In January 2012 consultancy.coop were appointed by Disability Wales (DW) to help identify opportunities that would enable DW to become less reliant on grants from the public sector.
Consultancy.coop undertook the following pieces of work to help put together a set of recommendations for future activity:
A team day was held with the DW staff team and then with each staff team member individually the results gave a team profile of skills experience and ideas for business development.
Market research was carried out by a number of personal face to face interviews and telephone interviews with public and private sector organisations that would potentially use DW services. The results showed a quite healthy market for the services that DW had to offer with few competitors in Wales.
Having concluded the above elements of work Consultancy.coop were able to draw up a business plan with costing’s to develop the business and potential income that could be generated. Cash flow forecasts were drawn up to illustrate the potential income to the organisation over a five year period. Further recommendations focussed on a marketing strategy and the recruitment of a business development manager to develop the training and consultancy services side of DW.
The final report and recommendations were presented to the Board of directors of DW in April 2012 and were well received. In October 2012 DW began the recruitment process for a Business Development Manager.