Strategic marketing agency Harrison Carloss have beaten competition to win an award from the UK’s innovation agency to help promote growth in the creative industries.

With up to £50,000 available in funding for each project, the award win means that the agency’s new Customer Engagement Platform will be co-funded by Innovate UK, bringing valuable funding to the local area.

More time for creativity

The new software will allow agencies to modernise their external offering to their clients, or amalgamate other solutions from multiple different ‘off-the-shelf’ providers.

The wider aim is to ensure that the software will drive efficiencies within agencies so that they can spend more time on being creative and focusing on the things that really matter whilst ultimately providing end clients with a visually engaging, solutions-focused user experience.

Investment in future tech

The UK is a global leader in the creative industries, adding £116 billion to the UK economy each year. Indicative of this, Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, are looking to invest up to £10 million in projects like this to help scale up innovation within the creative industries.

A modern approach to agency

Adam Mobley, Managing Director of Harrison Carloss, spoke enthusiastically about the win: “We are delighted to receive this award from Innovate UK. It’s a major feather in the agency’s cap and puts both ourselves and the local area on the map to have had government funding invested in a local business to help innovation and growth.

Our Customer Engagement Platform was born after we repeatedly heard the same pain points from clients looking to switch agencies due to a lack of transparency around reporting, data and communication.

On the flip-side agencies are battling with the ever-evolving technological landscape in their efforts to deal with multiple tools, systems and platforms.

We’re looking to solve these issues through one simple, easy to use platform, allowing clients and agencies to focus their time on things that really matter.

We’ve had this idea for some time and already have a platform that we built some years ago for our own clients.

The funding from Innovate UK will allow us to greatly accelerate the work and undertake the design and development of the customer engagement platform as a distinct project that otherwise we would have to fit in around client work.

Although we have a nationwide client base, to have won the funding as a Staffordshire based agency has been a wonderful reward for all our efforts to get this project off the ground. We’re now looking forward to upskilling our own team and creating jobs in the local area.”

Watch this space as we look to launch the name and branding of the platform soon.