NAA Update: Time is running out to book your place at the North West’s leading automotive networking event of the year, the NAA Awards Dinner
Have you booked a place for you or your company at the NAA Awards Dinner on 6 November? If not, please do so quickly, as the last remaining spaces are disappearing fast! And if you didn’t attend our recent events at mi Technology or Sigmatex, then make sure you book on our next event, at NGF EUROPE.
I’m sitting writing this on a dark, wet, windy, Monday morning – autumn has definitely arrived with a vengeance today. However the arrival of autumn heralds the beginnings of celebrations and within our community that means awards. This month I had the pleasure of attending the official ceremony by the Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire for the Queens Award for Enterprise in International Trade to TISS Ltd, this was a chance for everyone involved in the company to celebrate their hard work and success that they have achieved over the last few years. If you have grown your international trade activities in the last few years I do recommend that you consider applying for this award.
Awards ceremonies provide an opportunity for you to engage in more PR for your company, and you can consider making them part of your business activity by taking your staff to them as a way of saying thank you for their efforts during the year; obviously the NAA Awards Dinner on 6 November is an ideal solution, but book your tickets soon as they are selling very quickly and we’re likely to sell out in the near future! We have a new venue, a revised format and a new MC! I can guarantee that you will find plenty of opportunities to network with others.
September has been a very busy month, following on from the CENEX LCV show we have had an NAA Networking meeting and also a Business Excellence Networking meeting; take a read of the articles in this newsletter to see what others thought of the events. I have to admit to only arriving part way through the BE event at Sigmatex while they were having lunch; there was a huge buzz from the room with plenty of networking! If you missed the meeting at Sigmatex, make sure you put the next one on 3rd December being hosted by NGF EUROPE in St Helens into your diary.
We now have 146 members of Business Excellence, new members this month being Metflex Precision Moulding in Blackburn. We also have 36 live projects and don’t forget we are still allocating project monies, so please contact us if you are planning any external revenue based expenditure and we can advise you on its eligibility and also help you with all the paperwork etc.
NAA will be exhibiting at the SMMT Open Forum at Cranmore Park in Birmingham on 4 November. These events are held twice a year and really do give you an understanding of the status of the industry across the UK; if you haven’t been to one previously take a look at the article in the newsletter and register your attendance. This will be followed by our attendance at the UK Advanced Engineering Show at NEC on 11 & 12 November. Again we have a stand with member companies participating; please come along and visit us at the show, we are on stand K40.
Again the right show can give you huge benefits as an individual company; it can be an ideal location to arrange those meetings that you never get around to, follow-up with customers, investigate new leads, check out the competition and just get an understanding of what is happening on a wider basis. Make sure as part of your preparations for 2015 you consider which shows you will be attending and or exhibiting, why you plan to be there and then allocate activities for those attending. I used to hold a draw for individuals to attend shows; but the opportunity to attend came with a project that they needed to go and investigate and then present back to the team after the event!
I look forward to seeing you at one of our events between now and the end of the year!
Carol
