Investing in SME productivity growth by developing their performance management capability.

This proof of concept project will test an innovative intervention to encourage small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to boost their productivity through the adoption of performance management methods and high performance working practices. Working with key stakeholders in the local eco-system this is collaborative pilot project in the West Yorkshire region between a University, commercial bank, accountancy professionals and management consultants, all of whom have wide but overlapping areas of expertise in relation to productivity measurement and improvement. The intervention will help manufacturing SMEs develop their performance management capability, with the overall aim of developing their long term productivity. The collaboration merges expertise from a range of stakeholders who are a typical part of regional economic systems, so theoretical, practical and commercial perspectives will improve the suitability, feasibility and confidence for the SME participants.

The project is targeted at manufacturing businesses containing a large proportion of domestically owned family businesses and will be free at the point of use, and these will be recruited from the client networks of the collaborators.

Key elements of the programme include helping SMEs assess and benchmark their current total productivity, identify which of their key business process affect overall productivity, and ensuring they can access and analyse data from their current systems to assess performance. The outcomes of the project are that each SME will be assisted to develop their own strategic productivity improvement plan, which will be validated for feasibility.

The project will utilise and evaluate three key tools for helping SMEs to manage their performance and improve productivity. These are: 1) a digital web based [overall] Productivity calculation tool for benchmarking and baseline setting; 2) a mapping framework which allows SME to link key processes and measurements opportunities to their overall productivity calculation; and 3) a criterion based scorecard for evaluating their improvement plans for suitability, feasibility and validity.