BURLINGTON'S BUSINESS RETENTION & EXPANSION
(BRE) PROGRAM
Retention and Expansion of companies in
Burlington is a priority
Burlington Economic Development
Corporation (BEDC) has developed, and is successfully
implementing, a comprehensive business retention program for
the Burlington business community. The program is based upon
the customer retention theory:
"It is easier to take care of an
existing customer than to develop a new one and, if you
don't take care of your customers, someone else will"
BEDC's BRE program utilizes the retention
and expansion software called
Synchronist. This was the first application of
Synchronist in Canada, and new ground is being broken in the
application of a comprehensive retention and expansion
initiative. This BRE program moves the City into a more
sophisticated business retention program.
The program follows a rigorous process
for selecting companies, arranging interviews, conducting
interviews and recording and analyzing data. The program has
been designed to answer key questions and enable the BEDC to
interview senior executives to:
-
Gain insight into the dynamics of
Burlington's economy
-
Evaluate the company's relationship
with the community
-
Evaluate growth potential, risk of
relocation or downsizing, satisfaction, and employment
trends
-
Identify how public services can be
improved
-
Understand the attributes of
Burlington as a place to do business
-
Develop value added services for
Burlington companies
Since 2003 BEDC has successfully
interviewed a significant number of local
companies. Burlington's BRE program has proven itself to be
a powerful planning tool for service delivery in the
municipality. We are able to quantify CEO satisfaction
levels with services provided at the local and regional
levels and we are able to feed this back to operating
departments for improvements. The program has also directly
led to company specific actions that involved providing key
contacts to other government agencies and educational
resources. These linkages help companies address issues such
as: export development, financial assistance, employee
training, research & development initiatives and expansion/
relocation assistance.
Working with local partners, the local
BRE program has generated a great deal of success!
To learn more about this program, or take
part in it, please contact
Gillian Sheldon, at BEDC on
905.332.9415.
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