Ayrshire Chamber of Commerce
Background
Ayrshire Chamber of Commerce has a membership of over 800 businesses and their aim is to encourage members to do business with each other to help stimulate growth in the local economy. Mentoring brings a new dimension to this ethos, as the process of matching experienced mentors provides another level of support to local businesses that are looking to grow.
Aim of the Program
Ayrshire Chamber are very proactive when it comes to supporting their members and has been matching local businesses with experienced mentors for many years. They listened to feedback from their members who identified mentoring as one of the most important areas of support they had benefited from and were keen to grow this area and extend this member benefit. However, to really ramp up the provision of this benefit they needed a platform to help streamline the process and keep the administration to a minimum, whilst enhancing the experience for users.
Our Solution
PLD were chosen by Ayrshire Chamber to provide a business mentoring platform that members could access through their smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer. With a large and diverse pool of mentors across many different sectors it was important that mentees could easily identify a mentor who could work with them to solve common problems, share knowledge, expertise and experience.
The chamber identified that business mentoring can be anything from a couple of conversations to guide a mentee through a specific task or project, to a more in-depth commitment at the discretion of both parties. The PLD platform is specifically designed to be flexible according to users’ needs, providing options for mentees to just ask mentors a specific question, right through to providing a full mentoring journey that provides needs analysis and goal setting and tracking tools, mentor and mentee training guides and a tool to book meetings and store meeting notes.
Results
The platform will shortly celebrate its third anniversary and over the last three years has seen many successful mentoring pairs. The automation of the process has proven to be a real-time saver, as previously all matching had to be done manually. The mentee feedback says it all!
Client Feedback
We chose to invest in this platform as it allows the mentoring process to be automated ensuring the reach of our mentoring programme is maximised for benefit of the Ayrshire business community.
The user experience for both mentee and mentor has been enhanced allowing them to access a variety of resources that add value and support their mentoring journey.
The platform and the support we receive from PLD is invaluable and enhances our membership offering.
Claire Baird
Chief Executive
Mentee Feedback
"Excellent advice helped me see through a difficult business situation."
"My mentor was a great help and gave us some really good ideas which we are now putting into place would recommend."
"My mentor is the absolute perfect mentor for us, with a wealth of experience in our exact market. She's been brilliant at providing us with guidance and ongoing advice as we work towards launching our business."
"I found the process easy to navigate. I would highly recommend the mentor service. This was an amazing resource for me!"
