Department for the Economy - NI Export Promotion Ecosystem - Business User Journey Workshops

Overview

In May 2021, the Department for the Economy (DfE) published its new economic vision, “10X Economy: Northern Ireland’s Decade of Innovation”. The ambition set out in the economic vision is that a decade of innovation will encourage greater collaboration and innovation to deliver a ten times better economy with benefits for our businesses, our people and places across Northern Ireland. The 10X Vision aims to ‘increase the value of goods and services sold outside of Northern Ireland.’  It called for a targeting of resources for maximum impact and highlighted the positive relationship between exporting and innovation.

In February 2024, the Economy Minister set out four key priorities as part of the NI Economic Mission.  One of these priorities related to productivity as a driver of overall living standards.   The Minister identified using dual market access to grow domestic exports and attract highly productive investment.

There are a significant number of public bodies, business representative organisations, and others involved in export promotion in Northern Ireland - providing services and advice to businesses to support their expansion into external markets. Feedback from NI businesses suggests that the support and advice is of a high quality, but it is difficult to navigate, and hard to identify the full range of supports that are available. Improving the effectiveness of and join-up across our export promotion ecosystem is therefore a key priority.

A Northern Ireland Export Forum has been set up, with the goal of bringing together the main participants in the export promotion ecosystem namely: Invest NI, Department for Business and Trade, IntertradeIreland, local Councils (through SOLACE), Enterprise NI, The Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce, Catalyst, Confederation of British Industry, Catalyst, Manufacturing NI, The Institute of Directors NI and The Institute of Export and International Trade, as well as the Northern Ireland Office.  A key objective of this forum is to improve the levels of join-up between participants. 

This engagement forms part of a review of the existing export promotion ecosystem, detailing the range of support provided by organisations within the Northern Ireland Export Forum.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact Martin Cunningham (Innovation and Consultancy Services) 

Email: martin.cunningham@finance-ni.gov.uk

Mobile: 07761172853

Why your views matter

As a previous or potential user of export support, your views and experiences are of key importance to us. We need these to identify and map the export support available and your experience of it. This will help to ensure the support available is as joined up and effective as it can be. It will also ensure that availing of the right support is as straight forward as possible for new and existing Northern Ireland Businesses.

What happens next

Following your participation in the workshops. Your views and opinions will be anonymised, analysed and utilised to form export support User Personas, User Journey Maps, an overall Map of the Export Support Ecosystem and help support recommendations for improvements. 

In the meantime if you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact Martin Cunningham (Innovation and Consultancy Services) 

Email: martin.cunningham@finance-ni.gov.uk

Mobile: 07761172853