BURLINGTON'S BUSINESS RETENTION & EXPANSION (BRE) PROGRAM

Retention and Expansion of companies in Burlington is a priority

Burlington Economic Development Corporation (BEDC) has developed, and is successfully implementing, a comprehensive business retention program for the Burlington business community. The program is based upon the customer retention theory:

"It is easier to take care of an existing customer than to develop a new one and, if you don't take care of your customers, someone else will"

BEDC's BRE program utilizes the retention and expansion software called Synchronist. This was the first application of Synchronist in Canada, and new ground is being broken in the application of a comprehensive retention and expansion initiative. This BRE program moves the City into a more sophisticated business retention program.

The program follows a rigorous process for selecting companies, arranging interviews, conducting interviews and recording and analyzing data. The program has been designed to answer key questions and enable the BEDC to interview senior executives to:

• Gain insight into the dynamics of Burlington's economy
• Evaluate the company's relationship with the community
• Evaluate growth potential, risk of relocation or downsizing, satisfaction, and employment trends
• Identify how public services can be improved
• Understand the attributes of Burlington as a place to do business
• Develop value added services for Burlington companies

Since 2003 BEDC has successfully interviewed a significant number of local companies. Burlington's BRE program has proven itself to be a powerful planning tool for service delivery in the municipality. We are able to quantify CEO satisfaction levels with services provided at the local and regional levels and we are able to feed this back to operating departments for improvements. The program has also directly led to company specific actions that involved providing key contacts to other government agencies and educational resources. These linkages help companies address issues such as: export development, financial assistance, employee training, research & development initiatives and expansion/ relocation assistance.

Working with local partners, the local BRE program has generated a great deal of success!

To learn more about this program, or take part in it, please contact Gillian Sheldon, at BEDC on 905.332.9415.