Oxford Innovation Advice is expanding its role as one of the UK’s leading delivery partners for Made Smarter, helping manufacturers turn digital ambition into practical productivity gains, and demonstrating how the same proven model could unlock growth in professional and business services.
The UK’s productivity challenge will not be solved by technology alone. It will be solved by helping ambitious businesses understand what technology can do for them, choose the right tools, build the confidence to invest, and embed change in a way that delivers measurable results.
Digital transformation is no longer a marginal efficiency exercise. Evidence cited by the UK Government’s SME Digital Adoption Taskforce shows that SMEs can see firm-level productivity improvements of 7% to 18% per digital technology adopted, depending on the product.
With more than 5.5 million SMEs making up 99.8% of the UK business landscape, the prize is substantial: the SME Digital Adoption Taskforce estimates that even a 1% productivity uplift across SMEs could add £94 billion annually to GDP.
That is the strength of Made Smarter. Originally developed to help SME manufacturers adopt digital technologies, the programme has become one of the UK’s most important business support models for practical digital transformation.
Made Smarter supports manufacturing SMEs to digitalise processes, improve productivity, reduce overheads and boost quality, capacity and profitability. The programme has also been committed to national expansion across all nine English regions, creating a platform for more consistent, place-based digital adoption support.
Oxford Innovation Advice is now playing an increasingly significant role in that national delivery landscape.
Following a series of competitive contract wins, Oxford Innovation Advice has strengthened its position as a trusted delivery partner across multiple Made Smarter regions. This includes delivery in the East of England on behalf of Norfolk County Council, where the organisation is providing fully funded expert advice, tailored digital roadmaps and access to grants for local manufacturers.
It is also delivering bespoke roadmaps for SME manufacturers within the East Midlands as part of the wider Made Smarter support offer, and working across the South West programme led by the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority in partnership with the NCC and the University of the West of England (UWE).
This expanded footprint builds on Oxford Innovation Advice’s strong track record in manufacturing digital transformation, including delivery across Yorkshire, Cornwall, the East Midlands and the East of England. Through local delivery teams, Oxford Innovation Advice has supported more than 600 manufacturers over the last two years to explore and adopt technologies such as Industrial Internet of Things, data and systems integration, robotics and automation.
“The Made Smarter programme made everything easy – the process was clear, quick and never felt like a burden. The Oxford Innovation team guided us through every step. For businesses considering digital transformation, I’d absolutely recommend a Made Smarter initiative. The advisers are knowledgeable and genuinely want to see your business succeed.” Founder, Ubiquitous Engineering.
Turning policy into productivity
For public sector partners, the value of Oxford Innovation Advice is not simply its ability to deliver activity. It is its ability to translate policy into practical business change.
Made Smarter’s success lies in its structured but flexible model: diagnostic assessment, expert advice, digital road mapping, leadership and skills support, grant-enabled implementation and, in some regions, access to student and graduate talent. This gives businesses a clear path from “we know we need to digitalise” to “we know what to do next, what it will cost, who needs to lead it and what impact it should create.”
Oxford Innovation Advice brings the delivery infrastructure, regional relationships, specialist advisers and data-led tools needed to make that model work at scale. Its approach combines local client management with national delivery discipline, giving commissioners confidence that programmes are compliant, responsive and outcome focused.
ONS analysis shows the gap is already visible in business performance: firms adopting advanced technologies are associated with 19% higher turnover per worker than non-adopters, even after controlling for management practices and firm characteristics.”
Crucially, Oxford Innovation Advice also uses insight from delivery to improve future interventions. Through digital diagnostics, client engagement and programme performance data, the organisation can identify common barriers to adoption, understand sector and regional readiness, and feed evidence back into programme design. This creates a valuable loop between policy, delivery and impact.
Why this model should not stop at manufacturing
Manufacturing has been the right place to prove the Made Smarter model. It has clear operational processes, visible productivity challenges and strong links between technology, efficiency and competitiveness.
But the barriers that Made Smarter helps manufacturers overcome are not exclusive to manufacturing.
Across the wider SME economy, businesses are still struggling to identify the right digital use cases, assess return on investment, build internal capability and manage change. The UK Government’s SME Digital Adoption Taskforce was established to explore how SMEs can be supported to adopt productivity-enhancing digital technologies such as cloud computing, customer relationship management systems and enterprise resource planning software. ONS research also found that the most common barriers to AI adoption were difficulty identifying business use cases, cost, and levels of AI expertise or skills.
This is precisely where a Made Smarter-style model could have a powerful impact beyond manufacturing. ONS data shows that productivity dispersion is increasing in services even as it narrows in manufacturing, strengthening the case for taking proven digital adoption models into high-value service sectors.
