Our Services
Business Advice
IBD is a powerful, innovative and cost-effective management support resource for Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMEs) and Start-Ups. IBD has a network of over 200 UK based business support professionals and experts working to improve the performance, profitability and sustainability of businesses just like yours.
All IBD business advisers are fully trained to manage the specific business challenges that SME’s encounter and are part of a comprehensive network of small business and technical experts, mentors and trainers.IBD advisers have the right knowledge, experience and expertise, and this gives peace of mind to companies that IBD only provides advisers who can and will address concerns.
You decide the pace of work and the areas for our focus. You won’t get lengthy reports you don’t have the time to read. You will get advice, training and sleeves rolled up support for you and your staff which will make a difference right away. The payback on our combined efforts will be measured in weeks and months, not years.
Supply Chain Management
Optimised supply chains aligned to business strategy make a major contribution towards competitive advantage, customer experience and the bottom line. Having the right level of flexibility to adapt to customer, economic or technology-based change is essential.
Whatever your supply chain ambitions, how to deliver more using less, whether you can further optimise operations, what your future supply chain strategy should be, or evaluating alternative routes to market Stockton Business Consulting can help.
Whether you need to resolve day to day supply chain issues or complex strategic changes, we understand selecting when to bring Supply Chain Consultants into your business and who to use, can be difficult. Finding like-minded people, you can trust and that talk your language is as essential as making sure the time is taken to understand your business and operation as well as what you are trying to achieve from the investment.
As specialist Supply Chain Consultants with first-hand operational experience we bring fresh ideas, innovation and best practice to every project.
Change Management
Change doesn’t happen overnight, nor should it. It’s a process that must be staged in ways that ensure its manageable and has everyone on the same page before, during and after. Our role is to implement a strategy and ensure that each person affected by the transition, has a clear understanding of the journey ahead; how change will be implemented, the timescales involved and of course an understanding of the desired outcome.
Good change management is a fundamental part of the success of any project, from a global transformation programme through to technology implementations or the introduction of a new culture and ways of working.
All too often, however, it is viewed as a bolt-on or afterthought when in fact it is key in taking you from your first thoughts and ambitions through to the realisation of the benefits you are aiming to achieve. It involves a clear, well-articulated vision, a compelling business case, committed leadership, well-informed and involved stakeholders and an organisation ready and willing to make the change.
Drawing on our experience and applying a proven approach to change management, we’ll work with your people to plan and implement change in order to realise genuine business benefits
Start-Up Loans
At Stockton Business Consulting we partner with ‘government approved’ service providers to help you apply for achieve ‘government backed’ start up loans. These are personal unsecured loans intended to help business owners, who have been trading less than 24 months, and prospective business owners. An individual business owner can borrow up to £25,000 and a group of owners up to £75,000 (max of 3 applicants).
Business Health Check
At Stockton Business Consulting can offer two different levels of Business Health checks.
Initially we can offer you a Free Business Fitness Check-Up where we will spend time with you to understand your business challenges and your aspirations. We can produce an output that clearly identifies your priority risks to manage. We can then help you implement solutions.
We can also an Advanced Health check tool that will allow a deeper dive into your business.
Risk Management is now a top agenda item across Micro, SME and Corporates companies, often without a consistent, coherent and correctly structured approach to the handling of these risks.
Risk Management is gaining prominence as businesses attempt to tackle the many dimensions of business risk, above and beyond the traditional areas such as Health & Safety, people, legal, market, financial and asset risk.
Many companies would like to have a secure Risk Management environment; however, this often comes into conflict with other priorities. Some companies might find the task of keeping business functions aligned with the Risk Management process highly challenging. The reality is that; the risks that you could have controlled today with a little effort may become large issues that are very costly and destructive to the business when you are now forced to deal with the consequences.
You must consider that good quality Risk Management may enhance your brand and reputation, it may help you to lower operating costs such as the cost of insurances or finance in addition to providing a ‘Competitor Advantage’ by increasing efficiency, helping to boost profits, put the company in a healthier position to grow and increase in value to name a few. In addition, it will make staff and customers feel happier.
The Risk Dashboard provides a simple and effective way to detect, evaluate and mitigate business risks. It has been developed to empower everyone within your organisation with accurate and clearly presented information based on your ‘up-to-date’ data. This allows you to make informed decisions to mitigate your business against potential financial, operational and reputational liability.
The application consolidates different data from across different parts of your business and the system is continually updated by the development company as regulations and ‘best practice’ change. As you keep your data up-to-date the application will aid you in understanding how your risk levels change as Your Company evolves.
Growth Funding & Tax Credit
Whether it is operations, research & development, new markets, growth strategy or help to access funding that will make a real difference There are also loans available specifically to support regional development, ask us how we can help you with finding this type of finance.
R&D Tax Credits
The UK Governments Research and Development Tax Relief Scheme (R&D tax credit) has been running for many years to reward and encourage innovative companies, the purpose being to stimulate innovation and growth in the UK economy. The scheme is applicable to any UK company (not a partnership or sole trader unfortunately) seeking to improve or develop new products, processes or services – there are no industry or sector specific qualification criteria other than as stated by HMRC it must make or be intending to make an “advance in science or technology”.
The scheme works by reducing a company’s corporation tax by the claim amount (which includes expenditure attributed to R&D plus an enhancement of 30%) in addition to the company’s Profit and Loss position. This can sometimes bring the bill down to zero or it may mean your company makes a ‘loss’ for tax purposes. If your company is making a loss you can probably claim a cash payment back from HMRC, even if your company has never made a profit! This is a huge boost for eligible new companies too.
When making your first claim you can ‘go back’ and claim for the previous two tax years activity and you do not have to wait until you have an outcome for the work being undertaken – you claim for the effort at the end of each accounting year.
Coaching & Mentoring
It can be tough and sometimes lonely at the top. A sounding board and another business professional perspective can be invaluable. Coaching helps professionals achieve their full potential. We provide services in 1:1 coaching and business mentoring.
It is common for Owners, Directors and Senior Managers to ask the question “How can you help?” or state, “I know what needs to be done here”, however they may not know how to do ‘it’ or an effective way to do ‘it’. You may need support to do ‘it’ or encouragement to do ‘it. You may be concerned about priorities and how it fits in with what else needs to be undertaken. It maybe that you lack the skills, finance or motivation to do ‘it’ but we can help.
There is even the chance that the Company does not know what needs to be done. At Stockton Business Consulting it is our job to help you and the Company to understand, your current situation, where you want to be and what are some of your options and opportunities? We will help to plan to get where you want to be and support you on the journey.