[back]Independent evidence of how businesses can benefit from the Experiential Business Learning provided by The Academy for Chief Executives
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During 2008/9 Birmingham City Council awarded the contract for their Enterprise City High Growth Programme to Deloitte who in turn engaged The Academy for Chief Executives for the delivery of the experiential learning activities.
The ECHG programme enabled the leaders of 63 small businesses to benefit from the combination of expert speakers, peer group and 1:1 mentoring. The programme completed at the final event on 23rd March 2009.
As part of the programme, BCC contracted Birmingham University Business School to complete a qualitative and quantitative evaluation. The evaluation team are the authors of the summary report which can be viewed in full here (click to download the ECHGP Independent Evaluation Report >>). BCC, who own the report, have kindly given permission for The Academy to publish it on our website.
The following is an extract from the Executive Summary and clearly demonstrates the impact of the programme on the businesses involved. Congratulations to the participants for implementing the development ideas generated. It is an outstanding result - especially given the recession that was building just as the programme began!
Birmingham University Business School commissioned a webcast, including interviews with participants, which can be viewed here http://www.business.bham.ac.uk/webcasts/#webcast.
The evaluation found the programme to be highly effective and popular from both a participant and deliverer perspective. There was evidence of strong improvements in participants' marketing and entrepreneurial capability, which had translated into tangible successes. In particular and as a direct result of participation on ECHGP:
* 25% of participants claimed to have taken on extra employees.
* 60% of respondents had increased their turnover (15% by more than 10%).
* 80% of participants had engaged with new markets.
* All respondents claimed to have increased networking activities as a result of their participation and several reported this had "opened doors" to new market opportunities.
* Specific improvements in marketing capability were reported. Against recognised critical success factors in marketing, capability improvements included:
External/Macro Critical Success Factors:
* Understanding customer needs – 18% improvement in capability.
* Developing/maintaining customer relationships – 16% improvement in capability.
* Understanding markets and market conditions – 10% improvement in capability.
* Understanding the competition – 6% improvement in capability.
* Understanding targeting and positioning – 22% improvement in capability.
* Sales effectiveness – 10% improvement in capability.
* E-Business development – 12% improvement in capability.
* Human Resource Development – 4% improvement in capability.
Internal/Micro Critical Success Factors:
* Understanding the planning process – 20% improvement in capability.
* Understanding integrated marketing communications – 24% improvement in capability.
* Understanding the firm's core marketing competencies – 22% improvement in capability.
* Understanding evaluation and management control systems – 14% improvement in capability.
* Understanding product development capabilities – 20% improvement in capability.
* Demonstrating strategic vision – 30% improvement in capability.
Feedback from mentors was extremely positive and there was evidence of enthusiastic engagement by The Academy for Chief Executives who provided mentoring support.
There was a high degree of satisfaction demonstrated by both participants and mentors for the quality of support provided by speakers, Deloitte and Birmingham City Council. The Academy for Chief Executives received significant praise from participants for their high quality of support which was extremely effective.