chairman, Chartered Institute of Marketing, Kent branch

As someone who has spent a great deal of time working within a number of small to medium sized businesses, resources are more often than not in short supply and time is at a premium.

Being ‘creatively’ resourceful is a daily challenge and is compounded by one of my biggest bug bears – the thought of having to reinvent the wheel.

Whether you’re MD of a small manufacturer, or marketing manager in a large corporate, there are always design briefs to write, business cases to prepare, event plans to produce, web privacy policies to post, or marketing plans to present. Furthermore, time will always be an issue.

Bearing this and my own frustrations in mind, I feel compelled to introduce you to CIM Marketing Expert cimmarketingexpert.co.uk.

With more than 200 briefs and templates ready to download, including case studies, confidentiality agreements, non-disclosure agreements, public relations briefs, market research templates and many more, this easy-to-use bank of templates is a blessing.

I know what you’re thinking – it’s my first column and I decide to talk about templates! It’s true the subject may not be as glamorous as ‘social media’, but when you consider that good templates set out the parameters for professional and effective communication, all of a sudden they raise their game.

All hail the humble template – the simple tool that allows proposal creation to be shared by all members of the new business team, rather than just the creative copywriters but while preserving quality and consistency.

These simple yet essential support tools ultimately help us achieve better results, faster, thus saving us money.

It’s just a shame I hadn’t thought to search for such a template for writing Kent Business columns!