The Governments Help to Grow Digital Scheme

10 months, 1 week ago by Oliver Atkinson

The UK government launched the Help to Grow: Digital scheme on the 20th of January 2022, which is part of the flagship plan to help support small businesses. Originally announced by the chancellor during the budget statement, eligible businesses can now receive discounts of up to £5,000 off CRM software from leading CRM providers. The scheme is designed to help businesses to grow by adopting new technologies, which will result in greater efficiency and performance after the pandemic.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software allows businesses to store customers contact and order information in one place securely. CRM has the potential to simplify business processes and allow businesses to become more profitable and efficient. Research from the UK government suggests that only 40% of small business owners have used applications such as online data storage or cloud services. Meanwhile, studies also show that productivity in businesses that switch to CRM systems have a boost in productivity of 18%. Therefore, it has been made a priority by the government to make CRM systems affordable and accessible to small businesses to help level up the UK economy.

To be eligible for the Help to Grow: Digital scheme, you will need to meet all 4 of the criteria below:

• Based in the UK and registered with Companies House or be a registered society on the Financial Conduct Authorities Mutuals Register.
• Employ between 5 to 249 people.
• Be actively trading for over 12 months and have an incorporation date of at least 365 days prior to application.
• Purchasing the approved software for the first time.

If you do meet the criteria above, you will receive a one-time discount of £5,000 towards an approved CRM software provider. Please note, the Discount only aims to cover 12 months of the subscription. The CRM software providers that are approved under this scheme are the following:

• Capsule CRM
• Deskpro Ltd
• Gold-Vision CRM
• Livepoint Software Solutions Ltd
• Zymplify

This grant is only the beginning of the governments scheme to help provide small businesses to improve profitability. The governments website suggests that there is scope to introduce additional software categories in the coming months such as e-commerce software to help maximise sales.