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Welcome Business Retention: Helping Companies Compete in a Global Economy Predicting Corporate Behavior: Why Companies Relocate or Expand Economic Development Targeting: Laying a Foundation for Your Strategy Plan A City’s Tools for Downtown Development: Much More Than Money Building the Ideal Financing Toolbox Clawbacks in Economic Development: Policies and Practices Community Colleges: The Economic Developer’s Workforce Partner Using a Balanced Scorecard to Measure Your Economic Development Strategy Comprehensive Economic Development Strategies (CEDS) Summary of Requirements In Memoriam  Subscribe
About Economic Development America
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Business Retention: Helping Companies Compete in a Global Economy (cont.)Regional resource partners have found participation in BusinessFirst! useful in other ways – specifically, using the information gathered to identify needs and create programs that better serve their constituents. Miami County, one of the program’s newest members, used BusinessFirst! as a way to verify demand for advanced manufacturing positions, and more specifically the various skill gaps employers have identified among their employees. These data then were used to apply for a grant with the U.S. Department of Labor. BusinessFirst! has grown in membership from 14 charter members to 44 jurisdictions in the greater Dayton region. The list of regional resource partners serving regional businesses has grown from 34 to approximately 80.
Effective communication between regional resource partners and member jurisdictions is one of the major components of BusinessFirst!. Communities meet on a monthly basis to discuss challenges and opportunities around the program, such as how global pressures are impacting a particular industry segment, or workforce issues and skills gaps. In addition, one or two regional resource partners are spotlighted at each month’s meeting, providing member communities with a more comprehensive understanding of the value that the partners bring to businesses. Through this process, the outreach specialists are able to make better-qualified referrals on behalf of the companies, yielding better results for the client. Monthly meetings also have provided a forum in which to discuss intra-regional company relocations, which have decreased over the last few years due to the BusinessFirst! protocol. Prior to the inception of the program, jurisdictions in the greater Dayton region sometimes found themselves offering incentives to move a company from one community in the region to another, resulting in no net new jobs. But as part of the BusinessFirst! program, participating communities sign an interjurisdictional agreement which states that if they are approached by a company interested in moving to their community, they will not actively pursue that company with incentives. In addition, the community that is approached is obligated to notify both the company’s current jurisdiction and the Montgomery County Economic Development Office about the potential relocation. Recognizing that companies will need to move to be competitive and that some requests for assistance are more necessary than others, BusinessFirst! helps better qualify the needs of a company before tax dollars may be used to assist in a relocation. Twenty cases have been documented in which communities have notified one another about intra-regional locations. Montgomery County’s role is to act as a facilitator, working with all of the communities’ outreach specialists in the region and with the 80-plus regional resource partners. All of the results achieved thus far by BusinessFirst! have come from focusing on the employers already located in Montgomery County and the greater Dayton region. In fact, BusinessFirst! recently won the Ohio Department of Development’s Economic Development Achievement Award for the Most Effective Retention and Expansion Campaign in the state. Both the award and the program’s results reinforce the region’s belief that a systematic, sustainable business retention program is a cost-effective way to keep, grow or replace the jobs lost in a community through economic transition.
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