Case Study
Economic Development Business Retention: New Jersey’s Program
Economic Development
Background
Following several high-profile relocations, New Jersey planned to intensify its business retention and expansion efforts, ensuring that its reputation as a headquarters cluster and major business center remained intact. With such a high concentration of companies, however, reaching that audience across the board proved a difficult reality. The state’s Business Action Center called on DCI to add capacity to the effort and ensure all BR&E prospects were being vetted appropriately.
Services Provided
Strategy
Identify and schedule meetings with companies deemed “at risk” or showing signs of increased capacity for investment. Also ensure that those corporations with significant operations were being communicated with regularly.
Helping businesses create and retain jobs is an increasingly complex and competitive undertaking. Adding to this challenge, our customers—businesses of all sizes throughout New Jersey—are sometimes unaware of government incentive programs or make relocation and expansion decisions without consulting us first.
DCI has helped us to develop highly effective and customized strategies not only to reach more customers, but also to target our efforts in a precise and cost-efficient manner as we continue our efforts to serve the Garden State business community.
Results
- Identified more than 600 companies fitting the BAC’s criteria for target sectors and showing signs of potential investment activity. From that total, 113 company engagements (meetings and event attendees) were arranged during the year.
- Scheduled three economic briefing events for businesses of all sizes, addressing each corner of the state. A total of 74 companies attended these events, with 24 of them resulting in project discussions.
- By the end of the 2015, at least 45 companies either had an existing project or were deemed close to having one in the very near future.