Growth & Jobs | JBDC offers services to help businesses grow

The Jamaica Business Development Corporation (JBDC) has been offering technical and other services to clients desirous of starting a business.

“So persons who have an idea to start a business come to us. Persons who are aspiring to grow their business to another level, persons who are aspiring to go into new markets or just to tweak their business model, they come to us, and we will work with them,” Deputy Chief Executive Officer at the JBDC Harold Davis said.

“We help you with your business strategy. We help you to access relevant financial products, and we help you in your financial engineering and financial re-engineering.”

He further noted that the JBDC also assists its clients with product development, process development, and marketing strategy.

“Also underpinning all of that is research. We do assist you in research as well because research provides the fundamentals for your business strategy. You need to come with a solid business concept, and even if it’s not quite solid … we will help you to structure … and give you very poignant ideas and recommendations as to work you perhaps need to do to make it a viable business proposition,” Davis said.

“If you are in business, you [can] come to us with your business … and be very clear about where it is you want to go. Our advisers are equipped and trained to help you and to help you think through that process and structure solutions accordingly to have you move from your point A to your point B,” he added.

Regarding the impact of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) on businesses, Davis noted that this was difficult to plan for.

“COVID is a pandemic that we had never seen before. Yes, you have to build your business model agile enough, understanding the risk profile of an environment, and so on, but a pandemic of the magnitude of a COVID is difficult to plan for or plan a business strategy for,” he said.

He pointed out that as a result of COVID-19, supply chains were shutting down internationally, and markets were significantly disrupted, adding that consumers who purchased products and goods went into crisis mode, therefore, they purchased the essentials.

“Many persons lost their jobs, so the consumers’ buying power was significantly decreased. As a result of this crisis, we did a survey in early April to find out the effects of COVID on our clients, and up to 25 per cent of them had to close their doors because of the impact. Another 12 or 13 per cent had to reduce staff,” Davis said.

He noted that while the impact at the outset from COVID-19 was bad, it was not devastating for all businesses.

“So if you were in the business of providing essential services or essential goods - supermarkets, pharmacies, and things of that nature – you saw an uptick in your business practices. If you were in the business of the tech industry, providing your services online from before and providing tech-driven services, you also saw an uptick,” Davis said.

“The main lesson is the structure of your business and making the structure of your business robust enough. We are talking about making sure you have multiple income-generating products, you have the capacity, and you have moved your business to be able to trade and to do engagement online because that is the way persons have been interacting and have been trading,” he added.

Davis said that while the knee-jerk reaction is for many businesses to go online, it has to “be in line with your business strategy”.

He argued that the business strategy would determine the value proposition that businesses would bring to clients.