Invest NI: Changes and challenges
An update on Invest NI’s progress against IREP recommendations.
Over the past couple of years, Invest Northern Ireland has undergone significant change, much of it influenced by the recommendations of the Independent Review of Economic Policy (IREP) and Transform, our strategic change programme.
Published in September 2009, IREP made 58 recommendations on improving economic development support. Around half fell to Invest NI to deliver.
This reflected the IREP‘s conclusion that, while ultimate responsibility for private sector growth in Northern Ireland lies with businesses themselves, Invest NI has a crucial role in providing the most efficient and effective support possible.
So far Invest NI has delivered on around 20 recommendations.
This includes addressing a key IREP recommendation that the agency should work throughout the entire business base. In response, we have developed a tiered portfolio of support to allow us to provide market development and capability support to a much wider range of businesses, a lot of it through nibusinessinfo.co.uk and a mix of seminars, workshops and diagnostic tools.
Our Boosting Business campaign is bringing this approach to life and is already delivering results. Since its launch, the campaign has taken over 3,500 enquiries from businesses keen to learn about how we can help them drive innovation, increase use of technology, enhance the skills of their workforce, grow their exports and, ultimately, create jobs. This has resulted in over 550 new offers of financial assistance which, collectively, could create almost 1,000 jobs and generate over £70m of investment.
We’ve created new initiatives to meet the needs of business, such as the successful Focus on Finance regional workshops, which will be followed by Focus on Selling workshops over the next two months.
A second major recommendation from IREP was that we should work to significantly simplify our support. In response, we have simplified our product offering into 23 solution sets and we are implementing a proactive customer management approach through our new organisation design.
The IREP also noted that greater resource should be channelled towards research, development and innovation, and here we have made substantial progress.
By skewing resources towards innovation and R&D and providing higher levels of support to encourage more small businesses to become “innovation-active” through initiatives such as our Innovation Vouchers scheme, we have helped grow R&D expenditure from 0.6% of GVA to 1.1%, bringing NI up to sixth of the twelve UK regions and just below the UK average in terms of Business Expenditure on R&D. By supporting the development of industry-led innovation communities, such as the recently opened Northern Ireland Advanced Composites and Engineering centre, we’re strengthening our R&D infrastructure.
Through our trade support we have helped over 700 more local companies to begin selling outside NI, increasing exports by 31%.
And we have continued to drive up the quality of new inward investment, exceeding all the targets in our last Corporate Plan, with the average salary of jobs supported up by 29%.
Internally, we have looked at where we can streamline our processes. We’ve revised the application process for relatively small offers under our Jobs Fund, to make it easier and faster for businesses to get support to take on additional staff.
We have gone beyond the initial recommendations of the Review panel in relation to the use of co-investment, by putting in place a £100m Fund of Funds to ensure that early stage companies with high growth potential are not restrained because they cannot access finance.
Internally, we have revised our organisation structure to ensure it is aligned to the needs of our customers, putting in place a new Executive Leadership Team, introducing a new vision and values set which embeds a customer service culture, and aligning our staff performance management system to it.
The changes we have implemented, and those which we will deliver in the coming months, will underpin our next Corporate Plan which will be published within the next few weeks. It will set out how we will support delivery of the NI Executive’s Programme for Government.
Achieving the Programme for Government targets will largely depend on businesses having the confidence and ability to invest in skills, increase levels of research and development and innovation, and grow exports.
Invest NI will continue to play a vital role in supporting them to do this.
Through Invest NI’s Boosting Business campaign you can access a range of support that will help you secure your position for the future. Get in touch today. Visit boostingbusinessni.com or call 0800 181 4422.
