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As part of Intuit’s commitment to supporting small businesses and helping them be successful, the Intuit UK office today was honoured to host a question and answer session for SMEs with the Prime Minister, David Cameron.
The event was held at Intuit’s office in Maidenhead and provided a unique opportunity for small business owners, entrepreneurs and accountants to engage in dialogue about the Government’s drive to support entrepreneurship and create the best possible climate in which to start up and grow a business in the UK.
The event was part of Cameron’s PM Direct outreach program and was organised in association with StartUp Britain, a national campaign of which Intuit is a founding sponsor. StartUp Britain is designed to celebrate, inspire and accelerate small business enterprise in the UK. It has the active support of Her Majesty’s Government including the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Chancellor.
Chat and coffee
"It was great to meet the staff and see the fantastic work that Intuit is doing to support small businesses,” said Cameron. “I want to thank Intuit very much for hosting me, and thank everyone for coming and asking such good questions and making such good points today."
The Prime Minister was greeted on arrival at Intuit, his first public appearance of 2012, by Bernie McKay, chief public policy officer and vice president global corporate affairs, and Ami Verma, head of UK customer care and sales. He was introduced to the entire Intuit UK team, and joined them for a chat and coffee.
“Intuit was honored to be chosen to host the Prime Minister for his PM Direct roundtable with local small businesses on the issues they face and his thoughts and plans to address them,” said McKay. “In my conversation with the Prime Minister we discussed our mutual commitment to UK small businesses, his personal commitment to make Britain the best place to start a business, and our complementary commitment to support small businesses as they start, grow, and thrive.”
The PM Direct session kicked off with an introduction from Oli Barrett, co-founder of Startup Britain. Barrett acknowledged Intuit as a sponsor of StartUp Britain and the host for the day.
“If you don’t know them (Intuit) already, go and have a look,” he said. "They look after 4.5 million businesses around the world with their accounting software, particularly for small businesses, so we are in the right place – really exciting.”
The Prime Minister answered questions for an hour on topics ranging from the importance of small business to the health of the economy, the European Union, fashion and the importance of finance in education for young people. He also joked about the traffic in Maidenhead and the British weather.
More than 150 entrepreneurs and small business owners, including Intuit QuickBooks customers and QuickBooks ProAdvisor accountants, packed the room along with television cameras, journalists and Intuit employees.
“What a fantastic opportunity to hear the Prime Minister answer questions that are pertinent to small businesses who are starting up or expanding,” said Sarah Gibson, marketing manager. “I think we all left the event feeling inspired and energized. It was also a brilliant experience having the opportunity to speak with the Prime Minister face-to-face about the work that we do here to support small and start-up businesses.”
“Wow, felt amazing that the PM wanted to learn exactly how Intuit adds value for small businesses and how our products and services help customers save time and money,” said Nasif Uddin, senior financial analyst.
Customer feedback
“It was great to hear the Prime Minister answer some tough questions this morning in an open, candid and sincere manner,” said Will Boswell, creative director at Taylor Boswell, a QuickBooks customer. “As a product designer, I was particularly inspired by his plans to provide more incentives for companies to design and manufacture in the UK. For a long time I have been saddened to see British manufacturing companies closing their doors, unable to compete with the emerging markets in the East. I felt reassured that with the Government’s support, we will start to see more of the products we design, made in the UK once more.”
“It was good to see the Prime Minister right on top of the game,” said Chris Scanlon, director at Fintech, a QuickBooks ProAdvisor. “He clearly is trying to do the best for SME’s and was open to new ideas from the audience. I look forward to hearing about the further business initiatives he hinted at. These seem to provide further assistance to the engine room of the economy. It was good to feel that the Prime Minister is trying to do the best he can for our sector.”
“I found the day both interesting and informative,” said Paul Hodgson from BCAMS Ltd, a QuickBooks ProAdvisor. “It was great to see that Intuit was influential in attracting so many business leaders from the region. The feedback I received afterwards was that as attendees, we were all in agreement that the Prime Minister did a masterful job, in helping us feel assured that although times are tough, he understands the needs of Business Leaders in the SME space, and the Government is attempting to help."
“It’s great to see Intuit supporting the valuable work of Startup Britain in helping the next generation of British entrepreneurs,” said Charlie Carne of Charlie Carne & Co, a QuickBooks ProAdvisor.
The Prime Minister also used the event as the platform to announce a series of measures for tackling the compensation culture and trivial claims being made against businesses and freeing SMEs from the stranglehold of health and safety red tape. View the announcement from Number 10:
http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/business-boosting-measures-announced/
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