Designing The Business Gateway Service To Meet Future Needs

Description

Business Gateway (bgateway.com) provides free business support to Scottish businesses. It is delivered by Scottish Local Authorities and funded by The Scottish Government. The service has more than 40 offices across Scotland and a network of over 170 experienced advisers. The Business Gateway National Unit wish to procure the services of a suitably qualified, experienced and independent single company or consortium to undertake a service design process that leads to a strategic vision for the service and a service that is fit for the future. OBJECTIVES We need: - A clear understanding of the existing customer experience with the core Business Gateway service and the DigitalBoost programme; - To clarify our mission, develop a shared vision through agreed priorities and goal setting and determine strategies to deliver to our customers and engage with our stakeholders; - To define our principles and values; - To understand the why, what, who and how of the service; - To identify what, if anything, needs to change; - To know what else our customers want or need from the service; - To understand whether segmentation is necessary or desired and within that whether the service should focus on start-ups, established businesses or continue to provide support for businesses at every stage of their lifecycle; - To know what our partners and stakeholders expect from the service and what they can do to support that; - To know what needs to change across governance, strategy, operations and delivery to meet the challenge; - To know what the future services look like to meet the key user journeys we agree to focus on; - Above all we want to gather the evidence to support the development of a Local Government proposition that successfully argues for the resources needed to make a seismic shift in economic recovery and development. METHOD The methodology to be used in the study is likely to include elements of: - Desk research (drawing on existing data available from evaluations of the service itself, previous EU programmes or other complementary activity, quality assurance reporting as well as other sources); - Consultations – extensive period of consultation with customers, SLAED, SOLACE, BGON, BG Board, BG National Unit, Lead Local Authorities, advisers in LA in-house delivery teams & BG contractors and appropriate BG Stakeholders such as FSB, SCC, SCDI, Scottish Government, SDS and Enterprise Agencies. It is likely that these will be undertaken via a mix of 1-2-1 and Focus Group discussions; - We seek an approach built on the principle of co-production and one which builds the capacity and knowledge of the Business Gateway Team, enhancing our approach to continuous improvement;