Ibis wins Commonwealth mandate

Ibis Associates, specialists in the analysis and development of business plans, has been awarded a contract by the Commonwealth Secretariat to develop business plan modules to assist small and medium size enterprises throughout the Commonwealth.

Alan West of Ibis Associates notes that the company has 16 years experience of consulting on what he calls Phase 3 development, where companies tend to be looking for GBP1 million plus of funding. Most of the Commonwealth contract, however, is focused on Phase 1 development and consequently Ibis has spent much time developing earlier stage modules for these businesses to follow.

Interestingly, much of the development work in which Ibis is involved is similar to that which many of the incubators and accelerators that sprang up over the last two years. West notes that while for a while tempting to expand into this area, it was felt that it was best to stick with Ibis’ core competency of consultancy. This has not stopped Ibis from being contracted to work for Internet incubators in Italy, Spain and Antwerp to date.

The contract, which will see Ibis visiting countries such as Ghana, India and Papua New Guinea, is for a fixed term of 18 months and for a fixed price.

Ibis will create three modules in order to fulfil this contract with the Commonwealth Secretariat. Module 1 will be aimed at micro business and concentrate on marketing, quality management and sales development issues. Module 2 will be aimed at enterprises with up to 25 employees and add issues of cost control, personnel, new product development, and logistics. Module 3 will incorporate material already designed for the venture capital industry, which provides for detailed business plan development and monitoring of larger scale enterprises.