The Growth Maturity Index: a game changer for effective business support

Creating sustainable prosperity requires significant, long-lasting changes that foster growth, innovation, and resilience. Local councils play an essential role in driving these changes by addressing business needs as effectively as possible and measuring that change.

This article highlights the importance of well-targeted, data-driven business support and shows how the Growth Maturity Index is an invaluable tool for both deeper understanding of the needs and challenges at the local level and determining the impact of support interventions designed to address them.

Data-driven impact evaluation enables local councils to make more informed decisions, allocate resources efficiently, procure better support interventions, achieve better outcomes and demonstrate value to stakeholders​.

Business Benefits of the GMI

The Growth Maturity Index (GMI), created by YTKO and GPC Skills Ltd, is a suite of comprehensive diagnostic tools that evaluates businesses across five core areas: Marketing, Finance, Growth Strategy, People, and Digital.

By focusing on these critical business functions that drive sustainability and growth, the GMI allows businesses to benefit from greater insight into their strengths, weaknesses and risks. New GMIs on ESG, Innovation and Investment Readiness are being added.

They can immediately access a highly tailored, pragmatic and in-depth report and detailed action-oriented roadmap for improvement, entirely centred on them and their company. The content of these reports is written in down-to-earth, easy to understand language and is based on what works in the real world to increase sustainability, business performance and growth.

It empowers businesses with meaningful self-help and enables them to move to the next level of maturity and capability.

The GMI’s focus on unlocking and enhancing sustainability and growth potential also encourages businesses to adopt a strategic view of their development rather than reacting to short-term issues.

Commissioner Benefits of the GMI

A key advantage of the GMI is its ability to consolidate data from diagnostics, providing business support/skills commissioners with a comprehensive view of live, local business need and maturity levels. This can be segmented for sectors, postcodes or wards, gender, ethnicity, size of business and more.

This deeper understanding and knowledge of local issues based on a data-driven approach equips councils with the insights they need to make more informed decisions about future commissioning and delivery of support services.

The in-depth assessments enables service delivery providers to immediately focus on what is most important and what will make the biggest impact to that business, increasing resource efficiency.

Effective business interventions also require robust evaluation that goes beyond the usual output metrics. Real impact only comes through an embedded, sustainable change in that business’ level of maturity and capability.

Through repeating the GMI at the end of any support intervention, commissioners can independently assess the evidenced impact, and the distance travelled through that specific delivery. You will know what really works and what doesn’t.

Case Study: GMI in Action – Haringey Business Growth Programme

One of many examples of the GMI’s effectiveness can be found in the Haringey High Growth Business Programme in London.

By integrating the GMI into the diagnostic process, the programme provides a detailed assessment of the maturity of each business across the core functions. This in-depth analysis both aided significantly in the assessment of suitability for the programme, and quick identification of the best members of the expert team to deliver highly targeted support interventions.

Really understanding the potential for high growth is essential to ensure that support is targeted only at those clients who will go on to create high levels of local economic value. YTKO has integrated the key real-world factors that influence this likelihood of success into the GMI.

In addition to the suite of contractual outputs and outcomes, each client retakes the GMI at the end of the service. This results in a new score and spidergram of capability across the core functions, so that both the client and commissioner can easily and transparently see the real impact and change in every business.

Click here for more information on the Haringey High Growth Programme.

Liz Ratcliffe is Marketing Director at YTKO. YTKO Chief Executive Bev Hurley CBE is speaking on ‘High Growth Businesses’ at the IED Annual Conference 2024 on 6^th November. Growth Maturity Index is sponsoring the Most Innovative Project of the Year category at the IED Annual Awards 2024, which follow the conference. Book your place for the conference and awards dinner here.