But people have a way of finding out about the network and its services. Between and , the organization, which provides a variety of consulting and training resources to small businesses over 95 West Texas counties, helped open more than 2, businesses and create nearly 9, jobs. And it does so on a very limited budget.
Carrigo, the director of operations, readily admits they work hard with the money, leveraging technology to make those dollars reach to as many potential clients as possible, overseeing a network that provides a lot more services than small-business development centers in much of the country.
The SBDC is a way of putting some higher education resources to use to help small businesses start and expand, and often the service is about advising on business, marketing and strategic plans, providing research and workshops on legal and financial issues.
Unlike many of those other places, the work of the West Texas group is about distance, and how to bridge it with a combination of face-to-face meetings and using technology — meetings via Skype and Webcam conferences — to work with the far-flung array of clients.
I pick up on the body language. Often, the person on the other end is participating via webcam from a computer in a community economic development agency office, but agency officials acknowledged getting rural users to buy in to the technology has taken some doing. For example, clients of the Manufacturing Assistance Center are often find themselves with efficiency improvements of 30 percent and more, which amounts to creating more capacity in a plant without spending more money or hiring more people, said regional director Al Sammann.
