National Small Business Week is being celebrated by the USA Small Business Administration the first week of May. Whiteside County Economic Development is joining in support of small businesses by promoting a new, online program the county economic development office uses to help small businesses called SizeUpWhitesideCountyIL.
The service is available for free to all local businesses on the Whiteside County Economic Development website at https://www.whiteside.org/departments/economic-development.html SizeUpWhitesideCountyIL delivers powerful market research and business intelligence so Whiteside County businesses can make data driven decisions using analysis that has historically only been available to big corporations.
In today’s information economy, businesses without access to information are at a higher risk of failure and stunted growth. Whiteside County Economic Development is committed to helping local small businesses successfully startup and grow through the support of programs and services like SizeUpWhitesideCountyIL.
Small businesses are essential to economic health:
- 99.9% of all businesses are small businesses.
- Small businesses create 425% more net new jobs than big businesses.
- Locally owned businesses contribute more to the economy through the “economic multiplier” of increased respending of dollars in the local economy.
- Half of the national gross domestic product comes from small business.
- New businesses are currently starting at the fastest rate in the last 15 years.
“We want all of our small businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs to be able to make informed, data-driven decisions so that they can be more successful and reduce the risk of any new business failures,” said Gary Camarano, Whiteside County Economic Development Director.
SizeUpWhitesideCountyIL helps local businesses by providing them industry data analysis that empowers them to:
- Rank their industry performance across multiple measurements.
- Discover potential new customers and suppliers.
- Target advertising and marketing to ideal customers.
- Analyze the demographics of nearby customers and prospective employees.
Aspiring entrepreneurs can use the data to test, verify, or reject assumptions that will enable them to develop a better business plan for opening their company and to reduce the risk of failure by better preparing them with quality information.
“Small businesses are the economic foundation and engine of our local economy. We are committed to supporting them with the information they need to be more successful. We are helping to level the business playing field by providing our local businesses with market research and business insights that have typically only been available to well-funded and large corporations,” Camarano, said.
The software powering the SizeUpWhitesideCountyIL won the 1st Place award from the United States Department of Commerce for a business app that helps American businesses be more competitive, improve their success, foster prosperity, and create more jobs.
https://www.whiteside.org/departments/economic-development.html
Whiteside County Economic Development promotes and supports the county region, and our businesses; it provides guidance with incentives and financial resources; and encourages network opportunities.
To contact Whiteside County Economic Development about SizeUp, and any other of our economic development programs go to https://www.whiteside.org/departments/economic-development.html or https://www.nwillinoisadvantage.com/, or email us at econdev@whiteside.org.
