Growth Adviser Press Release for Rephrase Salesforce.com CRM Specialists

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE BASED SALESFORCE.COM CRM SPECIALISTS, REPHRASE, TO DELIVER ADVICE TO HELP START-UPS GROW

• Buckinghamshire based Salesforce.com specialists, Rephrase, offer advice as part of new £30m Growth Vouchers initiative
• The programme distributes subsidies of up to £2,000 for business advice
• Part of a brand new advice marketplace aimed at encouraging SMEs to take on good advice

Buckinghamshire based Salesforce.com specialists, Rephrase are set to deliver strategic start-up advice as part of the Government’s £30m Growth Vouchers Programme.

Frazer Lewis, founder of accredited small business IT and Web advice firm Rephrase in Chesham, Buckinghamshire is part of a new scheme that aims to help start-ups and SMEs to take on board advice at an early stage via a purpose-built marketplace.

The new Growth Vouchers scheme offers advice and guidance to businesses taking part and subsidies of up to £2,000 towards the cost of that advice to successful applicants. 

The programme will then monitor SME performance over the coming years in order to assess the impact that advice has had.

Frazer Lewis said: “If we can help start-ups in the South East take their businesses to another level by showing them how to take advantage of CRM technology, it will set them in good stead to become sustainable businesses contributing to the long-term prosperity of the region.

“The Growth Voucher marketplace will hopefully mean taking advice becomes an integral step for people forming a new business, leading to enhanced sustainability and economic growth.”

The Growth Vouchers programme is also being run as a randomised control trial (RCT) by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Cabinet Office’s Behavioural Insights Team. RCTs are widely regarded as a gold standard for empirical research. This is the first time an RCT has been run on this scale and aims to find out what sort of business advice is most effective for government to support.

The marketplace is designed to make it much easier for businesses to find providers of strategic advice on key topics like:

• Improving leadership and management;
• Making the most of digital technology;
• Managing cashflow, late payments and negotiating finance;
• Marketing, attracting and keeping customers; 
• Developing skills and taking on staff.

 Businesses that have been running for a year, with fewer than 50 employees, and have not paid for strategic external advice in the past three years will be able to apply at https://www.gov.uk/apply-growth-vouchers They will go through a process which will help them identify what sort of advice they might benefit from. Small business network Enterprise Nation has developed a marketplace for business advice where participants will then be able to find a qualified adviser at www.enterprisenation.com/marketplace

The new marketplace is funded by private sector firms:  technology specialist Toshiba, co-working expert Regus, cloud-based collaboration and data sharing software provider Citrix, telecoms brand Vodafone, cloud-based accounts, payroll software provider Sage One, email marketing campaign brand Constant Contact and EDF Energy which are showing their support for small businesses by backing the initiative.

It is also supported by professional bodies including the ACCA, ICAEW, BCS, CIPD, CMI and the CIM.

The Growth Vouchers programme will run until March 2015. To apply for a voucher go to https://www.gov.uk/apply-growth-vouchers

For more details contact:

Frazer Lewis on 0800 1337 130 or by emailing frazer@rephrase.co.uk

Background Quotes

Emma Jones MBE, founder of Enterprise Nation said: “This is an exciting initiative which could help accelerate the growth of thousands of small businesses at a critical stage of development - helping them to build long-term sustainability. At the moment, access to business advice is sporadic and highly variable with no means available to help businesses differentiate the good from bad. We want to address this by building a service that establishes suppliers’ credentials to offer advice from the outset and then continually seeks feedback on the quality of those services for everyone to see.”

The platform is funded by private sector brands.  These are technology specialist Toshiba, co-working expert Regus, cloud-based collaboration and data sharing software provider Citrix, telecoms brand Vodafone, cloud-based accounts, payroll software provider Sage One and EDF Energy which are showing their support for business by backing the initiative.

The scheme comes in the context of record numbers of start-up businesses across the UK, with more than half a million new registered companies expected by the end of 2013 for the first time.

About Enterprise Nation

Enterprise Nation is a small business network with more than 75,000 members. Its aim is to help people turn their good ideas into great businesses – through expert advice, events, networking and inspiring books. Enterprise Nation was founded in 2005 by Emma Jones MBE also co-founder of StartUp Britain.

Enterprise Nation is also heading up a new initiative which seeks to represent the needs of entrepreneurs, called the Entrepreneurs’ Alliance.  It is an umbrella pressure group that includes the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), the Federation of Private Businesses (FPB) and School for Startups, BusinessZone.co.uk and think tanks Centre for Entrepreneurs and The Entrepreneurs’ Network (TEN) which between them represent 2.5m businesses.

Background quotes:

Citrix

Andrew Millard, senior director of marketing, Citrix said: “Tooling small businesses with easy-to-use apps that enable new, more flexible ways of working is very important to us at Citrix. We are supporting this initiative because we want to encourage entrepreneurs to try new technologies and access resources that can transform the way they work, increasing productivity and improving competitive advantage.”