2009 is the ninetieth anniversary of Business Insight, Birmingham Central Library's business information service providing free business information and support services to the people of Birmingham.
While we had a range of events planned over the year, what was missing was a flagship - something that would have lasting value for as a wide a community of interests as possible, reflecting our skills and values. We wanted to make a real tangible impact UK-wide to help people beat the recession.
Our answer was to help create http://www.bestforbusiness.com, a new business trading platform that works as an online and physical service for every business, individual or organisation in the UK. The web platform provides a mix of:
Business club features
Business information
Business services
Business support programmes
B2B facilities
Discounted goods and services
Free software - web site, blog, CRM system
International trade
Networking
Sales and marketing systems
Skills development
Who are we?
Business Insight started life in 1919 as the Birmingham Commercial Library, the original business support service, to help build a land fit for heroes through supplying free business information services. It merged with Birmingham Central Library in 1973.
Renamed Business Insight, we specialise in proactive business support and providing economic regeneration in the city, gaining Enterprise Agency Status in 2006 with our Enterprise, Creativity and Learning agenda. In the last four years we have created 3,047 new businesses, and BI provides outsource services to 20% of library authorities in England and Wales.
BestforBusiness reflects our service experience to deliver a nationwide programme that any local council, business organisation or individual can use, that will benefit any business at whatever level of development and open up the widest possible access to business information to help businesses grow. The platform gives any individual or organisation the resources and trading ability of a multinational through a range of mechanisms that any library can use - either by having their own licensed version or by using the free registration.
Sustainability
The first thing to decide before embarking on building a platform such as this is getting the business plan right - that means finance, partners and sustainability. We decided to work with the New Visual Media company and license its software to be able to deliver the complex back-end functions of the site which drives the platform, and to maintain the front-end ourselves. In effect, this is two web sites: one a state-of-the-art automated system, one a simple facing site that we ourselves maintain.
Our sole cost is the licence with New Visual Media who makes an income from direct sales to members and advertising. We make an income from direct business information sales to the same members and, hopefully, the wider UK public.
BestforBusiness is a not-for-profit separate legal entity that runs as a club, with any income received going directly back to the members in the form of benefits. What this means is that every business member can use it to sell products to each other, to advertise, build network clubs, trade internationally and reduce their overheads through discount offers we have negotiated.
It exists purely for the benefit of members, helping them to start, grow and sustain their businesses. It returns any commission fees or kick-backs from discount offers to members that, in some cases, can have the effect of doubling the discount available.
Getting the structure and finance right means that membership for the club is free (we would normally have to charge £650) but that in itself is not enough. You then need to have a theme or a programme that unifies the service - otherwise it could be seen as just another discount club or information product.
Programme
Sticking to what we know, we built the platform so that it could deliver flexible business support programmes to any community anywhere, under what we have labelled the National Kick Start Programme. This is already the largest business support programme ever run in Europe by a single entity, with 129 councils signed up.
Kick Start can mean what anyone needs it to mean - kick start your sales, kick start your new business, kick start international trade and so on. The system is also flexible enough to accommodate individual issues such as worklessness, jobs and the skills gap.
The members are the drivers of the platform, so you need numbers to make it work. Having an adaptable programme means others can adopt the service under licence and change the front-end for their purposes, so they take ownership. Using the same data collection service means that all memberships are shared in one database, vastly enhancing the size of the platform nationally.
The incentive for any organisation or local authority to do this is simple. All want to help their local community economically but most lack the means or capacity. With our plan, every organisation can deliver benefits to members, track results and deliver a programme at a minimal cost - in fact, selling services to members will recover any licence fee.
For example:-
Every member immediately benefits by £6,000 in kind (free membership and software systems) - so at no cost, based on 50,000 members, you have just injected £30 million into your local economy, or £60 million if you add in our other free business support services at no cost. There is no need for additional physical costs as the service or programme runs itself, can be tracked, members do the work and the usage grows organically.
Now some of you may be thinking 'But where's the business information?' My point is: without a coherent plan for finance, sustainability and responsibility, what is the point of the product? Specialists like us need to take more heed of the advice and information we give out and apply those principles to our own work, rather than simply developing another stand-alone product.
I am sure you will have spotted there is no single new service here - but neither is it a portal. It's a fully functioning delivery mechanism that puts together a package from which members and the market decide what they will use - not a product that one has to sell. This, I believe, is the way Web 2.0 will increasingly take us: away from a signposting portal or repository and towards communities working through platforms that bring with them many of the older systems' benefits.
Benefits
How do you get the ‘commercial offers' on the platform? Simple: companies are happy to give discounts as you are giving them direct advertising to targeted customers at no cost to them. Most also offer commissions on sales, but we put this back into the discount for members to enhance the offer.
The list of benefits currently runs to six A4 pages, with offers such as free web site, free blog, free CRM system, slash energy costs by 50%, free UK landline calls and so on. Business Insight and its partners are offering low cost business information services direct to members as our contribution. This is about being inclusive, not exclusive, provided someone has a good service to offer.
Database
Every member completes a Facebook style profile that means we can track their activity and display impact statistics such as number of start-ups, business assists, ethnicity, age, international trade, service use (which lets us build better services) and whatever other measures we need to show that we add value and are making an economic impact. It is this profiling that enables members to sell direct to other members, to have permission-based networking, to create their own club within a club for specific interests, to deliver their own advertised services and - I am sure - provide functions we have not yet thought of.
This answers a question we rarely ask when we provide a new information product: How do I prove the wider value of the service? What is getting used and what is not? It is no longer enough to just deliver a good product if it does not provide a wider benefit such as tangible economic value.
What next?
I hope this has given food for thought as to how you could develop your own platform or adapt ours for your use, or for your customers as a free service. The proof is in the eating as they say, and the beta version http://www.bestforbusiness.com is already live, with a formal launch in early June. My original target was 100,000 registered members in the first 12 months, but with 125,000 pre-registered members via business organisations, my new target is now a million members by June 2010, making it the largest business membership in the UK.
Business Insight as a public library service has used its information skills and resources to make a direct approach to a wider market using technology. It's a strategy that other information units need to consider in times when niche markets are diminishing.
Douglas has worked in every type of library service there is over the last 30 years: schools, colleges, government, corporate, public and - the last refuge of the scoundrel - as a freelance consultant in knowledge management. For the past seven years he has worked for Birmingham Central Library, promoting Business Insight, and is currently working on transforming library services for the new £193 million Library of Birmingham. He believes in proactive services providing enterprise, creativity and learning, placing libraries at the heart of the cultural and knowledge economy, utilising web technology to deliver ever wider services, and the knowledge hub concept.
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2009 is the ninetieth anniversary of Business Insight, Birmingham Central Library's business information service providing free business information and support services to the people of Birmingham.
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