Plato Midwest now welcoming new members

Are you an owner manager looking to develop your business skills as part of a unique, collaborative network?

If so, Plato Midwest the Region’s leading business support forum for SMEs may be for you.

Plato aims to support and develop Owner Managers by providing a unique, collaborative forum in which the members develop their businesses through peer to peer learning, training and facilitation in small groups of 10-12 companies.

Each group is mentored and facilitated at monthly meetings by two Group Leaders who are seconded from ‘Parent’ companies, typically multinationals, a feature which is unique to the Plato Network. Confidential advice is also provided by Group Leaders to individual companies outside of the group meetings where difficult business situations may arise.

The Plato network has the full support of the Enterprise Boards in the Region and has gone from strength to strength in recent years. There are four groups in the Midwest, three in Limerick and one in Clare with a further two groups coming on stream. As a Plato member myself, I can say that the programme has been excellent in terms of the mentoring support particularly.

The Plato CORE training programme consists of a number of management training sessions and covers topics such as IT, Sales & Marketing and Planning. In addition, individual group training seminars based on group feedback are provided throughout the programme covering topics such as Branding , Leadership Skills & Customer Service.

Plato in the MidWest is an initiative funded by Limerick City and County & Clare County Enterprise Boards in association with IBEC, FAS and the Limerick Chamber of Commerce.
Membership of the Plato Network is open to companies in all areas of commercial activity. Members typically employ between 2 and 50 people and have been in business for 18 months or more.

The Plato Network has been operating in Ireland since 1993, has over 1500 member companies and is part of a European wide network of over 10,000 SMEs and 500 parent companies. Membership gives companies access to the wider Plato Ireland Network and also the dynamic European Plato Network across 11 countries.

Plato is now recruiting members for its new programme commencing in the Autumn. Please contact Eoin Tynan O’Mahony at 086 303 5664 or email eoin@platomidwest.ie. Further information is available at www.plato.ie .