Customer Stories

Oxford Innovation Advice

Oxford Innovation delivers an EU-funded financial readiness programme to small businesses.

Organisation

Sector

Professional skills: Business Consulting & Services

Date of activity

2022

The challenge

Oxford Innovation Services (OIS) is the UK’s leading specialist business support company. They work with businesses at all stages of development to maximise their growth potential.

Access to Finance (A2F) is an EU funded programme run by Oxford Innovation. A2F delivers financial readiness support to SMEs in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.

A core element, teaching Start Up Businesses how to build the components required to secure seed capital, was being delivered through a 2 day in-person workshop.

Oxford Innovation saw an opportunity to improve the support that it provides businesses in the region by augmenting its current workshops with online peer group learning. This is targeted initially at a minimum of 1,100 Cornwall and Isle of Scilly small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The solution

Learning with Experts worked with Oxford Innovation to develop a new online course.

As with the face to face workshop, this course is designed to help SMEs to understand the finance options available, decide which is most appropriate to them and then develop a business plan so that they can apply for finance.

The online classroom allows the course to be broken up into smaller modules and taken over a longer period. At the end of each module, participants complete an assignment and can receive feedback both from their peers and from Oxford Innovation’s specialists.

This means that they will have completed their business plan by the time they finish the course.

This course is hosted on an Oxford Innovation branded version of the Learning with Experts' platform.

We already help Cornish businesses through face-to-face workshops. Extending this to give the same support online, knowing that business-owners are also building up a valuable peer network is such a positive use of technology. We’re proud to be helping Cornwall realise its potential in a business sense.Andrew Finley, Commercial Director Oxford Innovation Advice

What next?

A second A2F course, providing support to more established businesses, launches in summer 2022. Oxford Innovation, Learning with Experts and the River Cottage have also since collaborated to develop a course that is aimed at helping independent food producers to build successful and scalable businesses.

The results

The course was launched in early 2022 and initially made available to 600 previous participants in the face-to-face workshops. The next step will be to open it up to those who have not attended face-to-face training.

More Customer Stories

Partnering with Learning with Experts has been a crucial component of bringing our course to life and has played a huge role in the success of our product. Throughout every step of the journey, the team have been communicative, flexible, generous with their time and knowledge, and are clearly experts in their field.Victoria Fox, CEO - AAR Group Read customer story

We chose to work with Learning with Experts because they echoed our values of pioneering the ‘fourth education revolution’ through high quality collaborative, interactive and scalable online learning.Barnaby Lenon, Dean of University of BuckinghamRead customer story

At CNTW, we have a large number of staff who are over 55 years of age and these bite sized modules are perfect to encourage them to build effective activities into their lifestyle leading up to and throughout retirement. We are really pleased to be working with Live Longer Better and Learning with Experts to support our staff as they move towards this important milestone in their lives.Lynne Shaw, Executive Director of Workforce and OD NHS Foundation Trust CNTWRead customer story

Our aim, our aspiration is to have courses running throughout the country and the use of digital technology and working with Learning with Experts to enable us to do that is really at the core of our strategy going forward over the next ten years.Peter Taylor, Centre Director Goldsmiths' CompanyRead customer story

This significant investment instore and above the line will promote Hardys enduring status, and we expect it to deliver strong incremental sales and profit across the market. Thomas Joyce Brown, Head of Trade MarketingRead customer story

We know that Tatler's audience loves to entertain and be entertained...the Tatler Menu...draws on the expertise of the Tatler Address Book restaurants, with access to some of the finest Michelin-starred chefs...inviting everyone to channel their inner gastronome. Kate Slesinger, Publishing Director of TatlerRead customer story

I’m so pleased to be able to bring this course to designers, customers and students around the world.. I hope that this course will inspire everyone to be creative and fearless with their design projects. Tricia Guild, Founder and Creative Director of Designers Guild Read customer story

Consumers are bombarded with skincare information from all angles, and this course will give both beauty influencers and their followers the confidence to share credible skincare advice based on fact rather than fad.Elizabeth Barnet-Lawton, President of Pillar, Education at British Beauty Council Read customer story

Ready to learn more?

Grow your people with expert learning. Complete the form with your details and we will get in touch shortly.