UK Business Barometer

about

Who will benefit from the survey findings?

What is UKBAB?

The UKBAB is a bi-monthly on-line survey of business advisers across the UK. It is fully internet based, updating results in real-time and panellists registered on the project receive a link every two months to each of the six online questionnaires. They take approximately 2 minutes to complete - no postage or paper is involved.

The UKBAB consists of around twelve questions constituting a mixture of topical subjects and quarterly repeated questions to generate trends data. The UKBAB will focus on :-

An SME Business needs analysis in terms of skills, finance, premises, legislation, information, etc.
A Business adviser needs analysis focussing upon resource requirements, constraints on effectiveness, specialist information needs, etc.
Problem solving development and solution generation.
Best practice identification and exchange.
Private sector strategy and public sector policy effectiveness and shortcomings.

The UKBAB resides behind a managed firewall controlled from UNIEI in the Nottingham University Business School.

Who are the Business Advisers?

Many Advisers work independently, some are employed by the Business Link (England) or the equivalent in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and others are working with Local Authorities or business support charities. The spread of experience, geographical coverage and expertise is unique and provides a balanced sample for the research.

Why is UKBAB Necessary?

With rapidly changing economic and trading conditions in local, regional, national and international markets, relative competitiveness will in part be determined by the ability of businesses to respond to new and developing opportunities. This may refer to a wide range of firms from small, well established businesses who are attempting to break into new markets or adjust to new technologies to newly established spin out businesses from universities attempting to exploit some of the potential generated by research and development.

Business needs constitute major market opportunities for firms in the financial sector, insurance and accountancy, training and executive development, ICT, etc. The UKBAB provides market intelligence enabling these businesses to identify more accurately the needs of SMEs in general and thus meet them more efficiently.

Significant public sector budgets are allocated to new business support and the encouragement of innovation and competitiveness. The information provided by UKBAB will enable the designers and implementers of policy at local, regional and national levels to be more effectively informed and therefore generate a higher return from this investment.

In short, greater transparency in business needs as perceived by business advisers alongside an improved understanding of business adviser needs could greatly improve the efficiency of private sector services to business and public sector business support.

Who will benefit from the survey findings?

*Private Sector:*	Financial Institutions, training organisations, small firms representative organisations and some companies providing goods and services to the small firm sector.
Main benefits would include:	Market intelligence on finance. Market intelligence on skills. Market intelligence on premises. Market intelligence on the use of ICT. Market intelligence on a regional basis. Improved services to SMEs. The facility to ask questions in particular areas.
*Public Sector:*	RDAs, GOs, Local Authorities, Central Government, eg, HM Treasury, DfES, DTI, SBS will receive crucial information to generate efficiency gains. Universities and other learning and research institutions will gain access to a new source of information and analysis.
Main benefits would include:	Policy design intelligence. Strategic development intelligence. Monitoring / evaluation / data. The facility to ask questions in particular areas. More informed, live research data.
*Business Advisers:*
Main benefits would include:	The identification of best practice and sharing of that practice. Access to information and basic research findings. A more informed and powerful voice to private and public sector organisations with whom they deal on a regular basis. The opportunity to use their expertise to influence policy making. The creative development of continuing professional development (CPD) by using accurate market intelligence. Business Advisers who have been assessed to SFEDI standards will then have access to high quality development programmes delivered by the IBA.

How will the UKBAB operate?

The UKBAB has been be established on the software platform that has been custom built to enable the collection, analysis and dissemination of survey evidence on a real-time basis. By removing the need for paper-based surveys involving printing, postage, data input and subsequent analysis the software enables almost immediate analyses of the data as they arrive

This form of intelligence gathering uses Business Advisers as observers of changing conditions based on their experience of their SME customers. The strength of this model is as a different and new set of evidence to use in conjunction with data generated directly from SMEs.

A further strength of the UKBAB is its natural focus upon start up businesses and those sectors and firms confronting particular challenges. It will therefore reveal crucial information on changing conditions in the context of those businesses most affected. There will be issues around the integrity of the SME sample that serves in effect as the information platform for the business advisers. These will be resolved through the creation of a separate sample of SMEs on the UK Business Barometer to enable direct statistical comparisons to determine the extent to which there may be bias. In the event that the business adviser based SME sample appears unrepresentative it will be possible to make adjustments when attempting to generalise from the overall results.