| What do
leading professionals and executives say about our work?
We have asked a few of our friends, supporters, and users of
this website to share their comments about this website and our work,
including suggestions for improvement.
Whether they are willing to share such comments here, or
just want to offer advice privately, our goal is to continually improve the
quality of the service we offer to executives, their professional advisors,
and the economic development professionals who choose to support our work,
particularly as a source of very well-qualified referrals.
We thank the many friends who have supported the
development of this business, and look forward to working with others soon
to make it even more useful. |
We welcome your comments,
too.
Bruce Donnelly,
President
bruce@gdi-solutions.com
TEL 847-304-4655
Global Direct
Investment Solutions, Inc.
P.O. Box 439,
Fox River Grove, IL 60021-0439
We perform US marketing and
advertising sales work for fDi - Foreign Direct Investment
magazine, which is published by FT Business, part of the Financial Times
group. |
| Dennis
Donovan,
WDG Consulting LLC (Wadley-Donovan-Gutshaw)
It would be helpful, for quick reference, for
more economic development organizations to share timely information through
this site as a summary of major recent developments and what really
differentiates their area for potential investors.
- Why should it be on the long list or
short list?
- What advantages can the area offer?
- What types of projects would be most
relevant to the strengths of the area?
In particular, what I would really like to be
able to find quickly is the typical information that
we must verbally or electronically request, which should be standard
offerings by EDO's.
This includes a factual executive summary with direct
links to verify details for :
- major employers by sector,
- new and expanding firms, or downsizing firms,
- tax practices and rates,
- synopsis of incentives,
- electric power supply, reliability, and cost,
- telecommunications infrastructure, matrix
- summary of available sites and buildings, market
averages for occupancy costs,
- median wages for 15-20 occupations,
- environmental attainment / non-attainment, and
- SAT or ACT scores.
This information is needed for almost all projects and yet
in the vast majority of instances we have to do one-on-one data collection
from long-listed area economic development groups (often 10). The
process is inefficient for all parties. That is why posting these data at a
central site would be so beneficial for the customer. |
If more
development agencies share useful local market knowledge in a more
convenient way, top professionals will use it. Their time is valuable.
Keep it simple.
We certainly welcome Dennis' helpful comments as a very
well-known specialist who has invested a lot of time and effort over many
years to improve the quality of information which is shared by EDO's through
websites to support business location decisions.
Dennis is a highly respected, independent location
consultant with many years of experience in this niche. He has led
training courses about the site selection process for leading professional
associations, and is frequently quoted or published in business media,
including some articles which can be found for reference in our "Consultant
Tips" section. He is an expert speaker at events about investment
trends and business location selection issues, and has a long list of
prestigious clients for major investment projects, particularly headquarters
and office projects.
Dennis helped to develop the IEDC guidelines for economic
development organizations (EDO) to share timely data about their areas in a
more consistent and independently verifiable way.
Often referred to as "data
standards" by IEDC members, this work has shaped the data content of
many EDO websites, as well as services which now consolidate some of the
data from many areas or from independently published sources. This has
made it easier for executives and consultants to find some data more easily,
although the sources are sometimes not cited (to verify it), and data from
different locations can still be difficult to compare. Some data is
more timely or reliable despite inconsistencies. There has been a lot
of progress because Dennis and other consultants worked closely with leading
US economic development professionals to define basic data guidelines.
Some information, however, simply isn't easy to find yet.
This website isn't about aggregating data according to the
IEDC guidelines. Other sites try to do that already, so we refer
people to them as appropriate. Instead, our approach is to leave
locally developed data on the local EDO websites so that it can be
maintained there, and just make it easier to find such data quickly through
direct links if it is available. We also share local market knowledge
which isn't readily captured through such statistical data, such as to
organize timely executive summary presentations about why an area may be of
interest for a particular type of project, or what differentiates the area.
We make this very easy to find quickly through this website's globally
consistent framework, navigational links, and Google site search. Such
content also expands the knowledge base to guide our project referral work.
In summary, EDO's would maintain on their own websites the
timely and detailed data which Dennis and others need, while we would
summarize the key points and make those supporting details very easy to find
quickly through direct links to the relevant EDO website pages. |
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