NBS Support

"I was glad to get out of there with my trousers on" said a consultant colleague of mine about a Client.  He meant of course, that he was glad to get away with his fee before the weaknesses in his advice were exposed.  Fortunately, this attitude to Clients was always rare - and hopefully does not exist at all these days!  The modern competitive business environment means that advisors - of all types - need to be both bold and circumspect in their advice.  Easier to do, the more experience the advisor has.

NBS takes an opposite view to its relationship with Clients.  Clients' Projects and advice are always designed to be sustainable in the medium to longer-term and NBS takes pride in seeing its advice adopted and works hard with Clients to ensure that outcomes are successful.  It is no co-incidence that NBS has worked on repeat projects for one Client now for over 10 years and for others, in excess of five years.

Sometimes, there are areas of data analysis or aspects of on-line marketing that take time to train in-house personnel to operate  - or, it is perhaps more economic or convenient to subcontract some tasks for a time or permanently.  We will ensure that you get the support that you need.

We are practical people that propose workable strategies designed to deliver measurable results.   We understand the needs of small businesses and the importance of ICT being a servant not a master.  We endeavor to make sure that the MD understands the data - or the secretary can operate the software - and we will 'hand-hold' as long as necessary.

Implementation Support is always built-in to NBS projects.  This is usually in the form of on-going support from NBS directly - or support bought-in and managed by NBS on Clients' behalf (see networking).  It can take many forms, for example:

• Training: in-house or off-site training of Clients' personnel in order to enable statistical analyses of markets, Web site analysis and maintenance etc. to be undertaken in-house.

• Statistical reports: annual reviews and updates of UK, European or world production and trade statistics relating to Clients' industry sectors

• Economic reports: quarterly or annual compilation of economic reports

• Negotiation: with statistics providers (e.g. ONS, HMCE) on Clients' behalf to resolve data reporting or collection anomalies.

• Attendance: at meetings on behalf of Clients and reporting back.

• Enquiry fielding:  fielding enquiries addressed to Clients relating to statistics or Web issues.

• Web monitoring: continuous monitoring of Client site activity; provision of reports showing trends, and provision of advice regarding necessary changes and upgrades. 

• Web benchmarking: monitoring activity of competing Web sites and 'benchmarking' the Client site against them;  carrying out any necessary changes to the Client site to ensure that it remains competitive. 

• Web promotion: keeping abreast of changing search engine strategies and maintaining Client Web site registrations; promoting Web sites to specialist search engines and directories, and within Newsgroups and to closed mailing lists.

• Web upgrades and maintenance; adding-in improvements as technologies change (database-driven pages, Web logs etc), maintaining internal and external links.

Last modified: April 29, 2005