How councils across the UK use Beauhurst to power inward investment

The health of our regions in the face of coronavirus has never been more critical. In order to protect and stimulate the economy over the coming months, regional authorities up and down the country will be shifting their focus from deploying government support to struggling businesses, to encouraging new business and investment into their area. 

Beauhurst is an essential tool for those who want to carry out an efficient and effective inward investment campaign, with world-class data and state-of-the-art search and visualisation tools. Here’s how you can leverage the platform to engage with businesses and promote your region with comprehensive statistics.

Better understand your region so you can promote your strengths

Our unique data paints a complete and vivid picture of the business ecosystem across the country. Whether you’re preparing a blog for your website, an internal weekly report, or an important presentation to promote your area, our data and visualisation tools drastically simplify what can otherwise be an arduous process. Here’s some of the questions you can answer with just a click of a button.

Which sectors are performing well, and which are just emerging?

Understanding which sectors are performing particularly well is a prerequisite of a successful inward investment campaign. If you have a solid ecosystem of AgriTech businesses, then other AgriTech companies around the country are likely to benefit from expanding into the region.

Our Explore tool allows you to quickly see the top sectors and buzzwords in each region, LEP, local authority or borough. Kensington and Chelsea has a high number of SaaS and AI businesses, this is unsurprising, given just how many tech businesses there are across the whole of London. But interestingly the second most populous sector is a far more traditional one – clothing. 

Which businesses are flourishing?

Developing case studies of businesses that are thriving in your area is a key way you can convince other businesses to join them. 

Beauhurst enables you to see which businesses have received the most funding, or achieved the highest valuation, and see which mechanisms they’ve used to drive this growth. This means you can compile case studies in minutes rather than weeks. 

Which funds are most prominent?

See which investors hold the biggest stake in your region and build a mutually beneficial relationship with them. Use their success stories to appeal to other funds that are yet to invest in the area.

As well as showing quick stats on companies and sectors, our Explore page shows stats relating to fundraisings. See which investors are most active in a particular area by the total amount they’ve invested, the number of fundraisings they’ve made, and the number of companies in the region that they’ve backed.  

How much funding is going into the region?

Track the investment that’s going into local companies and better understand trends over time. Whether the trends are up or down, you can use the data to encourage more investment into the region.

Quickly see the amount and number of fundraisings that have occurred in a particular place since 2011. As you can see above, 2019 was an impressive year of funding for companies in Birmingham, but 2020 has got off to a poor start (no prizes for guessing why!).

Now you’ve confirmed the strengths of your region, you can build a strong outreach campaign to attract more companies and funds to the area. Along with this data, use your connections, support offering and partnership opportunities to build a compelling proposal. 

Identify suitable businesses for your region

Our Advanced Search tool allows you to hone in on the businesses that are suitable for the region, using any combination of criteria. From location and sectors of operation to changes in financials and employee count. Set time-based criteria, such as ‘has raised £X amount in the last 3 months’, to find companies that will be implementing  new capital and expanding their operations.

You can easily find all the high-potential companies in the UK that meet your ideal client profile. For example, find automotive companies outside of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire who have raised over £1m in the last two months.

Or, find growing Tech businesses who’s headcount is increasing by 40% per year and have announced an expansion in the news.

Click through to a company profile to understand the business, see all the latest press mentions, and learn who the key stakeholders are. In just a few minutes you’ll get an excellent grasp of what the business does, how it’s performing and the people who are in charge. Our COVID-19 impact data will also indicate how the company is doing in the face of the pandemic, showing which businesses are experiencing a surge in demand, and may be considering expansion or relocation.

Once you’re ready to make contact, reach out to the relevant decision makers using verified email addresses or phone numbers, or click straight through to their LinkedIn profiles to connect – whatever fits to your outreach process. 

Monitor the companies you’re working with using our Collections feature, so you keep up to date with their latest developments, from a new funding round to a senior hire. Use these events as triggers to get back in touch and establish rapport. This takes the legwork out of client relationship building, making it a quick process that fits right into your existing workflows.

Whether you’re already working on strengthening your inward investment function, or are looking to get going in the future, the Beauhurst platform is essential in driving and measuring results. Don’t believe us? See what our clients have to say.