The Yorkshire & Humber ICT Partnership Group

Part of Yorkshire Forward’s involvement in information and communication technology (ICT) in Yorkshire & Humber is to promote business growth by helping businesses understand and get access to the latest technologies, and support with how to use them to best advantage.

We have set up the Yorkshire & Humber ICT Partnership Group, made up of key public- and private-sector companies in the region.

The partnership has developed a 3-year regional framework, containing eight priorities to increase ICT adoption and implementation.

The group’s objectives:

  1. To champion the use of response-based customer segmentation to define the ICT service offer to companies in Yorkshire & Humber, to support key business processes, improve business performance and move companies through the four identified groups
  2. To increase regional performance as measured by key indicator levels of ICT adoption over the 3-year period
  3. To engage with significantly more SMEs around the ICT agenda, through a more structured and segmented marketing approach which focuses on the business benefits and drivers of ICT adoption—rather than the technology involved
  4. To identify the key business drivers and opportunities for increased ICT adoption among regional SMEs, and to work with partners in the public and private sectors to maximise regional impact, competitiveness and investment through a range of complementary initiatives
  5. To re-focus the role of ICT within current business support delivery processes as a route to improved productivity and investment, and to improve the levels of ICT literacy and understanding while maximising linkages to the Regional Economic Strategy and other economic initiatives
  6. To work with regional partners, providers and SMEs to improve the connectivity between regional business support delivery and the regional ICT skills agenda, with a view to improving business understanding of the benefits of ICT training and adoption
  7. To develop an ICT dimension to Yorkshire & Humber’s enterprise policy, increasing the robustness of business start-ups through effective use of ICT, increasing regional survival rates and contributing to the Regional Economic Strategy target of 33,000 new businesses by 2015
  8. To work with commercial ICT providers to improve the overall quality, performance, business focus and currency of the customer offer within agreed market segmentation, in order to maximise the potential impact on regional business performance and investment.

How do we measure our success?

We undertake an annual ICT benchmarking study to measure how well we’re meeting these objectives, which we carry out by surveying the region’s small and large businesses. The study also categorises the region’s SMEs in each of Yorkshire Forward’s priority sectors on the ‘e-adoption ladder’. You can read the latest benchmarking report here.

Who’s a member of the ICT Partnership Group?

  • Business Link Yorkshire
  • BT
  • Digital 2010
  • easy connects
  • Easy Yorkshire
  • e-Skills UK
  • Federation of Small Businesses
  • Fujitsu
  • IAAITC
  • Local Government Yorkshire & Humber
  • Microsoft
  • netconstruct
  • NYnet
  • Premier IT Consultants
  • Sun Microsystems
  • The University of Huddersfield.