The SFEDI Business Support Standards

The Specialist Standards describe areas of specialist practice. They build on the Core Standards, which are assumed throughout. Each Specialist Standard has one matching SFEDI Specialist Certification.

• S1

  Business Finance and Funding

  This is about helping clients understand their financial position, plan and forecast with confidence, and find and secure the right finance for their stage and circumstances. It includes knowing where general business guidance ends and regulated financial advice begins.

  View S1
• S2

  Project and Programme Delivery

  This is about planning, managing and evaluating advisory projects and programmes so that they deliver for clients on time, within resources and in line with contractual and funding requirements. It includes managing a balanced caseload of clients and keeping their journeys moving.

  View S2
• S3

  AI and Digital Adoption

  This is about helping businesses understand, choose, adopt and get value from digital technology and AI, safely and in proportion to their size and needs. It involves assessing where a business is now, identifying practical opportunities, managing the risks and building the skills needed. Professionals working to this Standard are expected to use these tools confidently in their own practice.

  View S3
• S4

  Enterprise Mentoring

  This is about supporting the development of a business owner through a mentoring relationship. The mentor brings their own experience and insight; the mentee sets the goals and makes the decisions. It involves contracting the relationship clearly, creating a safe space built on mutual trust, listening and questioning in ways that help the mentee reach their own insights, drawing on experience without imposing solutions, recognising when mentoring has become advice, and bringing the relationship to a planned close once it has served its purpose.

  View S4
• S5

  Business Coaching

  This is about helping business owners and managers to clarify their goals, raise their awareness, find their own solutions and act on them, through a structured coaching relationship. The coach's expertise lies in the process rather than in providing answers.

  View S5
• S6

  Enterprise Training and Facilitation

  This is about delivering practical, flexible training and facilitation that suits business owners, in person and online. It sets out the skills and knowledge particularly needed when training aspiring and existing business owners, in addition to general training skills.

  View S6
• S7

  Sustainable Business and Net Zero

  There are environmental laws and regulations that all businesses must comply with, and others that apply to particular sectors. Beyond compliance, businesses face growing requests from customers, supply chains, funders and public buyers to show their environmental performance. Good environmental practice can cut costs, improve reputation and open new markets. This Standard is about helping businesses understand their impact, act on it in proportion to their size and communicate it credibly.

  View S7
• S8

  People, Skills and Employment

  This is about helping businesses see how their people and their skills contribute to performance, and helping them recruit, manage, develop and keep the people they need. It includes identifying skill gaps, matching needs to solutions and knowing when the business needs specialist HR or legal advice.

  View S8
• S9

  Start-up and Self-employment Support

  This is about helping people decide whether starting a business is right for them, test their ideas, plan and launch, and get through the early months of trading. It recognises the emotional investment and personal risk involved, and the different starting points people come from.

  View S9
• S10

  Growth, Productivity and International Trade

  This is about helping established businesses to plan and manage growth, improve productivity, innovate and trade internationally. It includes strengthening leadership and management, finding the support and finance for growth, and managing the risks that growth brings.

  View S10
• S11

  Supporting Businesses in Difficulty

  This is about recognising when a business is in difficulty, raising it with the owner sensitively, and helping them act early and get the right help. It covers immediate steps to protect the business, recovery where it is viable, and decisions about succession, sale or closure. Much of the specialist help needed in this area is regulated, so knowing the limits of your role and referring promptly are central.

  View S11
• S12

  Social Enterprise and Community Business

  This is about supporting enterprises that trade for a social or environmental purpose. It involves helping them balance mission and financial sustainability, choose the right legal and governance structure, find suitable finance and evidence their social impact.

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• S13

  Professional Services for Small Businesses

  This is about delivering a flexible and proactive professional service that suits each small business client, and adds value beyond the technical service itself. It can be used by anyone delivering professional services to small businesses, including consultancy.

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• S14

  Designing and Commissioning Business Support

  This is about conceiving, specifying, procuring, designing, delivering and evaluating policies and programmes that meet their objectives and genuinely help the businesses they are designed for. It includes specifying and assuring the quality of the advisers and providers who deliver them.

