Expert Service Scheme
We offer a range of services to assist you with business development. For many companies, this service is completely free.
What services can competitiveScotland.com offer?
Different businesses have different needs. What do you want to do?
- Develop or update our strategy to deal with new threats
- Increase our organisational effectiveness to reduce costs
- Move up the value chain to beat our competitors
- Aim for operational excellence to improve quality
- Develop new or improve existing products to stay ahead of our competitors
How does competitiveScotland.com provide support?
We will work with you to transfer knowledge and understanding from us to you, to enable you to apply new knowledge or technology to develop your company on an ongoing basis. This is not black-box consultancy: we want to leave a legacy behind to make you more competitive.
How can it be free?
We have funding from
- the European Regional Development fund to "develop the competitiveness and innovation of the region's SMEs"
- the Scottish Executive's SEEKIT programme and
- the University of Strathclyde.
The funding means that eligible companies do not need to pay for this assistance.
Is my company eligible for free assistance?
- Is the company based in the West of Scotland?
- Does the company employ under 250 people?
- Is the company turnover under €50M?
- Is the company independant? (As a rough guide, an independant company is one which is not owned by another organisation but there are several criteria. Please contact us to discuss this if you are in any doubt.)
- Is the company in manufacturing or a manufacturing-related activity?
If you have answered Yes to all of the above, then we can almost certainly offer up to five days of business development support completely free of charge
If not, there are other services available from our host, the Department of Design, Manufacture and Engineering Management at the University of Strathclyde, some of which are free to companies of all sizes in any location.