Business South has launched a free online business health check for all businesses.
The merger of the Otago Chamber of Commerce and Otago Southland Employers Association to form Business South, now "done and dusted", had been about consolidating the entity’s services into a new service offering, chief executive Mike Collins said.
The operating model was to change the mindset from a "one-size-fits-all" model to more targeted business development and economic growth for the region.
The business health check was an idea which derived from Mr Collins’ previous role at Otago Polytechnic, where students were helped to understand gaps of knowledge in their studies.
The idea was transferred to the business community and was all about identifying areas of focus for a business.
It took business owners through nine areas of their business to gain a quick understanding of what was going well and what was not going so well.
If lower scores were achieved, then further questions appeared "to go a bit deeper", and Business South could then strike up a conversation with the business about how it could help it.
It could then connect the customer with value-added services within the organisation and the BusinessNZ national network, or would connect businesses to accredited service delivery partners.
Business South did not clip the ticket on the service, rather it was about "connecting the dots".
In the past couple of weeks, about 700 surveys had been completed and, out of that, about 120 requested some type of support, Mr Collins said.
Under the new operating model, it had taken the Business South team a good year to get all its systems and for the people to understand their roles around how to help businesses.
It was a different way of operating compared with the previous Chamber of Commerce and Employers Association days, and staff were excited by it, Mr Collins said.
The team’s business navigators were getting a wider breadth of businesses they were talking to and, off the back of that, the organisation had realised the way it was communicating had not been working.
Rather than sending out one message to all businesses, communications were to be sent industry by industry.
As the year neared its end, 2024 was going to be a very interesting year politically and Business South was nimble enough around how to respond to things.
A sector engagement plan had already been written and the pain points identified in each industry, he said.
In the new year, it would making sure it was recalibrating back with businesses around what their needs were and keeping dialogue going with the new government about how to make positive change.
Business South would also be making sure there was access to investment back into the region.
In the meantime, there was The Grand Business South Awards next week were to look forward to and Mr Collins said it was going to be an "amazing" celebration of business success, with a high calibre of applicants.
It was great to see businesses not in the awards final who were buying tickets to support other businesses.
The awards were an opportunity to acknowledge the huge amount of talent in the South "and get that story out nationally".
