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Assessments Offer Solutions to Challenges for Local Businesses
Tim Burg Tim Burg currently serves as the Economic Developer for the Moore Norman Technology Center. Prior to joining the MNTC staff, for 12 years Burg was the Economic Development Director for Shawnee Forward and the Shawnee Economic Development Foundation. He also spent 7 years in Ponca City managing that community’s award-winning Business Retention and Expansion program. Burg also has more than 25-years of experience in the construction and engineering field, including owning his own business. He is a 2005 graduate of the University of Oklahoma’s Economic Development Institute and is one of only 1200 Certified Economic Developers (CEcD) in the world.
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30 | MOORE MONTHLY | MAY 2025
What exactly are business assessments, and why are they helpful? Business assessments can allow MNTC’s Workforce and Economic Development team members to understand better the challenges or obstacles a business faces. Every business can deal with different issues, and by conducting a face-to-face business assessment, we can often suggest or offer solutions that can help a company overcome its specific barriers. Some examples can include conducting a business assessment where MNTC’s WED staff can help find solutions to a business in need of customized training for their employees, the development of a safety plan, or a strategic business plan by meeting with our mature business coach, or exploring what resources exist to support a company in areas such as their supply chain, expansion planning or simply by helping them develop a targeted market strategy. Can you talk about how MNTC’s business assessments connect business owners with grant opportunities in a practical way? The state of Oklahoma offers a wide range of incentive programs that are mainly focused on business expansion projects, where the company will add new employees, and will be making a capital investment in the business, which can include adding new equipment, expanding, renovating, or modernizing a business facility or their operations. These incentive programs are in place to encourage a business to reinvest in its business, which will help grow the local and state economy, and equally as necessary, the business’s revenue streams. There are state P-3 programs (P-3 = Private Public Partnerships) in place that can help a municipality or county extend or expand their infrastructure systems, and programs help improve workforce development and educational training programs, which benefit employers who need better-trained and higher-skilled employees. When conducting a business assessment, we often learn what a business’s “points of pain” are, which allows us to determine if there are resources or services we are aware of that can ease a company’s business constraints. More often than not, MNTC’s WED Team can advocate for businesses by helping them find solutions to their most pressing business challenges. How do you link local businesses with instructors and their students? Meeting with a business owner or a manager one-on-one allows us to ask them questions about their understanding of what Moore Norman can provide to them in the area of Work-
force Development or Workforce Recruitment. Most business owners know little about what Moore Norman offers, but they don’t always know the full extent of what we offer or how to access those services. When we discover that a business needs to improve the skill levels of their employees and/or recruit more employees, we can walk them through the processes that work best to accomplish those goals and make the introductions to the training programs instructors or department directors to allow them to gain additional insight into solutions that will work best for the businesses. We are also blessed to have staff in our Career and College Connection Department who rapidly respond to businesses by helping them connect to our services. In addition to opportunities with OIEP, BEIP, etc., what other opportunities are available to help attract new businesses or help businesses with expansion? The benefit of working with the Moore Norman WED staff is that we have an extensive network of partners, associates, and peers locally, regionally, and statewide that we can turn to as needed. (I’m old, and I know stuff and people!) Our partners range from those who work at the Local, County and State levels in economic development roles, those who are connected to government organizations and agencies that represent Oklahoma towns, municipalities, and counties, financial institutions, Chambers of Commerce, non-profit organizations, plus we are well connected to our state universities, utility providers, representatives from our Federally elected officials, and much MUCH more. We also have access to several different research groups who are among some of the most intelligent individuals we know, who have access to robust software programs that help us track trends and projections that will affect not only our local areas but can provide us with valuable insight into the different regional perspectives that make up our large portion of our economies. How do business owners get started with a business assessment? The easiest way is to contact any of us who serve in the Moore Norman WED team, to allow us to set up a time to meet. I’m always happy to take a phone call at my direct office number of 405-801-5896, or a business can email me at tim. burg@mntc.edu to schedule a time to discuss their needs. Once we know a little bit more about a business, we can get them in touch with the right person on our team who can help arrange a meeting.