News
Bullish on BEAR: Economic development program in Billings rounds up businesses, volunteers – Butte likes BEAR; program could expand statewide
Identifying issues and referring local resources to local businesses is what the BEAR http://bigskyeda.org/BusinessDevelopment/businessvisit.htm program is about first and foremost.
"We let them know there is one-stop shopping" for the help that is available, said Linda Beck.
By Dave Burgess
(Thanks to Kerry Schaefer at the Montana Chamber of Commerce http://www.montanachamber.net/ws/home.php for bringing this to our attention.- Russ)
Beck is the director of Business Outreach and Recruitment at Big Sky EDA http://www.bigskyeda.org/ As part of the job, she leads and is the only paid staff person for the Business Expansion And Retention program, or BEAR.
The program supports businesses already here in the Billings area, partly in order to offer them the same kind of help that new business recruits from other areas are offered, and partly because statistics show that most new jobs — 80 percent according to BSEDA — in any community are generated by companies already doing business there.
A secondary objective is to collect information and use the aggregate data to gain insight into the business environment here.
It is a community-wide effort spearheaded by Big Sky EDA and facilitated by Beartooth RC&D, Big Sky EDA, Big Sky EDC, Billings Area Chamber of Commerce, Billings Job Service Workforce Center, Celebrate Billings, Montana Department of Commerce, Montana Manufacturing Extension Center, Montana State University-Billings, Rocky Mountain College and Yellowstone Development and Training Cooperative, Beck said.
In practice, it is a simple process: a business owner calls Beck and asks to participate. She sends out a pair of volunteer interviewers. After talking for an hour or two, the information gathered is entered into a confidential database. If the business owner can use help in growing his or her business, BEAR can refer local resources specific to the challenge.
"The BEAR team has developed a comprehensive resource list of experts in all aspects of business expansion and retention willing to assist businesses participating in the program," said Lyle Gabrian, chairman of the BEAR Resource Team.
The BEAR program started in 2001 without the help of the database program it now uses, but with tremendous volunteer help. From the beginning, Rocky Smith, owner of Cynroc Business Development, has been involved in many ways, one of which is to maintain the ExecutivePulse database system.
**********
Linda Beck
Director of Business Outreach and Recruitment
222 North 32nd St.
Billings, MT 59101
Phone:
406-256-6871
Fax:
406-256-6877
**********
Also involved from BEAR’s beginning is Bernice Hash. She was working at the Billings chamber of commerce when BEAR began and served as the chamber’s facilitator.
"At first it was kind of hard to get people to agree to be interviewed," she said, recalling the program’s start. But the word is starting to get out. Businesses are starting to call BEAR to volunteer their participation, she said.
Hash is now the director of volunteers at PLUK, Parents Let’s Unite for Kids in Billings. And she is still involved with BEAR as an interviewer and on the resource team.
Many of the interviewers are well known local business people. They are told that when they are out on interviews, that they represent the BEAR program, not their own employers.
There are 31 interviewers currently, which is enough for now, Beck said. What BEAR needs is more businesses willing to participate.
The BEAR program will help BSEDA http://www.bigskyeda.org/ get the data it needs for business recruitment and help to more clearly define public policy needs, Beck said. But the aggregate reports that the ExecutivePulse database can generate, and there are hundreds, are not going to mean much without a larger sample size. There are 67 companies in the database now.
A business does not have to be in need of help to participate. In fact, some businesses that have already been through the interview and shared their inside information did so just because they are good citizens, Beck said.
************
Health checkup: Participants in BEAR program access external expertise, add to database
By Dave Burgess
Alpine Veterinary Services was at a crossroads. Owner Mark Robinson was running a busy mixed practice outside Billings, helping horses, cattle, dogs and cats.
"We do a lot of surgery and stand several notable studs also," Robinson said.
But recently his family fell on difficult times and his daughter had an illness and needed his attention.
"I was basically in the position of having to cut back," he said.
The business was taking 80 to 100 of his hours per week, and that was just too much. Something had to give. Robinson had to consider options including shrinking the business or even selling it.
Available help
That was when Rocky Smith, owner of a Billings business called Cynroc, told Robinson there was help available through Big Sky Economic Development Authority’s BEAR program.
"It is really a phenomenal program," Smith said.
BEAR, which stands for Business Expansion And Recruitment, is not the help itself. But it is a new avenue for companies to find out about the resources that are available to help them advance their businesses, Smith said.
BEAR has had some noteworthy successes that have benefited Billings, including the retention and expansion of SYSCO, CTA Architects Engineers, ATM Express and Bio-Life Plasma Services.
Yet, as a volunteer with the program from its earliest days, Smith has found some reticence from local business people about participating in BEAR.
"People don’t believe we are there to help them," he said. Participants are amazed that a public entity like BSEDA would take an interest in their business, and do it without asking for any money, he said.
