Portal set to expand
MORE than 200 businesses from Fiji, Samoa, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea have registered on to the Business Link Pacific portal and have gone through their business health check-up process.
Business Link Pacific director Steve Knapp said they were really pleased with the level of interest and the number of businesses that had gone online and tried it as could track from there which businesses go through a service provider and do a health check.
“One of the subsidies that we have done for businesses are to put in a better accounting system so they can better understand financially how business is operating.
“Once they got a good idea of where they are now they can then begin to make decisions about marketing.
“It generally starts with bookkeeping and financial record keeping and then it moves on to strategic planning and business planning.”
Mr Knapp said Business Link Pacific was a five-year New Zealand government program which had completed two and a half years so far.
“We are just in the process at the moment of looking to expand the services to Solomon Islands and Cook Islands.
“The program is focused on supporting SMEs, we define SMEs as small and medium enterprises between five and 50 employees.”
Therefore this included not the very small microbusinesses and the big international firms which don’t need that assistance.
“We are targeting businesses that have the potential to grow, expand and employ more people so they are not necessarily the businesses that you would think that need help necessarily but with some help and support that they are then able to grow more than they would otherwise.
“So the way that we work with small businesses is we have a partnership with Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation and we contract FCEF to deliver business diagnostics and referrals for small businesses,” he said.
He said the program was about taking a small business through a business diagnostic process which looks at all the different parts of business.
“From their accounting and bookkeeping, marketing, people, HR, whether they are looking to export all the different parts of the business,” he said.
“That diagnostic helps the business to identify where they are doing well and maybe areas where they could do better with some support and assistance.”
Mr Knapp said this diagnostic would then produce a report which was presented back to the business and also a set of referral to local service providers.
“And we have been building a network across the Pacific Islands of what we call business advisory service providers and they are all those business all locally based that provides services to other businesses,” he said.
One of the subsidies that we have done for businesses is to put in a better accounting system so they can better understand financially how business is operating – Steve Knapp