Although social media has been around for a decade or more, many businesses – particularly smaller ones – have yet to start using it seriously. Often, it’s because they’re not sure how to do it, don’t know if it’s cost-effective or feel they simply don’t have the time. If this[...]

Never underestimate the power of networking when it comes to business. Professional networking is not just about swapping business cards or gathering a list of connections on LinkedIn, it is a crucial part of your business strategy – and if it isn’t, it should be. Heather White, founder of Smarter[...]

Elevating your business to the next level is never going to be easy. There comes a time, through natural evolution, where many businesses are faced with one of biggest decisions the company has faced since it began – do we scale up? Scaling up a business is not a step[...]

Have you ever considered the benefits of employing your own apprentices? More and more businesses are looking at how to run successful apprenticeship schemes because of the wide range of benefits, including creating a dedicated workforce as opposed to hiring one. All sectors are suffering from significant skills gaps in[...]

A business is only as strong as its employees, so how do you recruit the best staff should be a key objective? Hiring is a laborious task and a costly one, so taking the right steps and putting the effort in will reap rewards. It needs to be an efficient[...]

Announced to huge fanfare in November 2017, the Made Smarter Review provided a definitive view of the UK’s industrial and technological landscape – and delivered proposals to put the nation at the forefront of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It is a cornerstone of the government’s Industrial Strategy, which is why[...]

Successful football teams and brilliant bands are just two of the things the North West’s two major cities have got in common. Something else they share is the plethora of small businesses found within them. Walk through the streets of Liverpool and Manchester, and you’ll see they’re packed with independent[...]

"Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn’t stop to think if they should." Jeff Goldblum, Jurassic Park, 1991.  Nearly 30-years later, it’s not resurrected dinosaurs you could apply this to, but its 21st Century equivalent, Artificial Intelligence (AI). The benefits of this[...]

The attitude towards plastic – and single-use plastic in particular – has changed massively over the last few years. Bottled water, drinking straws and plastic supermarket bags have all become less popular with consumers as environmental sustainability has slowly replaced convenience on the high street. It’s not just consumer habits[...]

According to digital security specialists Gemalto there were 945 major data breaches that exposed 4.5 billion records in the first half of 2018. That’s a staggering 291 individual bits of sensitive information stolen every second. Most of these breaches were identity theft and malicious outsiders successfully using phishing techniques to[...]