Scottish Enterprise Business Advisors - Your experience?

[Boxby]

Peter's thread on SEO brought up some bad tasting memories for me. Basically we went through the Scottish Enterprise process, about 18months ago a SE consultant, and "SEO specialist", directed me to Smart-traffic. (Sharp intake of breath!). Cost of a lot of money, short term gain, long term pain.

Previous experience of SE (about 7 years ago) was that I was steered towards one particular web design company, who were puppies of the local SE office, who produced a wonderfully looking frames based website, that was invisible as far as google was concerned. Said company is now happily producing websites for South Ayrshire council, that still don't appear in any relevant rankings/listings.

However, in last year, I have found an advisor that has managed to get me a bit of funding for projects, and has let me use my own developers. And has therefore been useful. But simply from a cash point of view.

So my question, is my experience of SE average? Does anyone here advise for SE? Has anyone had any truely constructive advice/help from an SE consultant? Has anyone else had similar experiences to me, or am I simply unlucky/too trusting?

 

[Adventurelife]

Many years ago they engaged me as a business mentor through one of there west of Scotland departments.

That let me have a poke about some of the inner workings and met a fair few of their staff.

Lets say I have never used them for any of my own business and I would not advise people to use them since. However, the one exception is if you are looking to raise £. They always have a whole range of funds ongoing that may or may not suit various types of business.

I would suggest that many of their services are being overtaken by the commercial market and you would do better engaging with the commercial market for any of your requirements ( again apart possibly from funding)

Peter