I spent a very interesting afternoon talking to Christine O’Donovan in WCEB in Clonakilty on Tuesday. We covered a pretty wide range of topics and I was highly impressed by the range of services they offer local businesses.

Our big area of mutual frustration was the lack of take-up on the Tech-Check scheme. I’ve written about it before on my personal blog and in summary, if you are a local biz in Ireland with even one laptop and you’ve never even talked to an Enterprise Board, then you are missing out hugely.

For €150 you’ll get up to 6 hours of consultancy on your IT setup. Some people seem to think they are only getting €150 worth of consultancy but it’s obviously heavily subsidised. It covers everything from making sure you have anti-virus software and proper backup all the way up to EPOS systems and web-site development.

Despite tons of advertising, it just isn’t getting noticed and I think the people who need it most are the ones who realise it least. Perhaps a national intense campaign that focuses on the low-end basic problems that I see everywhere rather than “IT efficiency” etc would be more effective?

Tech-Checks are available to a much wider range of businesses than CEBs would normally cover. This is important to understand for the other support measures.

Training is a huge part of the budget for all the CEBs and Argolon has been the beneficiary of the courses offered in West Cork. The “starting a business” and basic accounting ones should be mandated by all bank managers handing out new business loans. They really are that important and the cost is minimal.

On the grant side of things, the range of companies that can avail is smaller. The main caveat seems to be that you won’t get grant support if you are a local-only business like a shop. But, for example, if you are a craft shop and you sell your products online, then you do qualify.

There were three grant aids that I discussed with Christine, one of which I was completely unaware of.

The first is a simple feasibility study grant to a value up to €5100. The grant is paid 6 months after you run your study. The range of areas that this covers is very wide and anyone kicking off a new biz would be well advised to apply.

The next one is the Small Exporters Scheme. This is something that I’d be very interested in making use of for the Web2.0 Expo in New York. Its main function is to help you attend trade shows abroad. They provide matching funding up to €2000. This is really a superb support and I believe that not many people are making use of it. It does have one catch, you must have already received grant aid from WCEB to qualify. I assume the route for many people is Feasibility Study->Small Exporters Scheme.

The final one we discussed was the one I was unaware of and the one that really excited me. WCEB will provide up to €1500 matching funding to help you get an ecommerce web-site built. I can think of so many businesses in West Cork that could benefit from this. Obviously it cannot be a brochure site or a local-biz-only site, the intention is to get you trading nationally and internationally via your web-site. One thing to note is that you must be able to show the bona fides of the company/individual you are hiring to do the work. This doesn’t mean tax clearance certs etc, just that it’s a genuine operation. It does not even have to be an Irish vendor; if you are comfortable offshoring, then that is allowed too. Like most other grants, this is paid after the work is done.

Let’s be honest, the standard of small business web-sites in Ireland is terrible. There are so many cowboys out there charging a small fortune for badly-implemented off-the-shelf templates. If you have a business with a small number of products for sale, it should not cost you €3000 for a great looking ecommerce site using an opensource or minimal-cost shopping cart.

One side-note: You should also keep an eye on Irish conferences/events that you would like to attend. Many of them (including the IIA) give discounts to CEB clients.

I’ve said it many times recently that I see a strong match between the CEBs and web businesses in Ireland. Many online businesses who either provide services via web applications or sell online will be very successful but may never grow beyond a few employees and are therefore under the radar for Enterprise Ireland. The level of paperwork with CEBs is also much lower than with EI.

I genuinely think that if you are kicking off a web biz, your first port of call should be your local Enterprise Board.

Contact:

• West Cork Enterprise Board
• South Cork Enterprise Board
• Cork City Enterprise Board
• North Cork Enterprise Board

8 Comments for this entry

3 Trackbacks / Pingbacks for this entry