South West RDA

Environmental impact is a big issue at the moment. The South West RDA is keen to ensure our region makes the most of our ample assets – in terms of both geography and people. It hopes we will become a leader in the emerging environmental sector, developing new products and ways of working before exporting them nationally and internationally, to all our benefit. An exciting strategy… but how to get it off the ground?

The RDA’s solution is to identify and support environmental businesses every step of the way. It has set up a specific support department and information programme to encourage innovation – iNets – and collated information about available support and funding. And it asked Proctors to take the information and repackage it as a user-friendly interactive PDF guide.

The Proctos response
With a huge range different programmes and funding options to explain, we stepped back and took a long hard look at the information to hand. We then rationalised information into relevant sections. These focused on business aspirations to help users quickly identify what’s available to them.

We also recommended the addition of an information panel that ‘explains at a glance’ what’s available to whom, and if there are any special considerations to bear in mind.

The results
Light, clean RDA-brand compliant design combined with logical dissemination of information to deliver a clear, rational, user-friendly document. The interactive PDF format is efficient and cost-effective. Users are comfortable because it ‘feels’ like a website, while the RDA minimises print costs and environmental impact.

Ben Powis, Environmental Business Development Manager at the South West RDA says:

“We had a lot of information, some it of quite complex, that we needed to present to the South West clean tech sector. It was essential we communicated this information in a user friendly and coherent fashion that would be appreciated and used by the business community.

Proctor & Stevenson proved to be excellent partners for this piece of work, bringing their expertise to the full process, from sorting the data into an easily interpreted and navigable arrangement to the design and excellent interactive format.

Initial feedback from businesses has been very positive and I look forward to working with Proctor & Stevenson in the future as we revisit and update the tool.”