ON Regional Economic Development

Introducing the Refreshed OMAFRA BR+E Coordinator’s Manual

The Business Retention and Expansion (BR+E) is an action-oriented and community-based program that aims to support local business growth and community development through identifying challenges and opportunities. The Program’s Four Stage Process helps to:

• Prepare the groundwork and project team
• Collect and analyze immediate concerns and opportunities
• Develop goals, action plan, and data analysis
• Implement the plan and track progress

The BR+E program can become a key component of a community’s ongoing economic development strategies and projects and is a great approach to strengthen businesses in your community.

Coordinator’s Manual Updates:

The BR+E Coordinator’s Manual has recently been redesigned and now features a modern layout centered on visual simplicity. The third version of the Coordinator’s Manual is designed to support communities and BR+E project coordinators. The document provides details around the Four Stage BR+E Process as well as key resources and tools to assist with the completion of the stages.

Qualtrics:

Along with the modern redesign of the BR+E Coordinator’s manual, the OMAFRA BR+E Program transitioned to a new data collection and analysis tool – QualtricsXM – as of June of 2020.

Qualtrics is a renowned data analysis and visualization platform, designed to optimize data collection, analysis and visualization. The transition to QualtricsXM has been met with positive feedback from BR+E coordinators, owing to its user-friendly interface and robust batch of features.

QualtricsXM provides efficient and functional tools to help with:

• Project Organization
• Surveying
• Distribution channels
• Data Analysis and Correlation
• Reports
• Contacts
• Administration

Communities undertaking BR+E initiatives with the support of OMAFRA have the option of accessing the platform at no cost for the duration of their projects.

For more information about the recent changes to the BR+E Coordinator Manual or to learn more about QualtricsXM, visit the Business Retention + Expansion Program website.