Philip Hey is a Director at Track Metrics Ltd, a full-service Software Development company specialising in high volume, resilient systems. They also developed and launched a digital solution for end-to-end drop shipping in the print-on-demand market. Philip is a participant on the Help to Grow: Management course.
 
Why did you sign up to the Help to Grow Management course? 
I’m switching my role from being mostly technical hands-on to a management role and felt the course would be a great way to brush up on the management skills I hadn’t really used since my BTEC in Business & Finance more than twenty years ago. 
 
How are you fitting the programme around your work? 
It was great to be able to just switch off for a few hours to focus on something else, but with it just being a few hours the backlog of tasks to complete for the day job didn’t grow too big. 
 
What has been the most useful part of Help to Grow: Management course so far? 
I particularly liked the parts on winning new markets, but all of it was great. While it obviously couldn’t cover everything in detail, with the course notes and a brief overview provided, I would still be able to go out and research the things I’m interested in to get a better understanding. 
 
How has your mentor and peer network supported your learning and overall experience of the course?  
The peer group experience has been amazing, being able to talk through my ideas and problems and find out about similar issues for other SMEs has been one of the best parts of the course and Vincent, the academic expert, was amazing at prompting us to get to the root of the issues we face. 
 
Which module have you found the most interesting or challenging? 
Part 2 of the course where we looked at vision, mission and values as well as building a marketing strategy was probably the most useful.
 
What would you say to other business leaders who are about sign up to the course? 
For a very small investment in both time and money you get an awesome overview of what it takes to develop, grow, and maintain a solid SME.