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The independent survey carried out by global market research company Ipsos asks business owners to identify the challenges they need help overcoming and the resources that are most important to them.
Whanganui & Partners has commissioned the survey. Suz Hepi, Strategic Lead for Business, says the results will help the agency understand the most important factors affecting local businesses. “This is about what businesses want, it’s a chance for local business owners to make sure their needs are heard.”
The survey aims to identify gaps in the market that need addressing, and the types of support and services businesses find are helpful or those that stand in the way of success.
Hepi said the Economic Development Agency would use the outcomes from the survey to help determine how it worked to address issues such as labour shortages, business support, business attraction, central-government resource allocation, compliance and regulations, and sector-specific support.
Hepi said the survey was created to be very specific and to gather a good amount of detail on what businesses rate as important, which programmes they may have used in the past, and how helpful certain resources are to them.
“We have 4479 businesses in Whanganui and every one of those businesses should get to have a say on what’s important and necessary for them.”
Once businesses had anonymously submitted their answers, they could then opt to enter their contact details in a drawer to win one of four $100 pressie cards. “Businesses will also be given the option of connecting with Whanganui & Partners, but this is also separate from the anonymous portion of the survey,” Hepi said.
The survey consists of a detailed series of questions and allows businesses to identify specific issues they face. “It’s very deliberate in presenting a wide range of priorities for businesses, it allows them to refine what is important to them and to determine the helpfulness of resources and programmes on offer.
“We want to see the gaps that exist and be strategic about addressing them,” Hepi said. “For example, it may be that manufacturers have trouble accessing the packaging they need locally, and so targeting these types of operations in our business attraction work would allow locals more efficiency while also adding to investment in Whanganui.”
The survey would also allow Whanganui & Partners to assess how useful its current programmes are, and what business owners think it could do to improve its support.
“We’re not afraid to ask what these businesses think of our performance and what they think we could do better,” Hepi said. “Our goal is to grow Whanganui’s economy and to do it sustainably and efficiently, the best way we can achieve this is with input and support from the local businesses doing the hard mahi.”
Hepi invited all local business owners, and managers of national or international businesses operating locally, to participate in the survey. She said it may take up to 10 minutes to complete the survey to achieve the level of detail needed for it to be impactful.
Hepi said Whanganui & Partners looked forward to sharing key results from the survey with the business community and with other organisations who would benefit from the findings.
The Whanganui Business Survey is open for four weeks from May 24.
