Drive Local Growth with Business Retention and Expansion
Foster economic prosperity and create a vibrant, sustainable local economy.
Job Growth From Within
A business retention and expansion (BRE) program nurtures and supports existing businesses in a community. Since the majority of a region’s job growth comes from within, BRE is a must for any economic development organization (EDO). By building relationships through business visits, BRE efforts seek to understand the needs, challenges, and growth opportunities of businesses so that your community can provide support, solutions, and assistance.
The goal of business retention is to ensure that local businesses stay local. When organizations face hurdles are faced with hurdles they don’t seek alternative markets for their operations. This is achieved by providing various support services such as access to financing, workforce development programs, training and education resources, and assistance navigating government regulations or permits.
The goal of business expansion is to ensure local businesses are able to grow—and do so in the local market. Expanding firms create a dynamic and thriving local economy, improve the quality of life, and position the community for further investment. This is achieved by providing guidance on site selection, available incentives, infrastructure development, and other resources.
What's your BRE status?
Do you have specific goals and objectives for your BRE program? And how will you measure them?
Do you have the necessary data and information about local businesses, and what additional data do you need to collect to inform your program?
Do you have a quality method for identifying and prioritizing the businesses you engage with?
Does your program have workforce development solutions to ensure businesses have access to a skilled and qualified workforce?
Does your program complement and align with broader economic development strategies and initiatives?
Business Retention & Expansion Success
A successful business retention and expansion program retains existing businesses, creates a supportive environment for growth, attracts new investment, and ultimately fosters economic development within the region.
Five suggestions when building a business retention and expansion plan:
To build a successful BRE program, you need comprehensive labor market data for your community to:
Workforce Solutions
The Gazelle platform uses cutting-edge AI to rank over 10 million companies based on their likelihood to grow. Create a targeted list in your region of companies to target for business visits and assistance.
Activate under-the-radar populations and tap into a new pool of talent. JRR supplements existing workforce programs with a new entry point and preparation tool that helps individuals acquire skills and demonstrate they are job-ready.
Give jobseekers the labor market information they need to make smarter career decisions. With Career Coach, they can develop their resumes, discover training and education programs, and find great jobs at local businesses.
Lightcast has the smartest database of companies on the market.
Want help prioritizing companies for business visits? We use AI to predict growing businesses—including those in your region.
Regions are different, so are the BRE strategies needed.
Sector strategies assess talent gaps, causes, and potential solutions. This granular detail of local industries and the talent that drives them informs actionable strategy development. Sector strategies focus on what already exists in a community and find the best paths to job growth and capital investment.
A deep understanding of the workers in a local labor market helps ensure a thriving economy and vibrant talent pipeline. Sector strategies take what's known about those workers and focuses on developing them and attracting new talent while aligning with current workforce development and education programs.
Skills strategies use the language of the labor market to remove obstacles and open pathways to connect workers with local businesses. This begins with identifying in-demand career areas and ends with outlining detailed career pathways through upskilling and reskilling initiatives.
Looking to take your business retention and expansion program to the next level?
Lightcast data helps you become a trusted partner and resource for local businesses.