Learning Focus

Boosting SME Success with ISME’s Back to Business

Adam Weatherley, Learning & Development Manager

Last year, the backdrop of uncertainty was difficult for businesses operating in Ireland, especially for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Rebuilding our domestic SME sector is an essential part of overall economic recovery. The OECD Report published in late October 2019 highlighted some of the challenges for SMEs. These included boosting the productivity growth of indigenous SMEs and ensuring Ireland has a dynamic business environment. Although the report was published pre-pandemic, many of its recommendations remain. We adopted digital technology in great haste, something we should have done pre-pandemic. If it took a pandemic for us to modernise our business processes, what will it take for us to adopt other technologies such as artificial intelligence? If the COVID-19 era had a silver lining, it accelerated entrepreneurial spirit and impressive innovation. To encourage the continuation of this innovative mindset, we developed a programme to assist business owners with their ideas, new business directions and improve their existing strategies. We partnered with Skillnet Ireland to launch a fully funded Back to Business Mentoring and Coaching Programme. With business coaching and mentoring widely recognised as a highly effective method to improve and grow a business, the programme offered business leaders access to expert coaches and mentors with sectoral or domain experience. The initiative assisted 65 participating businesses to develop new skills to improve their productivity and boost growth and innovation. The programme offered support in a range of areas including: • Digital and Automation • Growth and Finance • People and Leadership • Business Improvement Strategies • Business Processes With a panel of thirty qualified and experienced coaches, we provided the participants with a business advisor with domain or sector experience to help them address their challenges or aspirations. One particularly exciting new business that participated in the initiative was Portmagee Distilling and Brewing Company Ltd. in Kerry. Of the programme, Stuart McNamara, a director of the distillery said:

“Portmagee Whiskey were delighted to be selected to participate in the ISME Back to Business Mentoring & Coaching programme in 2021. The significant industry experience and personal commitment of our assigned specialist business advisor was quite exceptional. His advice and mentorship helped us to quickly close and eliminate an identified skills and capability gap in our small core management team. The results and impact were immediate, effective and tangible, allowing us to confidently transition and scale our business development plans and operations to a higher level.” He added, “Such valuable specialist support was an unexpected bonus of our ISME membership. We consider high quality mentoring and coaching support as an essential key enabler to small and medium businesses. It is a service all too often out of reach for many Irish SMEs. Thanks to our participation in this programme, we are looking forward with real confidence to taking Portmagee Whiskey to even great heights in 2022.”

Another growing business, this time in the technology sector, focused on increasing their sales capability. Peter Martin, a senior IT consultant with EVAD IT said: “The whole process was so inciteful and thoughtprovoking. The business advisor assigned to assist us had a great proactive approach. The process for me personally focussed on the ‘’live sales scenarios’’ that I was working through. I am confident sales will be made as direct result of this mentoring programme. I have no hesitation in recommending such a programme to other SME business owners. Well done on finding such an interesting mentor to pair me up with.” Some interesting facts from the analysis of the programme’s outcomes: A wide cross section of industry sectors was represented, with the main engagements covering Retail, Technology / Engineering, and Business Services. See below in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Industry Sectors

Figure 2 breaks down the size of the companies requiring the most assistance. The Micros (1-9 employees) lead, followed by the Small Business category (10-49 employees). In all, these two categories accounted for 95% of the overall initiative, but we were delighted that the final 5% addressed challenges for the medium category (50-250 employees).

Figure 2: Company size:

Just over 30% of the engagements addressed SME digitalisation and improving eCommerce functions, followed by business process improvements and transformation. Human Resource practices and recruitment / talent acquisition strategies were also in high demand due to the rapid changes in policies and trading environment as a result of the pandemic.

Demand for the Back to Business Mentoring & Coaching Programme was high and we intend to continue this into 2022. If you would be interested to learn more on how we can help with the growth of your company, improve its business processes and manage your workforce, please email us at skillnet@isme.ie with ‘’Back to Business’’ in the subject field.