There was an excellent article in this week’s Sunday Times (13 April 2014 edition page 15) about the huge amount of free advice available for small businesses.

Most interesting was the Business and Research Centre operating out of the British Library in the Euston Road (http://www.bl.uk/bipc/). A wealth of useful information to help new and growing businesses can be accessed from this source, however the main disadvantage is that you actually have to attend the British Library in order to access these services and advice.

The small business network, Enterprise Nation (https://www.enterprisenation.com/) also provides a lot of useful information – much of it free of charge.

If anything, there is probably too much information available for the new business entrepreneur. What is lacking is overall guidance on how to prioritise and use this information to best effect in order to get the business up and running and making profits.

Viewpoint are developing their own range of products to help plug this particular gap and provide much more hands on support to new businesses in Essex and London. Watch this space…..