• Swindon & Wiltshire News
• Friday September 30 2022
• Author Name: Peter Davison

Wiltshire businesses get ready to ‘do business brilliantly’ at Swindon & Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership conference next week

The annual conference of the Swindon & Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership returns to laptops and tablets next week.

Last year’s online conference attracted up to 300 virtual delegates at any one time, and this year’s event remains online.

The theme for the day is Doing Business Brilliantly, and is “aimed at all businesses and organisations striving to find out how to do business brilliantly or continue down the brilliance route.”

The event starts at 8.30am with online networking before keynote speaker Sam Knowles takes to the stage at 9.30am.

Sam, who holds a doctorate in experimental psychology, helps organisations make smarter use of data by considering the questions they ask, the insights they surface and articulate, and the stories they tell.

He believes that insight is the superpower that drives innovation and enables us to understand the world from other peoples’ points of view – customers, colleagues, advocates or competitors.

He is poised to give the audience shortcuts to better productivity, fast-tracked innovation and organisational success.

The afternoon’s keynote speakers (1.30pm to 2.30pm) are Adrian Clarke and Barny Guthrie, founders of fast-growing digital and face-to-face mental health care providers Clinical Partners.

Adrian and Barny will share Clinical Partner’s journey so far and how they have tried to ‘do business brilliantly.’

They will touch on many challenges close to any entrepreneur’s organisation, the difficult subject of knowing when to invest and when not to spend, both the directors having different viewpoints, how they created a senior management team and their decision process on selecting the team, the growing pains from expanding their employee numbers from 3 to 300 in a short period, knowing when to ask for help from third parties and how they navigated their way through obtaining a contract with the NHS.

During the day there will also be an SME Panel Discussion (11.30am-12.30pm) hosted by SWLEP CEO Paddy Bradley (pictured) with local business guests including Sam Dharmasiri of Seer365, Hayley Lambert of Packaging Not Included, Rob Hibberd of Nationwide Engineering Limited, and Laura Ward of Exeat.

The panel will discuss what doing business brilliantly means for them, the support they require and their thoughts for the future of business in our region.

Throughout the day there are no fewer than 26 workshop sessions hosted by local experts focussed on subjects to help ‘do business brilliantly,’ including:

• Doing business language brilliantly with Gera Solutions – Why language matters to your business, to your brand and to you.
• Keep the team performing brilliantly during change with Resolution Space – Insights and tips into how you can help your team to remain at the top of their game during change, to thrive and to grow.
• Protect your brand, designs and innovations – brilliantly – Learn how to identify what needs protecting, how to do it successfully and ensure your business’ assets remain yours.
• Doing Cyber brilliantly – simple tips for a digital age – Hosted by South West Cyber Resilience Centre.
• Growing Global: Tips for fast-tracking international growth – Local DIT Export Champion, Laura Ward shares her global growth tool kit which helps consumer brands begin exporting.

Full programme details can be found at https://static.swlep.co.uk/swlep/docs/librariesprovider2/news-library/conference-agenda.pdf?sfvrsn=89649e19_10/Conference-Agenda.pdf

Paddy Bradley said, “By hosting the event digitally, we prevent unnecessary travel, saving time and carbon emissions. We estimated a saving of circa 2.1 tonnes of CO2e by holding the 2021 conference online. Hopefully, an example of the SWLEP striving to do business brilliantly.”

Doing Business Brilliantly takes place on Thursday, October 6 from 8.30am to 6pm.

The event is free to attend, but registration is essential at https://growthhub.swlep.co.uk/events/allevents/2022/10/06/company-events/doing-business-brilliantly—swlep-conference-and-expo-2022