“From 1 April 2004 to 31 October 2004 there have been over 300,000 visits to the Access to Best Practice pages on the DTI’s website. During this period 100,000 hard copy publications have been ordered and dispatched. In October alone there were 50,000 downloads of electronic documents from the site.”
Nigel Griffiths, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at DTI (2004)
On 1st April 2004, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) launched Support to Implement Best Business Practice (SIBBP). This initiative was the first serious attempt by Government to mechanise the diagnosis of business issues and exert control over the advisory process.
SIBBP would be a flagship element of the Business Link service for the next 12 months. When finally withdrawn in 2008 / 2009, the Access and Support to Implement Best Practice Products initiative had cost the taxpayer a total of £44 million.
Chapter 8 investigates why the Government felt the need to standardise the advisory process and maps out the consequences of imposing a process driven approach in a creative sector.
Their S-T-R-E-T-C-H agenda is explained and the impact on small business is investigated.
“Even the best objectives and measures can be achieved in bad ways.”
Translating Strategy into Action: The Balanced Scorecard
Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton (1996)
