AN­DRE WOR­RELL

Broad­en­ing the eco­nom­ic base of any so­ci­ety re­quires that en­tre­pre­neuri­al­ly-mind­ed in­di­vid­u­als with in­no­v­a­tive busi­ness ideas be giv­en the right lev­els of sup­port and in­vest­ment to turn their ideas or "pas­sion projects" in­to vi­able en­ter­pris­es.

To achieve such a task, in 2011 the Min­istry of Labour and Small and Mi­cro En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment de­signed the Na­tion­al In­te­grat­ed Busi­ness In­cu­ba­tion Sys­tem (IBIS). At its core, IBIS is cen­tred around pro­vid­ing a mix of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment, in­fra­struc­tur­al, op­er­a­tional and fi­nan­cial sup­port to as­sist in the growth–and suc­cess–of small busi­ness­es.

In a wide rang­ing in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, IBIS pro­gramme man­ag­er David Roberts dis­cuss­es how the pro­gramme has evolved, what makes it unique, and how it con­tin­ues to fan the en­tre­pre­neur­ial flame in these try­ing eco­nom­ic times.

From his of­fice in El Soc­coro, San Juan, Roberts over­sees and man­ages the op­er­a­tion of the IBIS pro­gramme.

Ques­tioned about the gen­e­sis of IBIS, Roberts said: "The pro­gramme was de­vel­oped by the min­istry but is im­ple­ment­ed, fund­ed and man­aged by the Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NED­CO). The min­istry, hav­ing as­sessed the lo­cal en­tre­pre­neur­ial land­scape, rec­og­nized that there was a need for ad­di­tion­al sup­port in ad­di­tion to what was be­ing pro­vid­ed by NED­CO and IBIS was the ve­hi­cle they de­vel­oped to fill that void."

Asked point­ed­ly about the aim of the pro­gramme, Roberts stat­ed that ul­ti­mate­ly, build­ing suc­cess­ful en­ter­pris­es is what it en­deav­ours to achieve.

He said: "IBIS seeks to pro­vide sup­port for en­tre­pre­neurs to in­crease their like­li­hood of suc­cess. That sup­port is pro­vid­ed across four broad ar­eas name­ly train­ing, men­tor­ship, the pro­vi­sion of of­fice space and fi­nanc­ing."

De­tail­ing the four ar­eas of sup­port fur­ther, Roberts not­ed the in­te­grat­ed man­ner in which IBIS caters to the en­tre­pre­neur's needs.

He said: "The train­ing that is of­fered by IBIS in­volves pre-in­cu­ba­tion train­ing which cov­ers ma­jor ar­eas of a busi­ness such as op­er­a­tions, fi­nan­cial man­age­ment, IT, le­gal re­quire­ments and mar­ket­ing. Al­so un­der train­ing we have con­tin­u­ous train­ing which takes place while clients are in in­cu­ba­tion that caters to the chang­ing na­ture of the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment. Our con­tin­u­ous train­ing is usu­al­ly done in tan­dem with or­ga­ni­za­tions with whom we have re­la­tion­ships such as Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School, COSTAATT or UWI. Train­ing is al­so fa­cil­i­tat­ed through our part­ner­ship with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce"

Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to men­tor­ship, Roberts high­light­ed the need for small busi­ness own­ers to ben­e­fit from the ex­pe­ri­ence of those who have been suc­cess­ful busi­ness op­er­a­tors.

He said: "The men­tor­ship that is pro­vid­ed is one-on-one men­tor­ship with pro­fes­sion­als who have suc­ceed­ed in their own way in run­ning busi­ness­es giv­ing of their time and ex­per­tise to IBIS clients. We have found the one-on-one mod­el of men­tor­ship to work well for clients since they re­ceive the per­son­al, in­di­vid­u­al­ized at­ten­tion that their busi­ness would re­quire. We have in our cadre of men­tors per­sons who have ex­pe­ri­ence across a wide range of sec­tors and per­sons with both re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness ex­pe­ri­ence. We be­lieve that it is im­por­tant for our small busi­ness own­ers to learn and be pro­vid­ed with in­sights about busi­ness from those who have walked the path be­fore them."

On the point of of­fice space, Roberts stat­ed that he is all too aware of the chal­lenges small busi­ness own­ers faced in ac­quir­ing af­ford­able space to ply their trade.

He said: "Be­cause we are aware of the frus­tra­tions that small busi­ness own­ers face in terms of be­ing able to af­ford com­mer­cial of­fice space out of which to work, we pro­vide space at our lo­ca­tions for com­pa­nies in in­cu­ba­tion. So at our sites in Diego Mar­tin, Point Fortin, San­gre Grande and El Soc­coro IBIS clients have ac­cess to sub­si­dized of­fice space from which they can do meet­ings, make pre­sen­ta­tions or even host a mix­er. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, for fe­males busi­ness own­ers in the pro­gramme hav­ing ac­cess to a space away from their homes pro­vides them with a mea­sure of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty."

Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to fi­nanc­ing, Roberts de­fined the pa­ra­me­ters with­in which busi­ness­es were fund­ed.

