NAA Update: North West companies scoop top national awards; if your company hasn’t won, then enter the NAA awards!
What a North West success newsletter we have this month! We have two winners of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, as well as the winner of the UK-wide Shell Springboard competition. We’re also launching our own 2014 NAA Awards. To celebrate, we have included an In The Driving Seat and an article about each of the two Queen’s Award companies – all four articles make interesting reading and should motivate all of us!
As many of you know it is a period of change for us at NAA; after three years service, Martin Andrews left us on 30 April and Martina Rodrigues has been appointed as the Business Excellence Project Manager. As Martina already provides support on two other projects, there has been a reallocation of workload and we have started by identifying a customer relationship manager for each of you who are currently involved in a project within the Business Excellence project. By the end of May your CRM will have made contact with you and I ask that you use us as your first point of call for anything related to Business Excellence. In the following months we will continue the allocation to all of the companies signed up to Business Excellence.
We have recruited five new companies to become Business Excellence members, bringing us up to 133 in total. We have currently raised 99 project numbers for support from ourselves; the new members are
- Finch Electronics
- Technomot
- Lupton & Place
- S Hindle
- CGH Solutions
From this edition of the newsletter, we are including the Business Excellence information in this article.
We are starting to enter a very busy events period, if you have to pick just one, then please come and join us at Chomondeley Pagaent of Power – this is now open to everyone to come and have a flavour of a Business Excellence Meeting. Not only do you get the benefits of the BE event, you also have the chance to stay after the meeting and sample the delights that the Pageant has to offer. Unfortunately as we have to buy the entry tickets and send them out to you there is a closing date of 16 May for registrations.
Would you like free entry to the show? If so, identify another company that isn’t currently a member of Business Excellence and if they sign-up prior to the event you will get free entry.
Funding opportunities continue to grow and the most recent announcement is £20m for automotive supply chain companies for skills development. It is single company, single project applications and while you obtain 50% funding, your total project costs per project have to be in excess of £200k. Take a look at the article within the news section below or contact me directly for more information.
We are launching the 2014 NAA Annual Awards this month, see article (link to article), we have eight awards and I am very grateful to all our sponsors including new sponsor DHL for their efforts and continued support of ourselves. My recommendation is that you decide which awards you want to enter and download the application form. Each award has a different application form this year, so you need to ensure that you complete and submit the correct form. Our Company of the Year sponsor, Morson Group, has very kindly offered everyone their technical support for application writing, and the company is hosting an application workshop on Wednesday 2 July commencing at 12.45pm at its headquarters (Adamson House, Centenary Way, Salford, Manchester, M50 1RD) (it’s worth attending just for the view of the city from the room!). The closing date for the award applications is 31 July – so get started now!
Register for this event now at http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/naa-2014-awards-workshop-tickets-11595395139?utm_campaign=new_eventv2&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eb_email&utm_term=eventurl_text
Finally, two new members have been elected to the NAA board:
- Scott Tolson, Managing Director, Sigmatex
- Paul Moogan, Client Services Director, Morson Group
I’m pleased that the appointment of Scott and Paul further strengthens the governance of the NAA.
In closing, a quick summary of some ‘to-do’s’ – register for CPOP, book for the NAA Networking Meeting at Getrag, download the Award Application forms, and register for the Award Application workshop!
Have a successful month
Carol
