Small Business Support (SBS)

Women in Business

Women in business play a key role in advancing sustainable growth. Reflecting this, the Small Business Support (SBS) team* emphasises the importance of addressing gender equality and realising the economic potential of women across the EBRD countries of operations.

The Enterprise Growth Programme (EGP) and Business Advisory Services (BAS), managed by the SBS team, are essential components of the EBRD transition toolkit for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). The two programmes promote good management in the MSME sector and help enterprises to grow their businesses by providing assistance from experienced business advisors and consultants. Women in Business (WiB) programmes specifically targeting women-run and women-owned companies are an important element of the teams’ activities.

* In January 2012, the TAM/BAS team was renamed the Small Business Support (SBS) team, and the TAM programme has been renamed the Enterprise Growth Programme (EGP) to better reflect its objectives and clientele. There was no change in the name of Business Advisory Services (BAS).

SBS and Women in Business (WiB)

SBS seeks to strengthen and capitalise on the untapped potential of women entrepreneurs and managers within the MSME sector by:

► Promoting women’s entrepreneurship

► Supporting existing women owned and managed enterprises as well as enterprises with majority female employees

► Supporting companies who proactively manage gender diversity to increase representation of women and support equal opportunities

► Tackling challenges faced by women entrepreneurs

► Targeting sectors with strong female participation and upgrading female dominated industries with modern technologies

► Creating a support infrastructure, allowing women to fulfil the dual role of family and career

Small Business Support Tools ► Projects with start-ups and existing

women owned and managed businesses featuring higher grant percentages, particularly in rural areas

► Workshops and courses offering business training for female entrepreneurs in areas such as business planning, quality management and certification, sales and marketing, financial management

► Access to finance by establishing linkages with EBRD partner and other local relevant financial intermediaries to improve access to finance

► Visibility and dissemination activities of best practices and success stories of women in business to encourage entrepreneurialism

► Mentoring by matching women entrepreneurs with successful women in business leaders in the region

► Business matching trips to set up women entrepreneurs with potential business partners, introducing new technologies and knowledge transfer

► Networking by establishing partnerships with local stakeholders, and organising events and networking opportunities for women entrepreneurs

Enterprise Growth Programme (EGP) Results Since 2011, the EGP has started more than 30 projects for SMEs that are run by women, women-owned, or employ a large percentage of women, which is almost a third of all projects undertaken by the EGP in the year. These have been aimed at strengthening their wealth-creating capacity, creating innovative and effective changes in their business culture as well as building strategic alliances and affiliations.

Recent EGP trainings have taken place in Kosovo with a focus on the food processing, textile and fashion design industries. These sectors have great potential but there is a lack of specific skills and knowledge both in operational and marketing areas. The main objective was to strengthen the existing SMEs owned by women and to further develop businesses in industries such as food processing and textile sectors, in order to create new and sustainable employment opportunities for women.

Business Advisory Services (BAS) Results To date BAS has initiated nearly 1,400 gender focused projects in total across its countries of operations, to overcome gender imbalances, to empower women in MSME sector, and to promote involvement of women in decision making. BAS has currently over 700 female consultants in its database.

The first specialised BAS WiB programme started in Azerbaijan in 2004, followed by a programme across the South Caucasus countries. Building on this in 2011, BAS launched WiB programmes in the Western Balkans (Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia) with funding from the EBRD Shareholder Special Fund, Luxembourg and Taipei China, and also in Moldova with funding from Sweden.

For more information on EBRD’s commitment to promote gender equality please visit www.ebrd.com/gender, or contact the team on gender@ebrd.com.

Issue: Armenia’s fashion and apparel business is one of the largest employers of Armenian women. At the graduate level, around 400 women a year leave fashion-related university courses in Armenia with qualifications in hand. But many of these young women enter the industry with inadequate skills and expectations.

BAS assistance: To help address this problem, the BAS team, in consultation with local industry experts, organised two four-month fashion training courses for 52 young fashion specialists in Yerevan and Gyumri. Course modules included the history and career of a fashion designer, business planning and commercial fashion collection development, as well as fashion marketing, branding, PR and merchandising.

Outcome: The programme developed local impetus for entrepreneurship. The long-term goal is to set up a fashion centre, where future generations of students can be trained in all relevant skills necessary for a career in the fashion industry. As the industry is using increasingly sophisticated computer software, future courses will also include IT training.

Company: PSTech is an IT company located in Belgrade, Serbia and was established in 1996 by two women. PStech started as a distributor of different equipment as well as support for solution and application software. In 2001, they commenced with outsourced development for Wanadu Communication and, later, for Cisco. Today PSTech is a software development company with extensive international experience. They are a respected partner for global players and sales are growing rapidly.

EGP assistance: EGP assisted PSTech to change its organisation and marketing operations, effectively turning it from a pure outsource development agency to a software development company offering complete business solutions. In order to maximise staff and management involvement in the change process, EGP instigated internal workshops with different teams depending on the

topics under discussion. These working groups identified problems and jointly developed solutions. This methodology ensured motivation and a sense of ownership of the change programme.

Outcome: EGP assistance created an infrastructure within PSTech to enable management to exploit ideas and opportunities to the full. Overall, the restructuring facilitated by EGP enabled PSTech to reduce their dependence on the major contractor, broaden their expertise, and improve profitability in order to ensure sustainable growth.

EGP Case Study: ICT Role Models @ PSTech

BAS Case Study: Armenia’s Female Armani