Founded by Matt Haley in 2013, video production company MHF Creative was proving to be a successful independent business with plenty of client work and incoming revenue to keep the small team busy. However, when the pandemic hit and the UK went into lockdown, Matt and his Co-Director, Ciara Haley, found themselves facing challenges they hadn’t experienced before. Matt commented:

Pre-Covid19, our business was doing incredibly well and we had a large amount of clients in both the events and travel sector. We were lucky enough that we never had to seek out work, which in hindsight was very naïve and a big learning curve for us.  We realised that our biggest problem was that people outside of these industries did not know we existed and nor could they find us online as our SEO was non-existent and we had placed no importance on our marketing or PR – ironic given that our audience is primarily those working within the marketing industry.

Matt and Ciara sought help from SEMLEP Growth Hub – a free business support hub which helps local businesses in South East Midlands. SEMLEP then signposted them to the ALPHAS programme, organised through the University’s Innovation & Enterprise Services (IES) department.

Funded by the European Regional Development Fund and run as a partnership between the Universities of Bedfordshire, Northampton and the Open University, the ALPHAS project creates knowledge exchange between the region’s higher education institutions and SMEs specifically to solve business problems.

Through ALPHAS, Matt and Ciara completed virtual training workshops in a variety of topics – including digital tools, leadership and strategic planning.  This gave MHF Creative the skills and capability to apply for, and win, a grant to launch a new website platform for potential new clients to explore, expanding their digital footprint and showcasing their talent via show reels and testimonials.

“The ALPHAS project has enabled us to better understand the problems we were facing as a business and helped us focus on the best solution to resolve this,” Matt said. “We have since engaged with a local marketing agency who are specifically working on improving our SEO presence, our digital footprint and our website.  The funding provided by the project has also enabled us to work with a company specialising in lead generation, helping to get us in front of our target customers to increase awareness of our services.”

After completing the free SME support programme, Matt and Ciara decided to put their training into action by producing a promo video, in which they reflected on their experience of the ALPHAS project and the University of Bedfordshire’s efforts in supporting them. They said:

We would recommend working with the University – we have built great relationships with the team who were all friendly, super helpful and really took time to get to know us and our business, meaning we didn’t just feel like a number. The team has been a great source of support to us and has really helped us expand our network and visibility within the local area. Due to the success we are seeing from the ALPHAS project, we are already discussing future Innovation & Enterprise projects that we could benefit from.

Matt, Chiara and the MHF Creative team hope that their endorsement will help inspire other local businesses to reach out and see how the University can help them too. Watch the video on YouTube.

Dr Nick Lancaster, Director of IES at University of Bedfordshire, said: “Making a video as a way of providing feedback to us is such a clever way to showcase the company, clearly MHF Creative has really taken on-board the ALPHAS strategic thinking message. 

“We always relish receiving feedback from businesses and we are thrilled to hear Chiara and Matt have already seen results, but that doesn’t mean the relationship ends now – we can continue to offer help and support for the foreseeable future.”

The University’s Innovation & Enterprise Services (IES) is a great place to easily and quickly find out what can be done to help your organisation. Whether you need strategic input into your business or support with developing products, processes and services, IES has a number of funded projects designed to help solve some of your businesses most pressing problems and challenges. For more information about how Innovation & Enterprise can help your business, please visit:

www.beds.ac.uk/ies/we-mean-business

Is your company looking for growth by developing existing staff? ALPHAS programme offers fully funded Leadership & Management #webinars with #business experts this September.

Check eligibility & register: https://t.co/RydbF08xON#alphas4business #businesssupport #SEMLEP pic.twitter.com/tmgQxhF3mm

— InnovationEnterprise (@UoBIES) September 3, 2020