Advantage42

Advantage42

Sector: Disadvantaged communities

Advantage42 is a through-the-line business consultancy with a strong track record of delivering successful solutions for clients.

We help SME’s, new start-up enterprises and individuals to perform better by harnessing their creative and innovative abilities and effectively channeling them to deliver tangible results quickly.

Our unique approach focuses on People Development and Project Management.

People Development - We design and deliver measured performance workshops, training programmes, one-to-one coaching and mentoring services. Our principle objective is to identify the potential of all the individuals within a business, harness their creative and innovative abilities and show them how to channel them properly.

Project Management - We take a hands-on role in delivering specific strategic and business development objectives aimed at enhancing immediate and future performance.

All Advantage42 consultants are entrepreneurs in their own right and have spent between ten and thirty years at senior management and board level of UK-based SMEs and multi-national organisations. We are acutely aware of the economic factors and personal pressures related to running and developing a business.

This uniquely positions Advantage42 to understand and advise our clients with regards to their business ideas. It is our experience that our diversity of industry backgrounds and approaches to business makes Advantage42 workshops and their ensuing projects more potent and more cohesive.

For example, our Entrepreneurial Aftercare is all encompassing resulting in our delegates having access to our consultants along with both our industry and professional networks. These networks may include accountants, lawyers, mentors etc

Social Enterprise
As a social enterprise business our commitment to increasing creativity and innovation goes far beyond our involvement with industry. Through our Entrepreneurial Skills Programme we aim to inspire young people and those from disadvantaged backgrounds to discover their entrepreneurial and creative flair and better prepare them for their chosen vocations.

We are constantly refining our People Development Programmes so that we can continue to invest in the next generation of managers and entrepreneurs.

Description of interests

The principle objective of the Entrepreneurial Skills Programme (ESP) is to create as many 'net' contributors to the UK economy as possible by providing delegates with the tools they need to become self-employed and the aftercare required to give them the best chance of success. To that end we have delivered the ESP to delegates drawn from the following target demographics; ex-offenders, ex-military, long-term unemployed & single mothers.

Having delivered the ESP to cohorts throughout 2010 we also found that by attending our workshops delegates also became more employable. Whilst our ultimate focus is on self-employment, in order to achieve our organisational goals we also have to focus on many of the softer skills that are compatible with employment - all of which are key attributes that employers look for when hiring new staff.

We are used to working with particularly difficult customer target groups and our innovative and entrepreneurial approach has generated significant success in not only increasing enterprise and employment amongst our delegates, but reducing re-offending and their reliance on benefits.

Our interest in Social Impact Bonds is due to our work being restricted by the reduced amount of funding available to continue with the delivery of the ESP. We feel a Social Impact Bond, where we embrace Investor confidence with a Government Client to pay out on the results, has the potential to be a suitable source of funding to take the Entrepreneurial Skills Programme to the next level.

Service provider information

Target population:

Services provided:

Outcomes achieved:

• Hard outcomes in self-employment, full/part-time employment, full/part-time education account for over 80% of all outcomes from our Entrepreneurial Skills Programmes to date (Dec 2010).
• There have been no reported instances of re-offending.
• 100% of delegates who attend on the first day stay on to complete the workshops and 75% complete programme.
• Post the workshops there is a greater engagement between delegates and their Offender Managers (OM’s)
• Significantly higher motivation, self-confidence and self-esteem reported by OM’s post workshop.