back to approach

The business services delivery cycle

• Needs assessment (situation and problem analysis) on operators' level

• Action planning (three months planning)

• Self help and business services delivery (execution period)

• Monitoring and Evaluation

• Synthesis and information dissemination

• Outsourcing of the services from facilitation agencies to BDS providers

 a)  Needs assessment

• The advisers/facilitators on regional level (ReMSEDA or PO) identify MSEs in the region and choose a commited number.

• Carry out semi-structured discussions about their situation, their main problems and proposals.

• Document this information in a situation analysis matrix:

• Name, address and activity

• Products or services they provide

• Location and equipment

• Supplying, market situation and marketing activities

• Employees (number, position, job description and educational level)

• Costs per month (rent, salaries, electricity, taxes)

• Main problems and proposals identified by the operator himself.

b)  Action planning

• Draft an action plan matrix in discussion with the operator on the basis of the main problems and proposals (see situation analysis matrix).

• Name and activity

• Major problems of the business

• Proposal of actions

• Self-help initiative of the operator

• Complementary support by BDS providers

• Agree on a three-month execution period and time schedule for each action plan.

• Identify the main actors and service providers for each problem and enterprise.

c)  Self-help and business services delivery

• The business people embark on the action agreed upon and contact the facilitator if necessary.

• The adviser/facilitator supports the business people to approach the institutions, organisations and persons concerned and to solve their problems.

• The facilitator intervenes in favour of the business people in the case of blockade.

• If common problems and solutions of several operators are identified, the BDS provider should organize workshop programs and courses. So both, individual advisory and group trainings are possible.

d)  Monitoring and Evaluation

  Activity monitoring

• The facilitators and their organisations (on each level) document all promotion activities realized.

• They classify them according to the fields of intervention (credit and savings, vocational training, marketing)

• They carry out quantitative statistics about the actions realized according to:

• Regions

• Trades

• Gender

• Fields of intervention (vocational training, financing, marketing, etc)

  Impact monitoring

• Have case studies carried out regularly by local consultants on a number of users. Did the documented activities contribute to:

• increase the income

• strengthen the viability of the enterprise

• increase employment.

e)   Synthesis and information dissemination

• Strengthen the BDS network: Document and disseminate the situation analysis and action plans and their quantitative and qualitative results by electronic way (e-mail, Internet, CD-ROM) between the regions.

• Document and distribute the approach of needs assessment and action planning.

• Collect lessons learnt, disseminate information and organise meetings on the BSD cycle approach.

f)   Outsourcing of services from facilitating agencies towards BDS providers

• After a one-time run of the Business Services Delivery Cycle by the ReMSEDA facilitators themselves, they will introduce this approach to the final business service providers.

• The facilitators of MSE project and ReMSEDA finally supervise the regional and local facilitators' activities.

• Every three months they discuss the activity reports of the regional and local facilitators and the new planning documents for the next BDS cycle.

• The project facilitators give support to the regional facilitators.

• They synthesise the experiences made and disseminate the lessons learnt.

see our webpage to Business Development Services: case studies 

back to approach