If you have ever wondered whether it is OK to be a little bit different, a little bit silly, in a job advertisement, consider this.

We started advertising for an office manager in September last year with a very straightforward, boring job advert. We had five inquiries in four weeks, two of which were standard ‘purple crayon’ applications, two were interesting and one, that came via a recommendation from a friend was outstanding. We offered the latter a job at the end of November and they would have accepted – had she not also been offered a job in an adjacent  department in the publicly funded organisation they worked for 15% more money than they were already earning but they only had to work 3 days per week. (Mr Cameron! Over here! We might have found some easy ways for you to make some savings at the NHS…).

Less than gruntled, we retired to the pub. We needed help, The BLN is growing and we are working hard to keep pace with the growth. We had a plan. With nothing to lose, we posted a ‘silly’ advert:

Searching for a superhero admin Ninja to join the team

The upshot was over 70 applications in four weeks. We needed a superhero admin Ninja just to process the applications. We had a huge range of brilliant candidates – some of whom wanted to work part time, some full. We could probably have set up a great recruitment agency off the back of the applications.

So the lesson for us was don’t be afraid to be different, and don’t be afraid to tell it how it is. People seem to be far more interested in working with an organisation that doesn’t take itself too seriously, even if there is too much to be done. I was inspired to have the confidence to do something a little different after listening to this awesome talk by Young Me Moon at Business of Software last year https://thebln.com/2010/10/professor-youngme-moon-business-of-software-different/. I am glad I did.

Today, we are pleased to welcome Helen Leighton to the BLN as our new Office Manager. Welcome aboard Helen.

Now get organising!

One of the many paradoxes of governments is they tend to spout lots of waffle about believing that small, entrepreneurial businesses are the future of the country, are essential to the long term health of the economy, bring untold wealth, health and other intangible benefits to its citizens and they then do absolutely nothing whatsoever to encourage those businesses by purchasing goods and services from them.

It has been abundantly clear to every entrepreneur and small business in the UK since time began that working with the government is really, really hard. Procurement processes are slow, opaque, convoluted and usually end up with large organisations with dedicated teams of people focused only on sucking as much money out of the system as possible winning contracts.

Could some of this, after years of consultation exercises that led to nothing very much happening at all, be about to change? Here’s hoping! In December, Number 10 issued a request for feedback from people who had experienced govenrment procurement processes – in fact they asked,

“What nightmares have you had with procurement?

“How should we fix it?

“What are we doing wrong?”

There was quite a bit of feedback…! From the brilliant, to the brilliantly insane.

This week the government launched a number of measures to try to address some of the problems addressed in this feedback (and frankly stuff that they already knew). Key measures announced include:

• The launch of a Contracts Finder website. The new online facility, which is available from today, will become the place to find public sector contracting opportunities over £10,000 and will make the Government’s procurement process totally transparent. From now on, all organisations need to do is to specify which contracts they are interested in and details will be emailed free of charge.
• The appointment of Stephen Allott as a new Crown Commercial Representative (CCR) for SMEs. His task will be to build a more strategic dialogue between HM Government and smaller suppliers – giving those suppliers a strong voice at the top table.
• The launch of SME (Small Medium Enterprise) product surgeries. These events will be led by the new CCR and will give SMEs the opportunity to pitch innovative products and services direct to a panel of senior procurement and operational professionals from central government and the wider public sector.
• A completely new approach to assessing companies and organisations who want to do business with Government, so that SMEs are not disadvantaged including:
  • Seeking to eliminate PQQs (Pre-Qualification Questionnaires) for all central government procurements under £100,000. This represents a radical change in the way pre-qualification is carried out and means that from now on procurers will be free to choose the best route to market for their individual circumstances.
  • Allowing firms to submit their prequalification data once for all procurements in common commodities. This will put an end to companies having to submit the same data time and time again, saving time and money for the suppliers and for government.
• Publication of the findings of the Cabinet Office’s LEAN Review into procurement processes. This will show the Government is doing all it can to reduce waste, tackle bureaucracy and lower the cost of doing business with government.

Some of these points are pretty basic, but some make me think there could be some real progress.

