Services

Commerce is being conducted in a more seamless and geographically dispersed fashion than ever before, and its implications on businesses and communities are profound.

Business leaders and economic development agencies understand that their competitors and partners are no longer just in their backyards. They can be continents away. To grow, these organizations must continually gauge industry trends, foreign markets, their competitors’ motivations, and their own competitive advantage.

Each of our service lines listed to the left addresses specific research and marketing needs of our clients. They often overlap and their ultimate aim is the same – to provide you with the research-based counsel you need to succeed.

Business Retention & Expansion

Depending on the characteristics of your community’s economy, 40 to 90 per cent of new jobs are generated by existing businesses. Their aftercare, therefore, represents one the greatest, quickest and most cost-effective ways your community can foster economic growth. Business Retention and Expansion (BRE) initiatives aim to do just that.

BRE is a strategic, value-added dialogue and relationship-building process with targeted client companies in your market area. Unfortunately, many common BRE survey methodologies and related questionnaires run counter to that. They relegate business retention to a bureaucratic data gathering exercise. This “fill in the blank” approach to business retention ultimately fails on all levels.

We work with regional development authorities to establish their very own BRE programs, ones that are big picture, strategic, agile and conversational. We’ll help ensure your BRE program asks the right questions, engages the right people, employs the most cost-effective technology, and liberates your data.

Our BRE products and services include:

• -BRE Survey and Program Development
• -BRE Data Extraction and Interpretation

Competitive Intelligence

In an ever complex world with exponentially growing streams of information, decision-makers need clarity — clarity to decide what needs to be done in the interests of their companies and their communities.

Whether it’s keeping informed of industry best practices or tracking a competitor, our competitive intelligence services provide senior decision-makers with timely, coherent and actionable information.

Our products and services in this area include, but are not limitd to:

• -Competitor Tracking and Profiling
• -Environmental Scans
• -Best Practices Reviews
• -Sector Strategies

FDI – Investment Attraction

Economic development marketing is a tough business. Jurisdictions around the world are fighting hard to attract foreign direct investment – a real challenge given global economic uncertainty and dwindling investment flows across borders.

Marketing your community to outside investors is more than just logos and taglines. It entails getting up close with community stakeholders and analyzing the data so that communities can tell their story to new investors in an authentic, compelling and hard-hitting way.

Our Investment Attraction service line helps governments and regional development authorities attract greater investment to their jurisdictions by taking stock of their communities’ assets and developing the tailored value propositions, incentives and engagement strategies they need.

Our investment attraction products and services include:

• -Investment Attraction Strategies
• -Asset Mapping
• -Community Benchmarking
• -Value Propositions and Business Cases
• -Marketing Collateral
• -Lead Generation
• -Due Diligence on Potential Investors

Institutional Capacity-Building

SmartWhale Consulting’s Institutional Capacity-Building services are aimed at providing organizations in developing countries and transition economies with the skills and mechanisms needed to foster private sector development.

More specifically, we assist international financial institutions (IFIs), governments, industry associations and business development authorities to:

• -Establish economic development authorities and investment promotion agencies;
• -Forge public-private partnerships for economic development;
• -Develop and implement Business Retention and Expansion programs;
• -Establish technology-driven market intelligence programs to increase inward foreign direct investment;
• -Facilitate trade through export mentoring; and,
• -Provide actionable research to grow business at home and abroad.

Our capacity-building services and products include:

• -Small Micro & Medium-Sized Enterprise (SMME) Development
• -Business Support Organisation (BSO) Support
• -Competitive Intelligence
• -Sector Studies & Growth Strategies
• -Business/Marketing Plan Development

International Trade Research

Successful and globally-minded firms are using new and aggressive means to maximize their profits, whether it is through exports, imports used to create exports, inward and outward foreign direct investment (FDI), and offshore outsourcing, or a combination thereof. Integrative trade is indeed complex. Solid international trade research and marketing, therefore, is essential for maximizing its benefits and mitigating its risks.

Through in-depth secondary research, consultations and in-country assessments, we scope foreign markets, develop market entry strategies and evaluate import opportunities on behalf of businesses and their support organizations. We also assess international trade instruments on behalf of public clients.

Our international trade research services and products include:

• -Import/Export Readiness Assessments
• -Export Mentoring
• -Market Readiness Assessments
• -Market Entry Strategies
• -Foreign Competitive Intelligence
• -International Trade Policy Development