Maude and Grant Shapps were all in attendance and lending their support to an initiative that has three key commitments to small business: to improve access to finance; to make it easier to do business with the public sector; and to allow social tenants to start up their business at home.
It is encouraging that the Government is working hard to support small businesses; they are clearly going to be key to the recovery. But such efforts are only going to work if businesses are aware of the initiatives in the first place, and know where they can go for help.
One of the long-standing criticisms of the EFG (Enterprise Finance Guarantee) Scheme, for example, is that small businesses, banks and business organisations have seldom known enough about the scheme, and its details, with the result that demand has been depressed. Similarly, banks have many products to help small business - not just the ubiquitous overdraft - but these businesses either don't understand them or have never been told what other products may be suitable.
That ignorance extends to understanding the basic principles of cashflow management. Business owners, and especially micro business owners, are too busy making sure their businesses survive to worry about getting - or even looking for - advice, even when that advice is the very stuff they need to stay in business!
There have now been more than 185,000 downloads of the ICM's Managing Cashflow Guides. These numbers are very encouraging, and we are rightfully proud of what we have achieved to date. But we have to balance this success with the fact that there are 4.8 million small and medium businesses in the UK that employ less than 250 people, and when we compare our downloads to the potential target audience, there is still much work to be done.
Government needs to make a concerted and focused effort - including working further with organisations like the ICM - to educate businesses and make them aware of the basics that will sustain them into the future.
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