Business ambassador: The actions behind the title

Following her appointment by the prime minister as one of six new business ambassadors who will focus on encouraging trade, Enterprise Nation founder Emma Jones sets out how she plans to meet the job description.

Encouraging entrepreneurship and trade is something we've been working on every day for the past decade at Enterprise Nation. It's an honour to be asked by the prime minister to join a group of 43 ambassadors who play a role in promoting the UK economy and enhancing the UK's reputation as the international trade partner of choice.

More specifically, I'll be focusing efforts on three main areas across 2016 to encourage trade overseas and within our own island. Those areas are:

Going Global: We are seeing small businesses export faster than ever. To encourage this yet further and deliver the content and confidence required by small businesses to enter new markets, we're increasing the number of Go Global missions to five in 2016. The plan is to take 200+ small and ambitious businesses to new markets and help thousands more through webinars, UK based events, blog posts and masterclasses.

The digital opportunity: If small businesses in the UK harnessed digital skills, this could contribute £92bn to the economy and the creation of 1.1 million new jobs. Enterprise Nation will work with partners to deliver digital training to small businesses across the UK so the digital opportunity to trade can be fully realised.

Public procurement: Cabinet Office minister, Matthew Hancock has set a target of £1 in every £3 to be spent with small business. We think this is one of the greatest sales opportunities for small business in 2016 and a route to going global as larger contracts are secured and many with an international angle. We plan to make it easier for small businesses to find bid writers and acquire the skills to source and secure government bids.

Across all these opportunities, small businesses need advice from experts and professionals and this is the final area where we will act; to secure funds from the private sector to introduce a programme through which small businesses can access advice on how to grow.

Thank you for your messages on the appointment and rest assured, my complete commitment is to getting the job done!