Hundreds of free events pack out Coventry & Warwickshire Business Festival
Over the past few months, private companies, universities, business support organisations and local authorities have been busily planning and preparing their events in readiness for this exciting, fortnight of business.
Now a firm feature in the annual calendar, the 2018 Business Festival headline partnered by Inspire Insurance, comprises free business events in all subjects and industries and aims to showcase and celebrate the strength and diversity of the region’s economy as the UK’s centre of knowledge.
Business support is a key focus of the Festival and can be particularly useful to start up businesses, micro and small to medium sized enterprises looking for the necessary help and information they need to help them grow.
These events include everything from help with HR, skills and recruitment events and accessing funding to networking events, trading with foreign markets and managing finances and tax.
The Festival’s founding partner, the Coventry & Warwickshire LEP Growth Hub is playing a primary role, running several business support events including: Funding for High Growth Business on 20 November; The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Why Should You Care? in conjunction with Warwick events on 27 November, and alongside the Consulate General of India and the Warwick Manufacturing Group, a featured event looking at how to start trading with India on 23 November.
Craig Humphrey, the CWLEP Growth Hub managing director, (pictured left) said: “Having a robust business support and financial services offer is the backbone of a business community. This, coupled with a strong pool of skilled and educated graduates and first rate facilities from our two world class universities, makes Coventry and Warwickshire a very attractive place to start or develop a business. This is shown through the area’s fantastic business retention rate where, on average, 90 per cent of new start ups are still active after a year and over 40 per cent still trading after five years.
“The 2018 Business Festival offers many quality events featuring a range of topics that will be appealing to all businesses but in particular, new start-ups and SMEs, with advice and information on the many daily tasks involved in running a business such as HR, communications and marketing, where to find funding support and finances.
“There will also be plenty of opportunities to find new leads and contacts through networking at the many events in the programme, which is extremely important for developing business relationships and profile-raising.”
Employment agency, thefutureworks has been involved in the Business Festival since it began in 2017. Manager, Cheryl Dempsey said, “From our perspective as an employment agency based within Coventry University Group, we first became involved in the Festival because we wanted people to understand that thefutureworks offers a broader service with recruitment support to companies right across Coventry & Warwickshire, as well as temporary assignments and permanent recruitment for Coventry University and the student and graduate placement arm of our business.
“In the 2017 Business Festival, thefutureworks certainly benefited from a number of new clients and built some useful business relationships, leading to us being involved again this year by sponsoring and running an event entitled Busting the Myths of Apprenticeships in 2018 on 21 November. I would certainly encourage companies to see how they can get the most out of this unique event for our region.”
Business Festival events are run by business for business and are completely free to attend.
Tickets must be reserved in advance and are available through the Business Festival website www.cwbusinessfestival.com or via the new the ‘CWBF App’ - free to download from Google Play or the Apple store
