More than 230,000 small and medium sized business have been helped to enhance their digital skills and boost their digital transformation processes over the past two years free of charge.
Aimed at start-ups and small firms, Vodafone’s business.connected programme offers free online training courses, mentoring and workshops to help SMEs maximise business opportunities online, adopt new technology, mitigate cyber-attacks and meet with other like-minded individuals.
Launched during the COVID-19 pandemic., the business.connected initiative has pledged to upskill the online capabilities of 800,000 SMEs by 2025 whilst also being backed by a collective of leading banking and technology companies including JPMorgan Chase, Sage, Builder.ai and delivered by small business support platform Enterprise Nation.
Courses have resonated particularly well with Britain’s SoHo (Small Office, Home Office) businesses – defined as those organisations with 10 workers or fewer – who account for 9 in 10 sign-ups to the programme.
Food & drink and technology businesses (11%) both lead the way in terms of sectors taking advantage of courses, followed by health and wellness businesses (9%), those in the creative & media sector (9%) and business services (9%).
London (37%), South-East England (17%), North-West England (8%), South-West England (6%) and West-Midlands (6%) make up the leading regions where businesses are engaged with business.connected courses.
Andrew Stevens, Head of UK Small and Medium Business, Vodafone said: “We launched the business.connected initiative during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic to better support those small businesses who had very little experience in using digital tools to stay connected to their customers and improve their confidence in adopting new technologies.
“It’s great to see so many businesses have benefitted from this and that we are well on our way to meeting our commitment to help 800,000 SMEs gain digital skills so that they are able to reap the full benefits of the digital economy. We look forward to accomplishing our 800,000 SMEs target alongside our network of fantastic partners including Enterprise Nation, Sage, JPMorgan Chase and Builders.ai.”
Emma Jones, CBE, Founder, Enterprise Nation, said: “Increasing digital capacity is a key driver of productivity and growth. Embedding a culture of digital intelligence and data literacy is one of the ways our own small business community can thrive and compete convincingly with the rest of the world.
