Superfast Lancashire Case Study

Superfast Lancashire was a part funded European Regional Development Fund project which ran for 2 years, ending in mid-2015. The programme was designed to help businesses within Lancashire utilise the technology improvements being rolled out during this time to grow their business.

As part of the training programme, we were involved throughout, running specialist workshops on a regular basis for Lancashire based businesses showcasing how new collaborative web based tools could help their businesses work more efficiently along with another regular workshop designed to provide an in-depth look at digital strategy for modern and forward thinking businesses. The hands on workshops allowed businesses to get involved during the sessions so they had a clear action plan to take away with them. Combining this with several larger conferences, we ran sessions on similar topics which attracted several hundred businesses at a time alongside guest appearances from Dragons Den star and local entrepreneur Kirsty Henshaw.

Throughout the project, superfast broadband was rolled out to over 3,000,000 homes and businesses within the Lancashire area, meaning that over 95% of Lancashire now has access to the new technology. Being part of this enormous programme allowed us to provide support to a large number of businesses in the area who took advantage of the fully funded training provided by businesses with the expertise to help such as ourselves.

The Results

The programme hailed a huge success from over 700 businesses who enrolled in the training programme and boasting figures from the 350 businesses surveyed afterwards including;

• 55% of businesses involved in the programme made sales to new customers in the region
• 37% of businesses made sales to new customers across the UK
• 64% of businesses strengthened relations with existing customers
• 30% of businesses saw an increase in turnover

Bearing in mind the natural time lag from learning new skills, staff development, digital strategy and implementation, along with the fact that it is often difficult to attribute a specific result to a specific event in time, these results are extremely positive. And if that hasn’t convinced you, take a look at how many businesses we helped throughout the programme;