  View S14
• S15

  Rural and Land-based Business

  Rural businesses make a major contribution to the economy, but face particular constraints: distance from markets and services, gaps in digital connectivity, limited transport, planning and grid capacity, a shortage of housing for staff, and difficulty accessing finance. Farm and land-based businesses are also adapting to changes in farm support and to new markets for environmental goods and services, and many are family businesses where the household, the land and the business are closely linked. This Standard is about supporting rural and land-based businesses in ways that fit how they work: taking a whole-business and whole-family view, starting from a clear baseline, using peer and practical learning alongside one-to-one support, and helping clients make changes that are affordable and achievable.

  View S15
• S16

  Creative Industries

  Creative businesses depend on intangible assets: intellectual property, talent, reputation and relationships. The creative workforce has around twice the economy-wide share of self-employment, and many creative workers combine several jobs, work project to project and live with irregular income and late payment. Creative businesses are often motivated by creative purpose as much as profit, and combine commercial work, commissions, licensing and public funding. Generic business support does not always fit these realities. This Standard is about helping creative businesses, freelancers and cultural organisations to protect and make the most of their intellectual property, build sustainable business models, plan and fund projects, and connect with the networks and specialist support around them.

  View S16
• S17

  Business Resilience

  Businesses face disruption from many directions: pandemics, extreme weather and flooding, cyber attacks, supply chain failures, energy price shocks, and the loss of a key customer, supplier or person. Small businesses are the least likely to have plans in place, and the pressure falls heavily on owners themselves. Resilience covers the operational, financial, digital and people sides of a business, and the personal resilience of the owner. This Standard is about helping businesses understand the risks that matter most to them, put proportionate plans in place that grow with the business, and learn and adapt after every disruption.

  View S17
• S18

  Developing Enterprising Skills

  This is about helping people develop the attributes, behaviours and skills that make them enterprising: spotting opportunities, generating and testing ideas, thinking creatively, making the most of the resources they already have, and taking measured risks. These skills matter in employment and study as well as in starting a business, so this Standard applies whatever path the individual chooses.

  View S18
• S19

  Business Model and Value Proposition Design

  This is about helping business owners set out how their business creates, delivers and earns from value, and how well what they offer meets their customers' needs. Visual tools such as the Business Model Canvas and the Value Proposition Canvas give businesses of any size a simple, shared way to see the whole business on one page, spot weaknesses, generate new ideas and test them before committing time and money. This Standard is about using such tools well, for generating ideas as well as analysing what already exists, and helping clients become confident using them for themselves.

  View S19
• S20

  Consultative Advisory Practice

  This is about moving beyond providing answers to holding conversations that uncover what a business really needs, challenge constructively and lead to action. A consultative adviser prepares well, diagnoses carefully, questions and listens in depth, tests assumptions, influences without taking over, and agrees clear actions that the client owns. It also involves understanding how each intervention fits the logic and objectives of the programme it is delivered through, so that advice serves both the business and the purpose of the support.

  View S20
• S21

  Action Learning Facilitation

  Action learning brings a small group together regularly to work on real problems. Each member presents an issue they own, and the others help them think it through by asking questions rather than giving advice. It builds the questioning, listening and reflective skills that strengthen advisory and mentoring conversations, and peer networks that last beyond any programme. This Standard is about setting up and facilitating action learning sets, in person and online, developing members so that sets can facilitate themselves, developing other facilitators, and using action learning skills in one-to-one work.

  View S21
• S22

  Business Account Management

  Account management is about building a trusted, long-term relationship with a business and making sure the right support reaches it at the right time. The account manager puts the business's interests first, understands its strategy and ambitions in depth, and acts as its main point of contact, bringing in colleagues, partners and specialists as one team around the company's needs. It involves account planning, using data and intelligence to understand each business, and keeping the relationship valuable to the business over time.

