Dragons’ Den star and Co-CEO of leading cloud services provider Outsourcery, Piers Linney, is joining Minority Supplier Development UK (MSDUK) in a bid to raise the profile of black and ethnic minority entrepreneurs and drive greater business inclusivity.
Founded in 2006 and backed by global corporations, MSDUK is the premier membership organisation for fast growing SMEs with 51% or more black and ethnic minority ownership.
Outsourcery is the latest UK-based tech company to join MSDUK as a corporate partner.
Co-CEO Piers Linney, says: “I’m excited to be working with MSDUK to highlight the contribution black and ethnic minority enterprise makes to the UK economy and to demonstrate how business inclusivity can be used as an asset to strengthen competitive advantage.
“Outsourcery already has a comprehensive employment strategy in place that ensures we reach out to, and encourage, the best people to apply for jobs at the company, regardless of race, colour, religion, nationality or ethnicity.
“Our partnership with MSDUK will help us guarantee that our procurement processes are also open and flexible”.
Working with over 40 global companies that include the likes of IBM, Cummins and Cisco, MSDUK has brokered £40 million of transactions between ethnic minority businesses and corporate purchasing organisations in the last eight years.
Linney continues: “According to a white paper published by The Enterprise Research Centre in April last year, we know that pioneering ethnic minority businesses contribute between £25 billion and £32 billion to the UK economy and help regenerate declining sectors, towns and cities, which is why we look forward to diversifying our resourcing pool by tapping into MSDUK”.
Mayank Shah, CEO of MSDUK, stated: “We are delighted to welcome Piers and Outsourcery to MSDUK.
“As a corporate member, Outsourcery will be able to connect with over 3,000 black and ethnic minority owned enterprises working across a range of industry sectors, from within our extended network.
“Outsourcery will also be invited to participate in all the networking events we facilitate for members, including business opportunity fairs and ‘meet the buyer’ days”.
Linney, who was named in the top 100 most influential Black Britons on the Power List 2014 and who sits on the Cabinet Office SME panel, will join black and ethnic minority business owners and managers from Merck, AIG, Johnson Controls, Gibbs S3, KPMG, Barclays and GlaxoSmithKline, as a speaker at the MSDUK Conference and Awards in London on the 16th of October 2014.
Shah says: “Piers has kindly accepted our invitation to speak at this year’s conference Knowledge Forum, which will be facilitated by BBC Business Editor Kamal Ahmed.
“MSDUK members already admire Piers for his business acumen, but his readiness to embrace the organisation will also certainly be keenly felt”.
To book your place at the MSDUK Conference and Awards, please visit http://msdukconference.msduk.org.uk/?page_id=173 or email diversity@msduk.org.uk. Follow @MSD_UK on Twitter for live #MSDUKConference updates.
