Solutions 4 Business (S4B)

Although theSkils for Business network-wide programme is being mothballed because of a change of budget priorities, SummitSkills are continuing with their successful version of the site at: www.solutions4business.info/summitskills. People 1st are considering whether to do so too.

Background

The S4B project was one of the earliest cross sector management and leadership projects. A full history is at http://www.sfbn-mandl.org.uk/s4b_old.htm but, briefly, it aimed to address business  issues faced by owners and managers of small and micro companies. Research had shown that they were poorly served by current offerings – a new approach was needed.

The S4B website was originally planned to be an application sitting on the Cross Sector Gateway and was a sister project to the successful Action Learning project.

Following a change of SSDA budget priorities, S4B was impacted by the cancellation of the Gateway. Functions such as page design, navigation and automatic generation of content would no longer be provided. The project steering group sought to redesign the project to work around these gaps but, ultimately, there were insufficient funds to make up the lost ground.

Alternative suppliers and partners

Serious consideration was given to offers by the Northern Leadership Academy Portal team and SkillsActive who both offered to host the S4B project. In both instances, the re-hosting costs involved would negate any savings in year 1 and still leave the majority of the cost base (support, updates, marketing, and content generation and renewal) intact for future years.

Our thanks to all of the committed people who worked on this project over the uears. Your work lives on at the SummitSkills site.

Mike Hender

06-Jul-2007