What Was New In 2018
Back in August 2018 and in honour of Wenta’s 35th Birthday we launched ‘The Business Bookshelf’ on Wenta.co.uk. As one of the latest additions to our digital service and support repertoire, The Business Bookshelf offers online access nationwide to a wealth of free articles, resources, tips and tricks to help clients to navigate from the pre-start stage to running a growing small business. The Business Bookshelf will become a key support strand for Wenta in 2018-19 and beyond.
Due to the successes of our previous Wenta Thank You Events at the btc in Stevenage and our business centre in Enfield, we held our first ever Thank You Event at our Watford business centre! In collaboration with the Watford Chamber of Commerce, aiming to thank not only Wenta clients for working with Wenta, but also to Thank the wider Watford business community for their contribution to their local economy. The event took place in October 2018 and was a complete success. From the number of attendees to the knowledge of the speakers and the opportunity for businesses to network.
As part of our ongoing strategy to enhance the support for our clients, Wenta has utilised CACI data to target areas of individuals that would most benefit from our services. Additionally, we have expanded our skills development workshop offering to broaden the variety of knowledge that clients can gain from coming to Wenta.
Our business development strategy created new client service relationships to support start-ups and early-stage businesses to find access to finance; to be supported with productivity and growth opportunities and to help those clients in areas of higher-level depravation to have the opportunity to start their own businesses, by providing them with the right tools and information. Many of these will come into fruition during 2019, but Wenta has already launched The Bedfordshire Productivity and Growth Programme, in partnership with the Bedfordshire Chamber of Commerce, that went live on wenta.co.uk in November 2018.
We planned and successfully delivered a solid base from which to grow and we are now working towards the enterprise opportunities that lie ahead in 2019, where Wenta is best placed to innovate and support the SME community.
What’s To Come In 2019
Continuing with the momentum from 2018 and looking ahead into 2019, we intend to forge more partnerships across Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and beyond, to extend and build upon our reach in business ecosystem environments. This will lead to an increase in our ability to support even more clients than ever before, helping them through their challenges, as well as guiding them through their future growth opportunities.
Wenta.co.uk re-launched in July 2017 and we have continued to seek innovative ways to both ease and enhance the client journey. Our work has focused on automation and investigating the use of artificial intelligence, that would allow us to help more clients to access the information that they want, when and where they want to.
To grow our services and further support clients, we intend to invest in our business centre sites to increase our capacity and create new workspaces that are affordable and accessible for all. We intend to work with the Herts and South East Midland Local Enterprise Partnerships, in support of the Industrial Strategy to deliver enterprise support across these regions and we intend to continue our focus on technology to support clients in today’s volatile and complex environment.
We are excited to announce that The Hertfordshire Start-up Programme (HSUP) will be extended for a further three years and part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), giving residents of Hertfordshire access to free business support.
In January 2019 we will launch our latest online offering for SMEs, a free platform that provides access to finance and funding, in a newly formed partnership with Finpoint. This will help us support clients on a national level, as well as locally.
Later in the year, we will hold our next Thank You Event at The Business and Technology Centre with a 'well-being in the workplace' (health and wellbeing) theme, tailored to the local small business community in Stevenage and at the btc.
Wenta will continue celebrating its 35th Birthday in 2019 and so you’ll need to keep an eye out for all the latest news and updates here online at www.wenta.co.uk to stay in-the-know!