Local expertise
This past summer, admitting to himself that veterinary people get little business training in school, Robinson decided to give it a try.
Linda Beck, director of Business Outreach and Recruitment at Big Sky EDA and leader of the BEAR program, grabbed Jim Tevlin, an accountant at BSEDA, and spent a couple of hours with Robinson. They went through an interview standardized for the BEAR program. Tevlin also continued to work with Robinson to get to know his business more in depth.
Robinson said he liked the fact that an outsider spent the time to get to know the Alpine Veterinary operation before recommending anything.
Together, they came up with a plan for changes to the business operation that allowed Robinson to not only keep the business, but to grow it.
Some of the suggestions have been implemented and some are still in process. They have helped on quite a few fronts, including Alpine’s incorporation status and accounting, Robinson said. The business is reorganizing at the management level and has assigned all of the office management duties to Office Manager Vicki Hughes.
Tevlin also put Robinson in contact with a good accounting firm.
"In the past, I have only collected about 75 percent what we have actually done in sales," Robinson said.
The help enabled Robinson to add three new non-veterinary employees and one new veterinarian, and the hours of another part-time veterinarian were expanded. The business now employs 14, with a number of them part time.
What was a successful operation before can now be sustained without so much of Robinson’s time, he said.
And he recommends the BEAR program.
"We had always done well business-wise, but we were not streamlined enough," he said. "Now I spend less time managing, more time being a veterinarian."
Copyright © Western Business News, a division of Lee Enterprises.
**********
Butte likes BEAR; program could expand
By Dave Burgess
Economic development specialists in Billings like the Business Expansion And Retention program so much, they would like to see it go statewide. And other communities are showing interest.
First to follow the lead of Big Sky Economic Development Authority in Billings is the Butte Local Development Corp. http://www.buttemontana.org/ a private non-profit corporation. Livingston and Kalispell are just starting to look at it too, said Linda Beck of BSEDA.
"We appreciated BSEDA bringing it to our attention," said Evan Barrett, executive director of BLDC.
The whole premise for taking up the program is that it is easier to retain a local business and help it create more jobs than it is to persuade one outside the area to bring in new jobs.
A mixture of new jobs from existing businesses and from businesses recruited from outside the community is needed, Barrett said, but "working with what you have Ö is more cost-effective than recruitment."
BSEDA provided some instruction on getting the ball rolling at BLDC and the program is administered from there, but the impetus for the program came from a group of prominent Butte businesses aiming to improve the economy under a plan called The Blueprint for Change.
For $7,000, Butte got a license to the ExecutivePulse extranet program, the same used in Billings.
With the ExecutivePulse extranet system there is no software to purchase. It’s a password-protected Internet site, explained Rocky Smith, a proponent and volunteer with BEAR in Billings.
"We looked at software," Smith said. There were five or six other business retention technologies considered, but ExecutivePulse won out for its ease of use. "And it was a lot cheaper, too."
For $3,500 more, BLDC got 2.5 days of instruction from two ExecutivePulse trainers, said Jim Smitham, deputy director for business development at BLDC. Smitham is the point person for the BEAR program in Butte, Silver Bow County and the nearby counties.
And there has been a lot of interest from the surrounding area. Smitham said that on the first day of training, about 60 people from the seven-county area attended. He said that while BLDC focuses on Butte mostly, it is hoped that the BEAR program will involve the whole southwest region around Butte, based on the belief that economic growth anywhere in the region also benefits Butte.
In that same broad view, Smitham and BSEDA hope to see the BEAR program go statewide. If more communities start up BEAR programs, then more could be done with the data collected. Reports could be generated on a statewide, regional or town basis, and it would give everyone concerned a better feel for the business climate in Montana, Smitham said.
And, then "information you take to the Legislature is based on hard data," not subjective opinion, he said.
If the program goes statewide, then "we can disseminate that information in so many different ways," Smith said.
The data is secondary, but critical in proving what’s being said anecdotally about the economy. Statewide participation would provide a better sampling and more accurate numbers, Smith said.
"The entire world is becoming more information driven," he said. "This allows us to compete in that territory."
Nevertheless, the primary goal of the BEAR program is to provide specific help for individual local businesses.
It is done by first collecting data from local business owners. Two interviewers will spend an hour with the owner of a participating business. Answers are entered into the program to form a database.
Specific suggestions for the business owner are based on the dialogue with the interviewers and the assessments of an experienced resource team.
That group of knowledgeable business resources is now being assembled in Butte, Smitham said.
There is no cost to the participating business unless advanced resources are needed.
Business owners are not in the habit of divulging much inside information about their operations, but they need not worry about participating in the BEAR program, Smitham said.
"All the data is confidential," he said. "Confidentiality is strictly adhered to."
They are not going to overhear their private business data talked about at the coffee shop, he said.
MATR Supporters (view all)
Sorry, we couldn't find any posts. Please try a different search.