He said: "The pro­gramme pro­vides fi­nanc­ing up to $100,000. We of­fer a re­pay­ment pe­ri­od of up to five years with a mora­to­ri­um on re­pay­ment up to six months. Our fund­ing al­so comes with an in­ter­est rate of ten per cent."

Roberts was quick to point out, how­ev­er, that en­ter­ing the pro­gramme did not guar­an­tee that busi­ness­es would be fund­ed.

He said: "There are two manda­to­ry ar­eas of the pro­gramme. Those two are men­tor­ship and train­ing. Busi­ness­es in the pro­gramme are re­quired to pre­pare a busi­ness in­vest­ment pro­pos­al (BIP) from which fund­ing for the busi­ness would be con­sid­ered. Once the BIP is de­ter­mined to be fea­si­ble a path­way to fund­ing from NED­CO is cre­at­ed."

Since its in­cep­tion in 2011, over 200 busi­ness­es have been ac­cept­ed in­to the IBIS pro­gramme. Probed about the de­tails be­hind the num­bers, Roberts of­fered the fol­low­ing break­down.

He said: "To date, 273 busi­ness­es have been ac­cept­ed in­to the pro­gramme. Of those ac­cept­ed, we now cur­rent­ly have 123 in in­cu­ba­tion with 81 gen­er­at­ing sales."

Asked about the length of the in­cu­ba­tion phase, Roberts point­ed out that the pe­ri­od of time varies from busi­ness to busi­ness. He said: "The pro­gramme has stip­u­lat­ed a max­i­mum in­cu­ba­tion pe­ri­od of three years how­ev­er busi­ness­es with­in dif­fer­ent sec­tors, with dif­fer­ent mod­els will take dif­fer­ent pe­ri­ods of time in in­cu­ba­tion. So even though the stip­u­lat­ed pe­ri­od is three years, we de­cid­ed to set up cer­tain key per­for­mance in­di­ca­tors (KPI's) to mon­i­tor and track the progress of busi­ness­es in the pro­gramme. Once busi­ness­es have achieved those tar­gets, whether it be in six months or all the way to the full three years, they would be ush­ered out of the pro­gramme ac­cord­ing­ly."

Slow­down im­pact

Ques­tioned as to whether the re­ces­sion­ary en­vi­ron­ment has had any im­pact on busi­ness­es want­i­ng to be a part of the pro­gramme, Roberts not­ed that there had been a marked in­crease in in­ter­est for the pro­gramme.

He said: "There has def­i­nite­ly been an in­crease in busi­ness­es want­i­ng to be a part of the pro­gramme. In some cas­es, the re­al­i­ty of per­sons los­ing their jobs is forc­ing them to turn hob­bies in­to busi­ness­es while in oth­ers, wit­ness­ing fam­i­ly and friend los­ing their jobs in mo­ti­vat­ing in­di­vid­u­als to take stock and cre­ate al­ter­na­tive av­enues to earn in­come via busi­ness­es to safe­guard their stan­dard of liv­ing."

Asked about the types of busi­ness­es that the IBIS pro­gramme typ­i­cal­ly caters to, Roberts said the mix was eclec­tic.

He said: "Com­ing out of IBIS we have per­sons in­volved in a wide ar­ray of busi­ness­es. We have sup­port­ed busi­ness­es in food pro­cess­ing, mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tions, to busi­ness­es op­er­at­ing in the fash­ion in­dus­try. We've even had busi­ness­es in the 3-D Print­ing sec­tor as part of the pro­gramme. So it is re­al­ly a di­verse range of busi­ness­es."

When asked if any of the busi­ness­es of­fered scal­able, ex­port-ori­ent­ed en­ter­pris­es ca­pa­ble of earn­ing for­eign ex­change, Roberts said yes, but with a few steps that had to be passed through along the way.

He said: "Many of the busi­ness­es have for­eign ex­change earn­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties how­ev­er be­cause we are tak­ing busi­ness­es from the mi­cro-en­ter­prise lev­el, we try to get them to first get their busi­ness ce­ment­ed in their com­mu­ni­ty, then look­ing for a na­tion­al pres­ence and then in­to ex­port mar­kets.

"De­vel­op­ing along this train, even though some busi­ness­es are sol­id enough that they can skip steps, al­lows the busi­ness­es to cor­rect any mea­sures that need aug­ment­ing along the way and bet­ter pre­pare them for what the de­mands of the for­eign mar­ket will be."

Roberts was keen to note that as man­ag­er of the IBIS pro­gramme he was de­ter­mined to keep push­ing it for­ward and broad­en­ing its reach.

He said: "Over the medi­um term, we hope to deep­en part­ner­ships to en­sure that there is greater co­he­sion with oth­er state agen­cies and greater co­or­di­na­tion across the en­tre­pre­neur­ial de­vel­op­ment land­scape. Over the long term we hope to de­vel­op the skillset to han­dle more so­phis­ti­cat­ed en­tre­pre­neurs so that as their busi­ness evolve and be­come more com­plex we can move in lock­step with their needs and of­fer the sup­port that they would re­quire."