• Product surgeries are a great idea – if they can help to educate both government procurement people about the ideas that are coming out of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and also help small companies understand the pros and cons of selling to government, they will be doing an important thing.
• Reducing the amount of ridiculous paperwork involved in making government procurement pitches under £ 100,000 (but why not a much higher number?) My memory in another life of making bids for research projects of even a couple of hundred thousand pounds was that it usually took about three times as much time to get all the paperwork in place than it did to actually write a proposal. As we won more projects, it got much easier as we had meaningless pages of boilerplate text that we could just cut and paste but this really does make it hard for people to get a break in the first place. (One of our particular favourites was the 20 page ‘green credentials’ statement that we had to print four copies of stating we tried to use recycled paper whenever possible…)
• Bringing in someone like Stephen Allott, who has had significant experience in growing entrepreneurial businesses, to specifically champion the cause of SMEs, is a good thing. He has spent a long time working on solutions to the problems here and although he is not an entrepreneur, he is a civil servant, he should be able to engage with government in a way that someone like Lord Sugar just never could.

I should declare an interest on that last point – I like Stephen even though he turned me down for the last job interview I ever had. We have stayed in touch ever since and he will be speaking at our forthcoming debate:

‘Should the UK worry if ARM & Autonomy were the last big UK technology businesses?’

This discussion will be moderated by Rory Cellan-Jones at our CEO Tales discussion, March 16th. Given his new job, he should have some interesting things to say.

If you are setting up a business, or know someone who is – and want a bit of SERIOUS help in getting going, you should consider applying to the Springboard programme – deadline 20th February. Springboard is a 13 week intensive programme of mentoring, office space, seed capital and a ‘smart community’ for startups.

Springboard sprang from the collison between a programme Red Gate Software ran in 2009 to develop smart software businesses and The Difference Engine run by Jon Bradford. The two ideas have been combined, along with the support of angel investors and NESTA to produce what looks like a killer proposition.

Springboard has also learnt a lot from some of the leading accelerator programs in the US, (particularly Y Combinator and TechStars in the US) and adapting them to work in a European context.

Jon Bradford, the brains and brawn behind the programme says,

“What we’ve learned is that at the heart of Springboard should be the exchange of experience, advice, know-how and counselling provided by over 100 great mentors including experienced entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.

A conversation with Eddie Powell (Abcam CFO – 2000 – 2007)

Eddie was the CFO of Abcam for nearly 8 years, from its initial revenue up to its AIM listing and beyond. Prior to this, from 1990-2000, he was CFO for Colt, a £90m turnover, privately owned, international light engineering group. Before this he was with Marconi Instruments, initially as financial controller, later Finance Director. Part of GEC, this was a £100m sales high tech group with subsidiaries in six countries.

Eddie will share his insights and experiences in the implementation and expansion of Abcam’s share option scheme, the questions he faced, and the solutions he developed along the way.

1. Why grant share options? Is it always appropriate?
2. How many options to grant in total? How to allocate options between different employees.
3. How do you price the options
   • EMI vs USOS – potential immediate tax implications for employees.
4. What if the company is floated on the stock market/sold/other investment rounds?
5. Explaining to employees – getting the concepts and benefits across.

The BLN Breakfast Brainstorm is a high-level peer-to-peer discussion forum for CFO’s to learn from each other, share best practice and advance the role of the CFO in high growth companies in a relaxed, entertaining and facilitated environment. The event is run under Chatham House Rule.

Attendees: The BLN CFO Breakfast Brainstorms have already included some of the most experienced public and private company CFOs and FDs in the region including CFO/FD’s from Red Gate Software, NXT plc, nCipher, CSR, Alertme, Xaar, Domino, Owlstone, Zeus, Sphere Medical, PriSmaStar, Atlantic Healthcare and 1spatial amongst others.

Supporters: This initiative is supported by BDO and breakfast is provided courtesy of Red Gate Software.

Places are limited and in high demand so a prompt reply is advantageous to secure a place. If you would like to attend, please get in touch.

Please note that by applying we CANNOT guarantee a place, although we do our best to accommodate relevant individuals. Our priority is always to ensure that our guests are relevant to the specific discussion.

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