UK - Supporting Role, the small business support consultancy for the event and entertainment industry headed by Marco van Beek, has appointed Andy Mace as a web and database programmer and IT support specialist. Coming from Star 106.6 FM, the local radio station for Maidenhead, Windsor and Slough, Mace's presence increases the company's ability to support small businesses in the event and entertainment industry by bringing in experience of a different sector of the industry, they say.

Mace also brings his specific knowledge of radio station-specific IT solutions, including TXTMaster, a SMS to website tool which allows presenters to read text messages from mobile phones from a centralized database which includes an address book lookup for frequent callers, and talkshow surveys.

Supporting Role was started over five years ago by Marco van Beek, who says he was frustrated by the lack of good, industry-aware, consultancy, help and advice in a number of areas, including IT, Health & Safety and CE Marking - providing smaller companies within the industry the "support" services that they are unable to provide internally. These include areas as diverse as Health & Safety, ISO9000, CE marking and compliance, project management and business consultancy.Van Beek comments: "Andy brings wider experience of different sectors of the business, broadening our palette of skills that we can offer clients. Many people in our industry are suspicious of outside consultants because we all feel most of the standard rules don't apply to us. Yet many of us are too busy to be able to allocate the time to deal with these things internally, or find ourselves too close to the problems to be objective."

(Lee Baldock)


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