IN its bid to empower Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and also enhance their growth, Diamond Bank Plc organised BusinssXpress Enterprise Seminar for its customers.
Experts that featured at the seminar include Olugbolahan Mark-Gorge, of Mark-George Consultants, who spoke in the area of the need for drawing business plans and objectives. This he said should be reviewed constantly as situation or business demand. Mrs. Yetunde Allen of Lateral Links, spoke to participants on what business is really about. She tasked MSMEs on cutting costs as heavily over head cost crumbles business. So also that they should be cautious of expansion, that adds to the cost of running the business.
Shayo Odunsi of 360 Degrees took the participants in the area of finding and retaining customers in an economic recession- marketing strategies for SMEs.
Dipo Davies, CEO Realhouse Communications took participants through ‘from court to print-castles: an entrepreneurs’ story’.
Other facilitators who made their presentations there are Dr.Segun Ogidan of Secondary Limited who spoke on strategic planning for SMEs: critical issues, while Zero One delivered lecture on the web and you. Then Diamond bank presented its offering for SMEs.
Speaking on BusinessXpress at the seminar in Lagos, Mr. Garry Marsh, Senior Adviser, Retail Banking, Diamond Bank Plc said it is in three categories, which he listed to include micro business, small business and medium enterprises.
The bank, he stated, is doing this in partnership with Mark-George Consultants, who have a network of people and organizations that can help add value to MSMEs.                       “Using the scale and reach of Diamond Bank, we are then able to obtain easy reliable access to these added value services at lower cost, thereby making these add-ons available to our clients for the first time ever”.
According to him, “the first is for Micro businesses, we prefer to call them Starter Businesses. We have scrapped the concept of Commission on Turnover and replaced it with a fixed fee of only N 1500 per month. For this price, our customers can have free turnover of up to N 4 million per month and free cash deposits of up to N 0.5 million per day. Based on our research, these limits should be more than sufficient for more than 80 percent of businesses in Nigeria”.