Latest updates and stories from Bedfordshire Chamber of Commerce and its Members

For businesses trying to attract and retain talent in order to drive growth, it’s undeniably tough out there at the moment.

And for small and medium enterprises (SME), that often don’t have extensive recruitment resources and capacity to draw on internally, it’s tougher still.

It’s not just about the difficulty in finding people to fill your roles – in fact, the skills shortage also often means the candidates you do find don’t have the training and education they need to do the job.

Autumn is upon us and for many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the UK, this time of year is turning out to be distinctly growth-focused – more spring than autumn, you might say!

In fact, according to recent research from business finance provider Novuna, 7 in 10 UK small firms are making growth plans, and in some sectors growth planning in the SME space has hit a three-year high.

It’s been a busy few weeks here at the Bedfordshire Chamber of Commerce.

We welcomed a visit from the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) Director General, Shevaun Haviland, published the results on an opinion poll on the planned expansion of Luton Airport, met with Vauxhall to discuss electric vehicle strategy and funding, and hosted a Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP) event to help businesses combat the skills shortage.

What’s coming your way, what’s it worth, when will it pay out, and how likely is it to come good? If you needed a handy definition of a sales pipeline, you probably couldn’t do better than this.

But like any pipe, it’s susceptible to two common problems: it can easily become too full of stuff that sinks to the bottom and doesn’t make the distance, or too empty of the stuff that flows through healthily.

Whatever the size of your business, it is likely that at some stage you will face multiple challenges that can feel impossible to overcome. In fact, you will typically experience these at every stage of the business’s growth.

In this piece, we take a look at what we, as a member of the British Chambers of Commerce, offer to make it easier for business owners in our region to get advice and support when they need it most.

There’s a wide world out there just waiting for your business to fulfil its needs for goods, products, and services.

But how do you tap into these international markets? And how do you navigate customs, VAT, freight, local language and business culture, and every other challenge along the way?

With the new year looming on the horizon and the economy finally getting back on track, with specialists predicting we will be back to a pre-Covid economy by December, now is the perfect time to be thinking about the future of your business and looking at your strategic plans for 2022 and beyond.

Here at the Chamber, we can provide you with specialist one-to-one support to help your business succeed and grow in 2022.  Read on to find out more.

We are now one month into 2020, and just two months away from the start of the new financial year. If you haven’t already got a winning business strategy in place for the year ahead, chances are you're not alone. 90% of businesses fail to execute a successful business strategy.