  View S22
• S23

  Digital Marketing and Social Media

  Digital and social channels are where many business owners first look for support, and where many businesses find their customers. This Standard is about using those channels well: building a credible professional presence, planning and creating content that engages the right audiences, working in an agile way that tests, learns and adapts, and using analytics to turn activity into measurable value. It applies to professionals marketing their own practice or their service, and to those helping clients market their businesses.

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• S24

  Inclusive Engagement with Under-represented Businesses

  Business support often reaches some groups of business owners less well than others, even when it is available and free. Depending on the service and the area, these may include ethnic minority entrepreneurs, women, disabled people, older and younger founders, and businesses in deprived or isolated communities. The barriers range from awareness and trust to language, eligibility rules, the way support is designed and people's past experience of other services. This Standard is about understanding who a service reaches and who it misses, building trust with under-represented communities, adapting how support is communicated and delivered, and learning from evidence what works. Its requirements follow a simple cycle: reach, understand, respond and learn.

  View S24

The Business Information Standards describe information, enquiry and front-line roles in business support, such as helplines, enquiry teams and the navigators who are the first point of contact for business support services. People in these roles also work to C7 (Practise ethically and professionally), C8 (Develop own practice and networks) and the professional behaviours, with business knowledge at the level set out in E5. The numbering follows the original Business Information Standards.

• I1

  Respond to enquiries and identify needs

  This is about responding to enquiries from people who are starting or running businesses, whether by phone, email, web chat, social media or in person. It involves asking the right questions to find out what they really need, providing information or directing them to the right support, and building their confidence in the service.

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• I2

  Find and provide business information

  This is about researching and providing business information that is accurate, reliable and relevant to the client. It involves identifying and judging sources, collecting and analysing information, and presenting it clearly. It includes using online research and AI tools, and checking what they produce.

  View I2
• I3

  Administer and promote business information and support services

  This is about the day-to-day administration that enables an effective information and support service, including client records, diaries and bookings, and the events and communications that promote the service. It applies to services delivered in person, online or both.

  View I3
• I4

  Provide and maintain information resources

  This is about keeping the information resources used by the service and its clients accurate, accessible and up to date. Resources may include web pages, guides, frequently asked questions, knowledge bases, templates and video, as well as printed materials.

  View I4

The Introduction to Business Support Standards are for people who are thinking of working in business support, or who are new to it. They help people identify whether they have the abilities, knowledge and experience that provide a basis for developing into a business support role, such as business adviser or mentor. They can be used for self-assessment, introductory and taster programmes, and entry-level learning. The phrase "the people you are working with" can apply to colleagues as well as clients. The numbering follows the original Introduction to Enterprise Support standards.

• E1

  Build relationships with others

  This is about building rapport with people, helping them develop trust and confidence in you, and reviewing how your relationship with them is going. It involves communicating effectively, in person and remotely, so that you can find out what you need to know, listening, reflecting and getting your point across clearly.

  View E1
• E2

  Use your expertise and experience to help others

  This is about helping others to benefit from your expertise and experience. It involves clarifying what people need, explaining issues and ideas clearly, and recognising the limits of your own expertise and knowledge.

  View E2
• E3

  Evaluate and develop your own performance

  This is about reflecting honestly on your own performance and finding ways to improve it. It involves working with others to identify your strengths and weaknesses, finding out what information and support is available, and developing and following a plan that covers your personal and professional aspirations.

  View E3
• E4

  Help others to set and realise objectives

  This is about developing a clear picture of what the person you are working with wants to achieve, and helping them achieve it. It includes setting objectives, identifying risks and how to manage them, working out what resources are needed, and finding others who can help.

  View E4
• E5

  Understand how small businesses work

  If you want to work in business support, you need knowledge or experience of the essential areas of business, including finance, marketing, sales and customer service, and how they link to and support each other. You also need an understanding of the demands, pressures and motivations facing the people who run businesses. This Standard sets that knowledge at an introductory level, as a basis for progressing to the Core Standards (C6 sets the level expected of a business support professional).

  View E5