BySam Jordan, Co-founder and Managing Director of Merve
Merve, a Leeds-based start-up that makes staff training simple for small and medium businesses, has been selected as a Technology Solutions Partner on Innovation in Action, the South Yorkshire programme backed by the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) that helps local manufacturers test new technology on live work.
Within a week of presenting to the programme's 15 manufacturers, four asked to work with us, and two weeks on, three have been confirmed and approved.
At a glance
15 South Yorkshire manufacturers aiming to grow combined turnover from £176m to £294m by 2030.
Delivery is their weakest growth engine, and "there's no time" is the first barrier to training.
Three manufacturers signed with Merve within two weeks of Solutions Day.
A day built around real problems
Innovation in Action's Solutions Day took place on 1 October at the AESSEAL New York Stadium in Rotherham. It was, by some distance, one of the best-organised events I've been to.
The reason was the work done before anyone arrived. Through discovery workshops, the programme team mapped each manufacturer's processes and pinned down the one constraint holding its growth back. They then ran a selective process to find technology partners matched to those constraints. By the time the doors opened, every business knew what it wanted to fix, and every partner knew why they were in the room.
The framing set the tone for the whole day: "Don't look for technology to buy. Look for something worth testing." Businesses were coached to skip "what does your technology do?" and ask "how would you apply it to our problem?" That made every conversation purposeful and efficient: less pitching, more problem-solving. That suited me. I'd much rather talk through a problem and work out a solution than do the usual song and dance, which I think is awkward for everyone involved.
By the end of the day, each business had picked a favourite technology to trial on live work for 90 days, a reserve, and up to five smaller opportunities to explore.
So overall, a really solid day.
What the research showed
The 15 manufacturers in the cohort are seriously ambitious. The programme's research, presented on the day, puts numbers on that ambition: where the cohort is today, where it wants to be by 2030, and how far its ability to deliver has to stretch to get there.
Innovation in Action Solutions Day research, 1 October 2026 · scores from 13 businesses
So what do the scores mean? During discovery, each business rated itself from 1 to 5 against a set of statements grouped into four "growth engines": Win (getting the work), Deliver (making it), Fund (affording it) and Scale (doing it again and again). It's a structured self-assessment rather than an audit, but the pattern was clear. Deliver averaged 3.1, the lowest of the four, and it was the lowest or joint-lowest engine for 9 of the 13 businesses scored. Two of the weakest individual statements were managing change (2.8) and running consistent processes (3.0).
Innovation in Action Solutions Day research, 1 October 2026 · principal constraint per business, 15 businesses
The discovery workshops and research found that what holds these businesses back isn't mainly machines or floor space. When the programme team pinned down each manufacturer's principal constraint, most sat "in the systems around the work": five businesses were held back by people and knowledge (skills, retention, leadership and know-how), and another five by information and handovers. Only one named physical space.
Then Oz Hetherington, the programme's growth consultant, shared what the programme had seen inside these businesses, and the numbers came to life. One business thought it needed more people, but the real problem was that the job needs specific skills, and only a few experts can teach them. In another, one experienced person holds the know-how, so they end up explaining it again, every single time. Several departments keep the same job details in their own spreadsheets. And the first barrier to fixing any of it? "There's no time." The people best placed to train everyone else are exactly the people the factory can't spare from today's work.
The costliest symptom was rework. One business estimates it loses around £300,000 a year to it, and rework can add three to four days to a ten-day build, although the programme was clear the real figure isn't known yet because nobody was recording it. Nine of the 15 businesses found a leak like this they could put a number on. Not all rework is a training problem, but a lot of it comes down to whether everyone does the job the same way, every time. One business has already seen fewer big re-works just by introducing quality sign-off sheets. That's the part we think training can fix: teach the checks and the right technique once, consistently, so more work is right first time.
How rework compounds: the cycle and where it ends
That's why I believe a culture of quality and pride in the work starts with regular, short, easy-to-reach training: not just videos, but guides and articles that lean into everyone's desire to learn more and get better at their craft. It's why at Merve we encourage everyone to contribute to the resources available. Sharing techniques and skills between colleagues builds that culture, and it helps keep people too. When people stop progressing and developing, they start looking for somewhere that will help them grow.
Which brings it back to the programme's own conclusion: capability has to grow with the ambition.
Figures from Innovation in Action's discovery research, presented at Solutions Day on 1 October 2026. Scores are structured self-assessments, not audited performance.
Training without burden
When I gave our pitch, "Training without burden", the problem didn't need explaining. Everyone in the room was already living it.
Training a team in a growing business today is a juggle. There are spreadsheets tracking who has done what, separate systems for each training provider, a different login for every course, and the most important know-how sitting in one person's head or a folder of documents. Staff get confused, managers lose hours, and nobody can say with confidence who is trained on what. When training is that complicated and that slow, it becomes a burden, and in a busy business a burden gets avoided. Training is the first thing pushed to next week when an order is late, and the expert who should be passing on what they know gets pulled back onto today's work. So the key is making training easy: quick to put together, simple to find, and short enough to finish between jobs. Then it fits into the working day instead of fighting it.
That's what "Training without burden" means. In a room full of people who had just been told their first barrier was "there's no time", it landed.
Our role on the programme
Over the next 90 days we'll work hands-on with manufacturers on the programme, starting with one process that matters:
1. Map the process
In a hands-on workshop with the team.
2. Agree the win
Pick one high-value process to modernise first.
3. Build the training
Short and structured, on any device and in the team's own language.
4. Roll it out and measure it
Track who has completed it and show the change has stuck.
It fits the programme's four growth engines in two ways. We sit squarely in Scale, building the capability a business needs to grow, from online training through to leadership dashboards and shared knowledge. And we underpin Deliver: whichever automation, software or IoT solution a manufacturer chooses to trial, its people need to learn it. Merve is the layer that gets them trained and proves the new way of working is being used.
That makes us a complement to the other technology partners, not a competitor. Without trained people, no trial shows a return. As the programme put it on the day: "Technology isn't the outcome. Better business is."
Listening works both ways
The best part of Innovation in Action is that it isn't one-directional. We're not just delivering to these businesses; we're learning from them, and it's making Merve a better product and a better service.
Here's what the conversations are sharpening:
Shop floor first. Training has to fit a shift, not a desk: short, on a phone, in the language the team actually speaks.
Process change, not just compliance. When new equipment or a new method arrives, businesses need to turn the updated process into training fast, so it gets adopted rather than worked around.
Proof, not hope. Owners want to see that a change has stuck. Clear reporting on who has completed what is front and centre.
Support, not another system. Teams with no time don't want one more tool to learn. Our hands-on service means we do the heavy lifting alongside them.
Every trial on the programme will feed straight back into what we build, for these manufacturers and for every small and medium business we work with.
For Merve, this is one more step in a fast start. We launched our go-to-market in late August, were selected for Innovation in Action within weeks, and had three new clients signed within two weeks of presenting. Six content partners are already signed up and being onboarded, and our revenue growth is running at twice our forecast!
Does training feel like a juggle?
If you run a growing business and training feels like a juggle of spreadsheets, systems and logins, we'd love to talk. See how it works and start free at merve.app.
Slide: "There's no time is the first barrier", from the Innovation in Action Solutions Day presentation, 1 October 2026 (growth consultant feedback fromOz Hetherington, 1101). Reproduced with thanks toInnovation in Action,Business SheffieldandSYMCA.
