Access business advice

Overview
Eligibility criteria
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Advice for Small Businesses

Finance alone often cannot meet the challenges that micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) face. These businesses also need access to know-how, networks, and skills, to help them innovate and grow.

We provide advice to MSMEs in a wide range of areas, from strategy to operations, quality management, financial reporting, energy efficiency, sustainability, digital transformation and more.

Our network of local consultants and international advisers introduce the latest best practice guidance, helping small businesses become more competitive and grow.

We also work to build strong, competitive markets for business advice that will thrive long into the future. This means developing competent, qualified consultants and building local institutions.

Our results

We have transformed the performance of thousands of MSMEs and laid the foundations for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in markets across our regions.

Results matter to us. Focusing on the right objectives, our projects achieve the best possible outcomes and we are confident that the results speak for themselves.

One year after completing each project, we return to measure changes in the client’s business performance.

Job creation, increased turnover and securing access to financing are key themes we see time and again.

Market development

We also know that a competitive market for business advice requires a wide variety of advisory services and qualified, competent consultants to deliver them.

We have over 10,000 local consultants ready to help small businesses, with wide coverage across all our regions.
We train the next generation of consultants in core consulting skills.
We have introduced new and more sophisticated services, including advice on energy and resource efficiency, change management, information and communications technologies, digital transformation, and many others.

Our professional development programmes help consultants build their competencies to better serve their clients.

We offer a variety of opportunities, from introductory courses to help new consultants establish their business and learn essential consulting skills, to training for more experienced consultants, to improve their marketing, business diagnostics and project management skills.

We also enable consultants to expand their services with specialised training in technical areas such as energy efficiency and export promotion. By creating a strong pool of local expertise, we know that the benefits of our work will be sustained into the future.

63% of our clients have never worked with a consultant before starting their project, but when we come to evaluate their projects one year after completion, 95% of our clients say they would hire a consultant again, and half have already done so.

Business advice in your country

By connecting our clients to local consultants and international advisers, we help them access invaluable business advice.

From the smallest companies looking to grow, to those going global, our expert network of advisers helps our clients step-up and start thinking big.

Work with us

Local consultants

International advisers

To qualify, an enterprise should meet the following criteria:

Size: up to €50 million in annual turnover or with a balance sheet total of less than €43 million. Typically, we work with enterprises with fewer than 250 employees.
Ownership: we work with private businesses owned by local nationals
Maturity: almost all of our work is with businesses that have been in operation for more than two years.
Sector: we work with businesses from almost every sector and industry. We cannot work with enterprises engaged in military activities or production, tobacco or gambling.
Integrity: we expect the companies we work with to abide by high standards of integrity. We do not work with businesses that have ongoing or previous legal proceedings in place that might affect the implementation of the project.

We help MSMEs access business advice across most of the EBRD’s Countries of Operations.

If your company could benefit from a specific type of know-how, then we can help support a range of projects. These usually involve working with qualified local consultants and often last around four to six months.

This advice covers specialised areas of expertise including:

Business strategy
Energy efficiency and environment
Digital transformation
Marketing
Organisation
Operations
Engineering solutions
Quality management
Financial management

To make your businesses more competitive, our experts draw from their experience and apply the latest best practice and thinking in these areas.

We know our consultants personally and ensure they meet our rigorous standards, working closely with them to deliver the highest quality advice for your business.

Our aim is to build a strong, competitive market for business advice in each country that will thrive long after we’ve gone.

Thanks to our donors, we can share part of the net costs of the advisory project with you (applicable taxes are borne by the enterprise).

To apply, please reach out to your relevant local country team below who will share more information and an application form.

Apply here