Something a little bit different from us this month. We know that as a business, you are focused on increasing productivity and making sure that you are au fait with the latest digital technology. But did you know that there are Grants for South Yorkshire SMEs available to help you achieve your goals under the Business Productivity and Digitisation Grant Scheme?
Grants for South Yorkshire SMEs
Where does the money come from?
The UK Government is investing £2.6 billion as part of the ‘Levelling Up’ agenda.
The UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF), replaces EU structured funding and was planned following the ‘leave’ result of the EU referendum in 2016.
The fund has been allocated for local investment opportunities between April 2022 and March 2025 under three main areas:
- Community and place
- People and skills
- Supporting local business
Every area of the UK has received an allocation to invest in local priorities.
The money available to local SMEs through the Business Productivity and Digitisation Grant Scheme is aimed at stimulating productivity and innovation to create globally competitive cities throughout the UK by 2030.
The objectives of the scheme are:
- To create jobs and improve community solidarity through investments into existing industries from help for start-ups to improvements in local retail, hospitality and leisure sectors
- Promoting networking and collaboration by bringing together businesses and partners to share knowledge, expertise and resources to stimulate growth and innovation
- Increasing private sector investment through targeted support in small and medium-sized businesses for innovation, increased productivity, energy efficiency and low carbon technologies and techniques, and to increase exports
Business Productivity and Digitisation Grant Scheme
How is the money distributed?
The UK Government has recognised that each area of the UK has its own particular challenges.
The money provided by UKSPF has been allocated to local authorities and other local partners to be distributed where it is most needed against measurable goals.
The idea is for local authorities to invest the money where is works best for their communities, without the red tape and restrictions of the previous EU structured funding.
There are two different grants available under the Business Productivity and Digitisation Grant Scheme:
- Business Productivity Grant
- Digital Innovation Grant
The aim of the project is to support businesses by offering grants for South Yorkshire SMEs
- Boost productivity
- Increase digital innovation
- Improve how businesses both measure and report gains in productivity
Although the type of project for a Business Productivity Grant will differ depending on the business sector, the overall aim is to improve innovation and productivity with a view to creating more jobs and prosperity, thus increasing the sense of pride within communities for their locality.
Likewise, there are any number of diverse applications from collaboration technologies to new equipment and digital integration projects to manufacturing robots that can be considered for the Digital Innovation Grant scheme.
Grants for South Yorkshire SMEs are available if your postcode is in one of the following local authority areas:
For the purpose of this article, we are using Sheffield as an example because that is where Rebus Creative is based, but the links provided above will take you to the Business Productivity and Digitisation Grant Scheme for each of the four local authorities across South Yorkshire.
Grants for South Yorkshire SMEs will cover up to 50% of the cost of a project with the objective of boosting productivity or digitising systems to improve efficiency and competitiveness.
The Digital Innovation Grant offers between £2,500 to £5,000, while the Business Productivity Grant can provide from £2,500 to £12,499 with your business providing the rest of the investment under both schemes.
How Rebus Creative can help South Yorkshire-based manufacturing, engineering, and environmental businesses
At Rebus Creative, we have amassed a wealth of experience during the last 20 years in helping manufacturing, engineering, and environmental companies to reach their business goals.
The Rebus Creative team works with the major stakeholders in our clients’ businesses across South Yorkshire, including the owner or board of directors.
Everything we do is driven by you and our services are tailored around your business needs.
In fact, transparency lies at the heart of what we do, so we will never try to sell you something your business doesn’t need.
Furthermore, we promise all our clients will receive value for money and see a return on their investment into Rebus Creative services.
We can help your South Yorkshire-based manufacturing, engineering, and environmental business as part of a project funded by the Business Productivity and Digitisation Grant Scheme:
- Creating and/or developing your website
- Connecting a CRM system to your website, improving customer engagement by personalising their online experience
- Using an Application Programming interface (API) to allow software programmes to share data and/or functionality to boost productivity
Furthermore, if you would like the help of our team to help your business to deliver a project utilising one of the grants for South Yorkshire SMEs, we can help you to create a strategic marketing plan which will:
- Look at your business goals
- Assess sales targets to meet those goals
- How to market your products and services to your target market to achieve those sales
The strategic marketing plan will be regularly reviewed to make sure it is working and delivering ROI, and that it continues to work with your business plan, whenever changes are made.
We project forward to where your business should be in 1, 3, and 5+ years’ time to establish goals for:
- Brand development
- Marketing activities, including investment into new technologies for automation and reporting
- An implementation plan for APIs to increase efficiency and productivity
We can then set priorities for your business, including:
- Future planned innovations
- Taking new products to market
- Digitisation projects for sales and marketing to enable growth
- Marketing techniques to improve market share and profitability
Projects will be costed, and time scaled, with regular reviews to measure ROI and amend as required.
So, where do you start?
If your business would like to benefit from one of the grants for South Yorkshire SMEs, take our FREE marketing audit which will reveal:
- When your marketing efforts were last reviewed
- Are you getting the desired results from current marketing?
- Changes in the business since the previous review
- How effective your marketing is across all channels and where changes may be required
- Your budget
What we find during the FREE marketing audit will provide the basis of a plan for your new marketing strategy.
If you are the owner of a South Yorkshire SME, click on the link for your local authority to find out the exact details and how to apply.
We hope that this article has provided you with some background information about grants for South Yorkshire SMEs, and the objectives of the scheme. Remember, the Rebus Creative team is just a click away to create a strategic marketing plan to help you to reach your business goals.
