How Lancashire County Council Finds & Supports Scaleups With Beauhurst

With Beauhurst, we have access to real-time information, with a level of detail that we wouldn't get anywhere else. And we can use this information to reach out to new businesses.

Amin Vepari, Business Finance & Scaleup Lead
  • Industry

Local Government

  • Location

Fishergate, Preston, Lancashire PR1 8RL

  • Employees

5000+

Lancashire County Council is part of a two-tier system of local government in Lancashire, in the North West of England. It serves those living and working in the county, such as by investing in local industry and promoting innovation in its high-growth ecosystem. 

Amin is a Senior Projects Officer at Lancashire County Council, within the Economic Development function. His role includes overseeing a number of business support programmes, primarily finance and scaleup initiatives, that aim to improve economic prosperity within the county. Amin works closely with ambitious businesses in Lancashire, helping them to reach their full growth potential.

We sat down with Amin to find out how he uses Beauhurst to get a comprehensive understanding of Lancashire’s business landscape and better support its scaling companies.

Key uses of Beauhurst

    • Find and approach scaling businesses
    •  
    • Benchmarking deals
    •  
    • Preparing for meetings and presentations
    •  
    • Carrying out trend analysis

What first led you to Beauhurst?

The Council have been using Beauhurst for two years now. We had already heard of Beauhurst and its high-growth tracking triggers through conversations with other growth hubs and councils in our network, but the main reason we were interested was Beauhurst’s scaleup data. We work very closely with the ScaleUp Institute and we wanted Beauhurst to help us identify scaling businesses within Lancashire.

How are you using Beauhurst to support your work?

The Council uses the Beauhurst platform in a number of ways—everything from researching businesses before we speak with them through to trend analysis. 

For me, since I oversee the Council’s business finance programmes, I spend a lot of time looking at equity investment rates within Lancashire and using the platform’s Advanced Search tool to identify businesses that are raising equity. I can see the kind of investment they’ve secured so far, what stage in their development they’re at, and really drill down into  the specifics, like borough, sector, size of business, and so on. 

We also use Beauhurst to prepare for presentations to stakeholders, whether that be internal committees of councillors, local authorities, businesses, suppliers, private and public sector sub-committees or BEIS. Beauhurst gives us more credibility—say we want to discuss new aims and objectives, or certain trends we’re seeing, we can use Beauhurst data to formulate and back up our argument.

One of my colleagues also uses the platform to collect data for weekly reports. By allowing us to draw information seamlessly from a single source, rather than having to trawl through different datasets, Beauhurst saves us a lot of time.

Has Beauhurst changed the way you target businesses?

The Council has an internal function that gathers intelligence on businesses that pay rates. We can also reach out to anyone who inquires about or receives support through the Council’s growth hub programmes and other business initiatives.

But now, with Beauhurst, we have access to real-time information, with a level of detail that we wouldn’t get anywhere else. That’s the great thing about it—whilst we’re working with similar companies as before, we have much more oversight now, from their corporate structure and timeline of activity, to their employee count, revenue and whether they’ve accessed any grants or funding. And we can use this information to then reach out to businesses.

How do you use Beauhurst Collections?

Rather than searching across specific criteria on Beauhurst on a regular basis, I have Collections set up based on my key drivers. This means I can get weekly updates on relevant businesses, as well as any information I need for presentations. If something comes through that piques my interest, such as a company’s credit score changing, I’ll look into it further and use that to form my work for the week. Collections allow us to be more proactive and ahead of the curve. This access to real-time information also saves us from needing to have regular dialogue with businesses to update our own database.

What has your experience with our team been like so far?

Faultless. It’s been a real pleasure working with Beauhurst’s Account Management and Client Services team. They check in on a regular basis, regularly share information reports with us, and are always available to provide users with additional training on the platform where needed.

How would you describe Beauhurst to another council?

I would say that the Beauhurst platform is a dynamic tool that gives you real-time information and a very detailed set of search criteria, helping you to understand and analyse the businesses you’re working with. It will certainly save you time and it’s very, very easy to use.

Want to see how Beauhurst could transform your job?

Book a 25 minute demo today to see all of the key features as well as the depth and breadth of data on the Beauhurst platform.