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September 2007
 Small businesses are vital to the world’s economy. In the United States alone, they account for 60-80 percent of new jobs annually. Unfortunately, however, nearly half of small businesses fail within four years because they lack business management knowledge and resources. This statistic is mirrored all over the world, where small and medium enterprises (SME) find that access to best practice and business management tools is a significant barrier to their growth and sustainability.
Center member IBM and World Bank partner IFC are trying to change this statistic with their new version of a free small business toolkit specifically for small business owners in emerging markets, as well as women, Black, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian entrepreneurs in the U.S. The SME toolkit offers highly developed business information, tools, and training services usually reserved for Fortune 1000 companies.
The toolkit is organized by eight major subject areas: accounting and finance, business planning, human resources, international business, legal and insurance, marketing and sales, operations, and technology. It includes specially designed free tools that help small businesses make decisions or meet online, from an online calculator that helps small businesses determine their readiness for financing, to free software to build a web site, to community tools such as online conferencing, blog capability, and group calendars.
The toolkit also helps businesses connect to the global economy for sales opportunities by providing data on a country’s economic performance, import/export regulations, transportation rules and patent laws.
The Small Business Toolkit was originally launched by IFC in 2002. IBM joined forces with IFC in 2006 to launch the next chapter of the SME Toolkit.
“When we were researching how IBM could help small businesses in emerging and underserved markets, we learned about the IFC approach and saw it as clearly the best resource available, and as an opportunity to partner with them and make a difference,” said Ann Cramer, Director, IBM Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs. “We helped transform the Toolkit into an open source platform, bringing new collaborative tools and technology used by large businesses today that could help small businesses succeed.”
IBM has dedicated more than $1.6 million to transform the Toolkit and rebuild it on an open source platform using top IBM research talent. The Toolkit now includes new Web 2.0 features such as live chat, online forums, business directories and survey capabilities to create a community where small and medium sized business can collaborate from anywhere around the world. The community tools also create an opportunity for peer learning.
In the future the Toolkit will add new partners, markets and languages. Also planned is the ability to allow users to connect to it using wireless devices, such as cell phones. (In developing markets, mobile devices are increasingly becoming the way users connect to the Internet, and sometimes the only way.)
The SME Toolkit is free and available on the Internet in a wide variety of languages. It is available in 22 emerging markets, including Vietnam, the Philippines, and Bangladesh.
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