SME empowerment series continues in Brunei

The workshop titled ‘A Strategic Planning Development Workshop’ was conducted by Dr Sophiana Chua Abdullah. - BB

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN (Borneo Bulletin/ANN): Baiduri Bank in collaboration with DARe (Darussalam Enterprise) held a workshop for its ‘Baiduri SME Empowerment Series’ at the iCentre Auditorium in Anggerek Desa from March 22 to 24 in continuing support of the nation’s economic agenda to diversify beyond the oil and gas sector.

Since April 2019, workshops tailored to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) have been held, covering topics from e-commerce to product marketing.

The workshop titled ‘A Strategic Planning Development Workshop’ was conducted by Dr Sophiana Chua Abdullah, who founded A Vision A Day Company and is also a strategic planning consultant at EpiPeople Consultants.

Her primary focus involves helping public and private sector personnel in their strategic planning development.

Some 20 local businesses attended the interactive training workshop aimed at having them craft a strategic plan using strategic thinking and systems thinking.

Participants learnt about using practical tools and techniques of strategic planning development in their plans and looked at how to align top-level visions across all the levels in their businesses.

The workshop ended with a clinic to apply what they learnt in a real-life scenario.

The partnership between Baiduri Bank and DARe is aimed at implementing a series of skills training workshops designed to complement existing training programmes offered by DARe’s Industry Business Academy (IBA), providing a more comprehensive, well-rounded training curriculum to local entrepreneurs, empowering them to achieve greater success in their business ventures.

Baiduri Bank CEO Ti Eng Hui said, “Our objective with the Baiduri SME Empowerment Series is to enable growth for local SMEs which we fully believe can be achieved by empowering them through education.

“This series of skills training workshops is designed to complement existing training programmes offered by DARe, and will hopefully provide a more comprehensive, well-rounded training curriculum to local entrepreneurs, and allow them to better thrive in their business endeavours.”

Baiduri Bank also offers a wide range of solutions for local SMEs to optimise their cash flow and finance their growth, including working capital financing, instalment loans, property loans as well as trade financing options.

Through these financing solutions, local SMEs have access to short- and medium-term capital to fund their operations or grow their business. Other products designed to serve SMEs include business credit cards, payroll processing and other day-to-day banking services. - Borneo Bulletin/Asia News Network