Member Article

NBSL funding supports VOSS to grow new brand

Voss, Virtual Office Support Services, established by Rachel Mackay, specialises in performing a wide range of administrative tasks on behalf of small, medium and large sized businesses nationally.

Operating from a state of the art, purpose built office in rural Teesdale, the company provides businesses with Virtual Office and Virtual Assistant solutions, which allow small businesses to benefit from the same facilities and staffing resources, that a much larger company would enjoy at a fraction of the cost.

The company also offers professional CV writing and has worked with ‘Working Links,’ a Government organisation. This was an area that VOSS was keen to expand further, and wanted to develop a sub brand ‘The CV Queen,’ which would offer a range of services in the employment market including a telephone and email based CV consultancy service, available nationally and internationally.

Looking to invest in their own success and the growth of their brands, Voss realised that they needed coaching and mentoring to help them develop a vision for the company and the capability to communicate this to the workforce. Developing a more entrepreneurial approach to the business would help them to build and create a productive team that would lead to increased turnover and the option to expand into new geographical areas.

Accordingly the company turned to NBSL for help in moving their ideas forward. NBSL is a D-BIS (Department of Business, Innovation and Skills) approved and regulated Local Enterprise Agency. Over the last 8 years NBSL has delivered the North East’s Leadership & Management Advisory Service, funded by D-BIS’s Skills Funding Agency. Under NBSL this programme has gone from strength to strength, engaging directly with more than 1,000 SMEs each year.

NBSL has secured ERDF investment of £2.38 million to deliver support to the North East’s private sector businesses employing between 2 – 249 employees, and funding is still available which provides grant support of up to £1,000 for businesses such as Voss that need coaching for growth.

Rachel met with Deborah Lowden, one of NBSL’s Leadership & Management Specialist Advisers who supported her to identify precise areas for development, desired business impacts that would be measurable and a plan for growth. Specific coaching to be delivered would include assistance in determining the vision for the company, enhancing communication skills to enable the promotion of the desired culture change within the organisation towards a more dynamic and entrepreneurial focus, and mentoring to help set and achieve targets.

After a four day programme of coaching and mentoring provided by Linda Britton of Lakey Wells, Rachel was able to identify a number of key developments that resulted from the intervention. These included better business systems and processes, the ability to deliver a more flexible service than larger competitors and an increased strategic focus on increasing turnover and profitability, as well as the evolution of the CV Queen brand. This has also increased awareness of the VOSS offer in addition to increasing revenues through new brand opportunities.

Voss has now moved into delivering their service nationally as well as in the North East region and are well on their way to achieving their targets for growth and development.

NBSL still has limited funding available to support businesses, so if you would like to benefit from grant funding of up to £1,000 towards the cost of developing a growth strategy for your business, contact NBSL now on 01670 813322 or apply online at www.nbsl.org.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Phil Langton .