MORE than 25 businesses in Essex have taken part in the Amazon Innovation Accelerator at the company’s state-of-the-art robotics fulfilment centre in Tilbury.
The Amazon Innovation Accelerator is a unique training initiative that brings small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) into Amazon’s operations to see first-hand how the company approaches innovation. Through a behind-the-scenes view of its operation in Tilbury, the Accelerator gives local businesses the chance to learn from one of the world’s largest and most dynamic companies.
Launched in 2023, the Amazon Innovation Accelerator is a free training programme that combines in-person workshops led by senior Amazon leaders, site tours, demonstrations of the company’s latest technologies and online learning. The programme was created by Amazon to help SME’s boost their productivity though the adoption of proven strategies in areas such as automation, machine learning, and operational efficiency.
Participating businesses from Essex benefitted from learning about Amazon’s innovation culture and working practices that they can apply in their own businesses.
“After the success of last year’s Amazon Innovation Accelerator, we’re excited to be expanding the activity this year to cover a total of twelve locations across the UK,” said Amazon Regional Director Ruzanna Sargsyan. “Our aim with the Accelerator has always been to support UK businesses to grow and create a culture of innovation in their own teams. We’re looking forward to continuing this, driving growth in businesses like The Finishing Line in Basildon and across the country.”
The Finishing Line is one of the businesses that attended the Accelerator in Tilbury. Josh Arrowsmith, commercial director at The Finishing Line, shared his experience and encouraged others to apply for the free programme.
The Finishing Line is a Basildon-based third-party logistics firm. Like Amazon, the business was developed from the managing director’s garage and initially specialised in providing logistics services to supply free gifts for magazines.
The business progressed into other areas of supply chain services as it grew and now employs over 100 local people. Unlike other SME logistics firms, The Finishing Line is also boosting its offerings through its own enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, built by the five full-time software developers on staff.
“Like Amazon, we have a blend of practical workforce team members and tech team members,” said Josh. “We’re based very close to the fulfilment centre in Tilbury, so to be invited in was a great experience for us, particularly because what we do is very similar. We actually knew Amazon well before we took part in the Accelerator because we facilitate Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) and Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP) for small businesses selling their products on Amazon. This was a completely different experience though, and one that proved useful.”
Josh continued: “I picked up many golden nuggets during the Accelerator, both practically and in a business sense. Amazon has thought of everything, and there’s a lot of what they do that we can implement in our own practices, from how they pick and pack orders to their attitude.
“Amazon’s customer obsession ethos stood out to me, and I’ve brought some of that back to The Finishing Line already to refocus our meetings about the next quarter and the next year. We’ve grown by 33% on last year already and want to grow by another 20% in the 25/26 period. I feel that I have new tools now to get us to that point.
“Seeing that Amazon is such a huge organisation but is still very lean and agile has encouraged me to refine and refine and refine our processes. The Accelerator also helped me to think bigger about what The Finishing Line can achieve, particularly around driving efficiencies as we look to hiring more staff.”
“I couldn’t be more complementary of Amazon and the Accelerator,” Josh concluded. “It gave me a lot to think about around our current and future operations.”
The programme is part of Amazon’s ongoing commitment to supporting local economies and driving innovation in the communities where it operates.
SMEs operating across all sectors that are looking to embrace digital transformation, improve operational efficiency, and scale their business using proven innovation strategies, should apply for participation at future events. For more information, please contact [email protected] or visit www.aia.growthstudio.com.