The professional and business services sector is a particularly strong candidate. It is one of the UK’s major economic engines, supporting 4.5 million jobs (around 14% of UK employment) and generating £315.3 billion in GVA, equivalent to 12% of total UK GVA. The Government’s Professional and Business Services Sector Plan also places technology and AI at the heart of future competitiveness, with an ambition for the UK to have the world’s most dynamic and productive professional and business services sector by 2035.
Yet many professional services SMEs face the same challenge as manufacturers did before Made Smarter: they know technology matters, but they do not always know where to start.
For a manufacturer, the opportunity might be sensor data, automation, production planning or robotics. For a legal firm, accountancy practice, consultancy, architectural practice, HR business, marketing agency or property services firm, the equivalent could be workflow automation, AI-assisted knowledge management, CRM adoption, client portals, document automation, secure data management, resource planning, digital compliance tools or new AI-enabled advisory services.
The technologies differ, but the adoption challenge is familiar: diagnose the opportunity, prioritise the right investment, support leadership teams, build skills, manage risk and measure productivity gains.
Working with Aim Forward, a Leeds-based consultancy which champions neurodivergence in the workplace with a focus on introducing a new digital screening tool to create signification opportunities in the corporate world, co-founder Matthew Timmis commented: “Being a business owner can be incredibly lonely. You’re expected to be an expert in everything. Oxford Innovation Advice gave us access to people who’d done it before and were willing to walk alongside us, which has seen our revenues soar.”
A practical pilot for professional and business services
A professional and business services digital adoption pilot could build directly on the proven Made Smarter architecture, adapted for service-sector productivity.
It would begin with a sector-specific diagnostic, helping firms understand where time, cost, quality or client experience are being constrained by manual processes, fragmented systems or underused data. Each business would then receive a tailored digital roadmap, identifying priority opportunities, investment requirements, skills needs and expected productivity outcomes.
Specialist, local advisers could support firms to explore practical use cases such as automating repetitive administrative tasks, improving client onboarding, integrating CRM and finance systems, adopting AI safely, strengthening cyber resilience, using data dashboards for management decisions, and developing new technology-enabled services.
Leadership support would be essential. As in manufacturing, the biggest barrier is often not the technology itself, but the confidence, culture and capability to implement it. A successful pilot would help leaders understand return on investment, manage change, support staff adoption and introduce appropriate governance around data, AI and client trust.
The model could also connect professional services SMEs with regional universities, colleges and digital talent pipelines, mirroring Made Smarter’s use of internships and skills support. In doing so, it would not only improve productivity within firms but also strengthen regional innovation ecosystems.
Measures of success should go beyond activity. A serious pilot should track productivity indicators such as time saved, revenue per employee, faster client turnaround, improved utilisation, reduced administrative burden, new service development, client satisfaction, job creation and business growth. It should also generate policy insight into how digital adoption support can be adapted for service-sector SMEs.
Why Oxford Innovation Advice is the natural delivery partner
Few organisations are better placed than Oxford Innovation Advice to trial this next generation of digital adoption support.
It brings the national credibility of Made Smarter delivery, the practical experience of supporting more than 37,000 SMEs across the UK, and the regional insight gained from delivering complex, place-based programmes with combined authorities, local authorities and growth hubs.
It understands how successful programmes are designed, to mobilise quickly, engage SMEs, manage multi-stakeholder partnerships, deploy diagnostics, coordinate specialist advisers and report meaningfully against outcomes. Just as importantly, it understands how to turn data from delivery into insight for policymakers.
That combination matters. A pilot for professional and business services would need more than a training provider or consultancy framework. It would need a partner that can design, deliver, evaluate and improve a programme while maintaining trust with both commissioners and businesses.
Oxford Innovation Advice has already shown it can do that in manufacturing through Made Smarter. It has shown it can do that across the UK across various competencies including Access to Finance, Innovation and Good Growth. The next opportunity is to bring those strengths together and create a new model for digital transformation in high-value service sectors.
From national programme to wider economic impact
Made Smarter has proved that structured, expert-led digital adoption support can help SMEs move from uncertainty to action. The next step is to apply that learning where it can deliver wider economic impact.
Professional and business services are central to the UK economy. They support other sectors, shape business decisions, drive exports, enable investment and create high-value employment. Improving productivity in this sector would not only help individual firms grow; it would strengthen the wider business base they serve.
For regions such as Yorkshire, the opportunity is clear. A targeted digital adoption pilot for professional and business services could help unlock growth in one of the region’s most important sectors, create better jobs, improve SME resilience and generate evidence for future national policy.
Oxford Innovation Advice is ready to help make that happen.
With a proven record of turning policy ambition into practical delivery, and with deep experience across Made Smarter, Innovate UK Business Growth, Access to Finance, and more, Oxford Innovation Advice is the credible partner for public sector organisations seeking to design, trial and scale the next wave of digital transformation programmes.
To discuss how Oxford Innovation Advice can support the development of your regional cluster plan or pilot a digital adoption programme for professional and business services, contact David Ledbury, Stakeholder and Partnership Director.
