by David Harbourne, chief executive of North Yorkshire Training and Enterprise Council

When businesses ask me what North Yorkshire TEC can do for them, it can be hard to sum up the many ways we help them.

So I was pleased to come across an example of a business the other day, where we brought together a range of services to support a unique organisation, which has its busiest period on Christmas Eve.

The distribution business was started many years ago by - let's call him Mr S C for now. He is fortunate to have remarkably little competition but the downside is that he has fallen behind the times in a number of important respects. One of our Business Service representatives visited him and identified a number of ways the business could move forward.

First, although the distribution methods employed by the business are impressive, order processing falls well short of modern expectations. We were able to involve Mr S C in an e-commerce initiative which will enable customers to place orders on-line rather than by putting notes up chimneys.

Secondly, we referred Mr S C to Business Link's Export Adviser. As an established exporter, we thought the business might consider opening up new territories overseas - probably directly rather than through overseas agents.

Thirdly, there was no business plan in place, and only limited thought was being given to developing staff skills to meet the ever-changing challenges and opportunities faced by the organisation. We pointed out that Investors in People provides a set of principles and ideas useful to organisations of all sizes. The starting point is to look at where the business is going in the next few years. From here, each line manager (in this case, Mr S C himself) looks at the skills and ambitions of employees and agrees individual training plans linked to the needs of the business.

Leading on from the third point, we were able to get a quick win for Mr S C: we identified several full-time staff (known in the business as "helpers") under the age of 24. They qualified for support under our training programmes, and the result is that the business now boasts several modern apprentices who are combining experience in workshop and animal care skills with knowledge of customer care, team work and problem solving.

Mr S Claus is delighted with the help we have given. He said, "My business is very unusual, and I suppose we tend to think that we have to solve all of our problems on our own. In fact, the help we have had from North Yorkshire TEC - and from Business Link North Yorkshire - has helped us learn from other people's experience and to apply some common-sense methods of looking at problems and finding solutions. This has all come at the right time, too, just as we approach our busiest time of year."

Santa concluded: "I recommend all businesses to make good use of the TEC and Business Link. Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!"

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.