Improving effectiveness of SME business support projects 

GMI is an advanced SME diagnostic tool for business support professionals, informed by over 40,000 business diagnostics.  The GMI uncovers the real business issues, not the symptoms, so it’s the ideal engagement tool for business support services and Growth Hubs.  

The diagnostic forms a light-touch intervention and can be used to measure pre and post support impact with each business and how far they have progressed as a result.  GMI can identify the specific impact generated, together with a measure of its effect.

The diagnostic only takes 10 min to complete, after which a comprehensive and tailored downloadable report is generated on the fly.  This provides a detailed view of the strengths and weaknesses of the company, with recommendations for prioritised actions on any areas that need improvement.  The report is used by an advisor as the foundation for a discussion with the client, enabling a real focus on the causes not the symptoms, and quickly enabling a support plan to be built from the  prioritised actions and recommendations.

GMI greatly enhances advisor performance through

Optimising their time – Client and advisor gains insights into the SME’s strengths and weaknesses, highlighting areas for improvement.

Achieving more – the client completes the light touch intervention themselves, allowing the advisor to devote more time to subsequent action planning, support or IDB based on the report output and recommendations.

Enabling a more consultative approach – from the start, conversation is informed by knowledge of business needs and enhances the professionalism of your business advisors 

Reduces attrition in support – by exploring key areas know to impact growth, the tool ensures that the key challenges for the business are illustrated, and best practice actions are outlined for how the business should address them.  Businesses are more likely to continue through the programme, due to the level of advice and action planning they gain at the onset. 

At the end of the support intervention, the client takes the GMI again to benchmark impact.  By comparison between pre- and post-support reports, GMI can define where intervention impact was most successful and can help to measure the level of success, whether this be in increased growth, productivity, resilience or profitability.

Additional support services can be purchased to support businesses, based on their precise needs as identified by the GMI.  Examples of frequently purchased services:

• monthly half-day coaching and consultancy support,
• dedicated consulting time to create an effective people, markets or finance strategy,
• framework agreement for a specific number of hours of our support per quarter that your team can draw on and allocate according to need and your business support priorities.

Practical resources provided to clients to support their growth after completing the GMI are bespoke and relate to their individual weaknesses and gaps to ensure that we help them, and you, to achieve greater impact and outcomes. 

Talk to us about how we can tailor a service that will help you to transform business performance in your local area.