SME Development: An evaluation of the external advice and guidance received by small businesses (and sole traders) in the early stages of their Business Development (4.2 MB pdf download)

Thank you to everyone who responded to, or helped to support, this survey and the author. Although the survey is still live and the statistics are still being gathered and interpreted, Wising UP! is please do announce that the main evaluation has been completed. If you would like to read the Dissertation as it was submitted and approved by the University of Liverpool (who with the author are the acknowledged copyright owners) a 4.2Mb version is available for download by clicking here. U P Publications Ltd and Wising UP! are both pleased to announce that the author, Gaile Griffin Peers was successful in achieving her MBA.

The Survey continues...

We are still looking at advice options that are being taken up by small and medium businesses. When starting a business if you are aware of the opportunities, you can be bombarded with information and advice or, if you are not aware, you can feel very alone. The question is - will the amount of advice you get make a difference to the decisions you make? Is it quality that counts and if so, where is the most useful advice out there coming from? In any case the odds are that you sought or received advice from someone - what we would like to find out is if there is any commonality in the good and bad advice that SMEs recieve - are there a few nuggets that every one should know for mutual survival? Is there consistently Bad Advice we should all be aware of?

Please help us by completing our SME survey - you could still make a difference...

Click here to take the survey now, online.

No personal information will be collected. We have estimated that the whole survey should be completed in less than 20 minutes. If you wish you can bookmark and return to the survey at a later date to re-examine or change your answers - Closing date for the survey has been extended by request. For the purposes of the MBA the last date for submission was 1st July 2006, the MBA Dissertation has been completed, submitted and approved but the survey has been kept live as a result of the positive interest generated in business support agencies by the statistics already gathered from your responses.

If you would like to find out more about the background to this survey please click here

You should receive no further contact as a result of this survey. If you have any issues (or questions) with the way your details have been (or may be) handled please notify me immediately .

The author can still be contacted at with@itude.org.uk

Author's Note

If reading about the survey has opened up possible sources of advice and information that you have not previously considered - you might find the following link to The UK Government's sponsored Small Business Advice Organisation - Business Link useful. As well as being a mine of impartial advice it will also have links for local contacts and to free and sponsored activities, training opportunities and Enterprise Programmes in your area - http://www.businesslink.gov.uk

My thanks to U P Publications Ltd, staff and directors for supporting me in my MBA for the last three years of silly questions and insatiable curiosity and for allowing me to suborn part of the website for my MBA dissertation research. I hope that the statistics gathered will help to improve free services and subsidised support for small and medium businesses.

Thank you,

Gaile

To Browse my sponsor company's website Wising UP! online please click here

The online Business Magazine for small and medium Businesses