Want to move your business to the Digital Age? Discover how the Digital Growth Programme can help you
The Digital Growth Programme is a £12.6m project part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), East Midlands Chamber (Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire) and Leicestershire County Council.
Delivered by the Chamber, the project aims to provide dedicated support to Leicester and Leicestershire SMEs to explore and introduce new and emerging ICT products and services into their business, to improve competitiveness and productivity.
Eligible enterprises registered to the programme can receive a minimum of 12 hours of funded support through its range of awareness-raising webinars, action-planning workshops, grant funding and 121 digital business advice.
To sign-up to the programme, SMEs are required to complete our online registration. To see if you qualify for support use our postcode checker.
Here’s what you can access once your business has signed up:
- Awareness-raising webinars
- Strategic action-planning workshops
- Annual Conference
- Digital Business advice
- Grant funding (£2k to £25K - subject to conditions)
Webinars and Workshops
The programme delivers a range of webinars and action-planning workshops covering a range of topics from social media and website planning to email marketing and paid advertising.
Delivered by industry experts, sessions are structured to provide businesses with the latest digital knowledge and techniques. Each session allows you to consider strategic objectives and draw up a plan of action to develop and grow your business.
Webinar and Workshop themes include:
- Website planning and Ecommerce
- SEO, Optimisation and Measurement
- Email Marketing, CRM and Automation
- Social Media
- Paid Digital Advertising
- Visual Marketing
- Cloud computing
Access to Finance
Technology Grants from £2,000 to £25,000 are available, subject to conditions. The aim of the grant is to support businesses to utilise their existing technology solutions to full potential or assist in the introduction of new systems and software. All grants must be 65% match-funded by the business and details of the application process can be found on the technology grants page.
Digital Business Advisers
To further support your business, business who access grant funding will also be allocated a Digital Business Advisers who will provide advice in your development and growth. They will work closely with you to gain a better understanding of your business and the breadth of technology that exists in your current structure and help develop a plan to move forward. They will also support and assist you with the grant application process.
If you’re ready to embrace the digital world, sign-up to the programme today!
Leicester and Leicestershire Digital Growth Programme targets
The programme runs from 1 July 2016 to 31 March 2022 and is contracted to deliver the following results:
- 1188 enterprises receiving at least 12 hours of support including 208 new businesses supported
- 181 enterprises supported to introduce new to the firm products or processes
- 12 enterprises taking up broadband with speeds of at least 30 Mbps