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SUSSEX INNOVATION WELCOMES NEW CATALYST TEAM
SUSSEX INNOVATION
WELCOMES ITS NEW CATALYST TEAM FOR 2020-21
By Simon Chuter, Student Enterprise Manager at Sussex Innovation
Over the past four months, the Catalyst team has been a microcosm of everything that’s been going on at Sussex Innovation. We’ve had to be extremely flexible and responsive as a team, developing new ways to help businesses survive and thrive in the face of the global pandemic, the lockdown, and everything else that 2020 has thrown at us. As we bid farewell to this team and send them off to the next stage of their careers, I want to share our gratitude to them for going above and beyond to support their clients during this time.
This summer, our seventh intake of placement students and recent graduates from the University of Sussex will be joining the Catalyst Team as Business Support Executives. They’ll spend a year working alongside myself and my colleagues in the consultancy team, delivering targeted research, practical support and one-off projects for the growing SMEs in our community and beyond.
HELPING BUSINESSES DURING LOCKDOWN
We’ve helped a huge number of local businesses respond to the unique challenges of lockdown, particularly those from the retail and hospitality sectors who have seen their traditional revenue streams cut off, and needed to rapidly pivot to a direct to consumer model.
Following the closure of pubs, bars and restaurants, Hepworth Breweries – previously a B2B business – needed to start reaching their customers directly through an online shop. With a list of over 50 products ready to go, Arthur created a Shopify site to help them pivot to online sales. They are now having fantastic success through being able to reach their customers directly... Arthur even got a free crate of beer at the end!
Eleanor has also been assisting a client whose business was severely affected by the lockdown to identify potential opportunities for a pivot. “My research projects have been really rewarding, helping people to identify trends and generate insights,” she says. “In lockdown, I’ve helped people turn a disaster into an opportunity to re-invent their businesses. They’re not only
“Brighton Chamber has used the Catalyst team in lots of ways. The team are part of the Brighton Summit conferences and stage-manage the rooms throughout the day. They have carried out a successful research project for the Brighton & Hove Living Wage campaign for the last three years with great results. One of the team has stepped in when we have had a gap in staffing and they have helped on several data entry projects when accuracy has been essential. Need I say more, they are a valuable resource.” Sarah Springford, Chief Executive Officer - Brighton Chamber
helping their own business to survive, but they’re choosing to stand up for entire industries and communities which previously went unnoticed and unheard.”
WHAT IS THE CATALYST TEAM?
The Catalyst Team was launched in 2014 with the aim of bridging the gap between full time work and business owners looking for practical support without the expensive recruitment and training costs. The team works with hundreds of businesses each year – sometimes in a continuous part-time role, sometimes for just a few hours to deliver a one-off project. This flexibility is a big selling point for the SMEs we support. Through our link with the University of Sussex, we’re able to access a talented pool of willing young people, who often struggle to find the kind of work opportunities that can accelerate their careers. At the same time, we know
young people looking for meaningful, that early-stage companies often need assistance but don’t have the time to find and train employees, or commit to employing someone full time.
By taking that burden of training and support off their hands and bringing it into our own team, we ensure that every Catalyst project has a real strategic purpose to the business, and a tangible outcome. The team member gets a real experience of working with a range of different, innovative and exciting young businesses.
The incoming Team 7 are among our most exciting and diverse bunch yet. This year’s team includes placement students and graduates with backgrounds in Computing for Business and Management, English and Theatre Studies, Marketing Management and Psychology, Intellectual History, Sociology and more.
If you’d like a Catalyst Business Executive to help your company get projects delivered, or a part-time team member to free up your time, get in touch and tell us what you need.
www.catalyst.sinc.co.uk
WHY YOUR IT FIRM MAY BE SCARING YOU ABOUT THE CLOUD…
AND WHY IT’S NOT TRUE
Many IT firms are scaring their customers about the problems of moving all their IT operations into the public cloud (such as Microsoft Azure). Andrew Hookway, Managing Director of Burgess Hill based Extech Cloud believes that many Sussex businesses are being scared in to making decisions that force them to be “locked in” to their IT supplier and data centres.
When businesses scare their customers and force them down a particular path, you often wonder if they have a hidden agenda, whilst trying to appear helpful. We hear many stories where local IT firms are offering poor or inaccurate advice when it comes to the public cloud.
But why the scare tactics? Often, it is because they don’t understand it or they fear they will lose revenue usually made on purchasing and installing servers onsite, or through locking them into a private data centre (aka private cloud).
One scare tactic focuses on the cost of Microsoft Azure, suggesting that businesses pay for cloud capacity that they aren’t using, making it hard to budget, and it is expensive.
This simply is not true. After the initial cloud migration, known as digital transformation, businesses then just pay monthly depending on what’s used and the number of users. So, if the workforce reduces, so do the IT costs. Microsoft Azure gives the freedom to manage and deploy applications on a secure global cloud network and has flexible pay-for-what-you-use pricing options. Budgeting is therefore really easy and accurate according to the business size and needs. And of course, there are never any capital
costs for on-premise servers or all the hidden costs and locked-in licences.
Security risks are another scare tactic we see time and time again. The public cloud offers better cybersecurity than an on-prem server would, particularly for regulated businesses that require standards for data compliance and information security. In fact, in the cloud businesses can say goodbye to constant server management and security patches and can just get on with their business.
Control is another focal point for businesses trying to discredit the cloud. They say that the company hands over control to a third party. The reality is that in the public cloud, businesses are free
to move to different IT providers as the data is actually hosted with Microsoft. It is for exactly this reason and the freedom it provides, that IT firms don’t want businesses to move away from their “locked-in” Data Centres.
Finally, there is the issue of old legacy software. Previously it was true that some legacy software could not be transferred to the cloud, but that is no longer the case. Extech Cloud has the experience to put almost any application or software into a cloud environment thanks to our pioneering use of Microsoft WVD. This is cuttingedge digital transformation meaning there are now no compelling reasons why companies need to have onpremise servers.
