Richard and some of his troops are already doing this.. But let’s get to the starting point.
TechNorth is about supporting digital businesses of which tech businesses are a part of. My interest is only on the latter.
If you are a tech startup, you hit the pinnacle when you get chosen as a Northern Star (within the TechNorth ecosystem). These companies get the maximum support, and rightly so.
What about those left behind? Could there be another two levels of companies, which could get defined support? Yes, we get invited to various events and programmes, but it’s difficult to sum up the benefit.
Lets explore this from another point view, that of supplier and customer. TechNorth is here to support us, so we must be their customer. But we do not pay them directly for the services they render. Ok, we do indirectly, if you consider taxes we pay. Whilst they get their budget from the UK Government through TechCityUK and responsible for delivery of agreed services, it’s difficult to treat UK Government as the real customer. Without us, there is no need for TechNorth. So let’s agree we are the customer.
So if we are the customer, then the customer relationship needs to be managed, just like in any business. You would need Account Managers to achieve this in a typical organisation. You would need to allocate time (few hours a month) to look after your customer, aka us. If so, there would be a service contract between TechNorth and the customer, so the customer knows what they can expect from TechNorth.
Now at this point, the whole game changes and gets exciting. I’ll let your imagination run wild now.