How Affilius is helping #GrowingLancashire businesses

For over 26 years its software solutions have been helping businesses around the world to grow.

And Accrington-based Affilius Group is now on a mission to help businesses closer to home to reach their potential too.

The Boost & Co member provides mentoring support to Lancashire business owners through its work with Community & Business Partners.

“One of our main areas of specialism is helping business owners align their sales and IT strategies,” explains Affilius Group’s commercial services director Mike Wilson.

“As well as doing this for our clients, we want to help Lancashire businesses of all shapes and sizes through the support we deliver with Boost and its partners.

“IT can be an often-overlooked area of business support. People are familiar with the idea of seeking support on financial issues and HR issues, but not as much for IT. That’s one of the things we’re looking to change through our relationship with Boost.”

Along with Affilius Group’s founder Andrew Dewhurst, Mike has been a business adviser for over 20 years. Working with Community and Business Partners, Andrew and Mike mentor business owners on a one-to-one basis as part of Boost’s Growth Mentoring service.

This unique insight has enabled them to tailor a number of additional business support initiatives specifically for Lancashire’s business community.

Through Boost, Affilius is running Group Mentoring sessions at its HQ in Rising Bridge, Accrington. In partnership with Community & Business Partners it is also running a series of events that will show businesses what they need to do to get the most out of their IT and software.

“It’s about giving specific support that they may not be able to get through their existing business advice network,” adds Mike.

“We have a number of tools that help businesses to identify where their knowledge gaps are, and what they need to do to generate the sales, enabling them to meet their growth targets.”

As well as the mentoring support it offers, Affilius is also an approved deliverer of the Propel2Grow and Growth Vouchers programmes which are available through Boost. These programmes provide funding to develop and implement technology projects to help businesses grow.

Such has been the success of the company’s relationship with Boost, it has written a guide for other Boost & Co partners on how to get the most out of their Boost & Co membership.

Affilius specialises in three main areas – IT consultancy, sales and marketing consultancy and software development.

Aside from its work with the local business support community, it has recently worked on projects for the likes of Virgin Trains and BAE Systems.

As part of its own ambitious growth strategy, it recently launched its Intellectual Property Greenhouse concept, which will see it develop 20 specialist software solutions by 2020, to bring new innovative software packages into the market to fulfil gaps identified both by Affilius, its Business Partners and its clients.