Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 9 September 2003 — The Mekong Private Sector Development Facility (MPDF) is launching two new tools to help Cambodian entrepreneurs excel in all facets of business. These are a new half hour TV series, The Business Edge, that begins this Thursday night, 11 September, and will air weekly at 9 pm on Channel TV3, and high quality, affordable, self-study workbooks that develop business skills – also to be marketed under the Business Edge brand.
According to Mr. John McKenzie, MPDF’s Manager of Business Development Programs, a survey conducted in all three MPDF countries revealed that business owners ranked training as their second highest need after affordable financing. “After nearly 30 years of war and isolation in Cambodia the owners and managers of small companies have had little opportunity to learn business skills. The profitability of their businesses would improve if they were more knowledgeable about the four pillars of business – finance, marketing, human resource management and quality improvement. These are like the legs of a table. If one leg is weak, the table will not stand up properly.”
The decision to launch the Business Edge TV series was made because MDPF’s research showed that Cambodians are more likely to get information from television than from any other medium and television reaches people nation wide.
Mr. Dim Sovannarum, a well-known TV journalist, is producer for the fast-paced, magazine-style program. In a recent interview he said, “Each week’s show is built around a single challenge faced by many entrepreneurs. These include how to secure financing, where to find reliable suppliers, how to begin exporting, managing human resources, improving accounting, cutting through government red tape etc.
“To explore a challenge, the show begins with an in-depth, on-location report about how a single company is coping with it. This is followed by a panel discussion in which two or three experts discuss the issue from different angles and suggest possible solutions. The next segment is a business management tip related to the show’s central theme and this is followed by answers to business questions sent in by viewers. The program ends with a profile of a successful Cambodian entrepreneur and announcements of recent business news.”
MPDF is sponsoring the Business Edge show for its first year, during which commercial sponsors will be sought to take over financing in September 2004.
The new workbooks to be launched in conjunction with the TV series enable SME managers and staff to teach themselves business skills. MPDF first introduced 12 of these in 2001 in Viet Nam and then adapted and translated them for Cambodia and Lao PDR. Sold under the Teach Yourself Business Management title, the first workbooks focused on marketing and human resource management and sold out in less than a year.
The new set of 20 workbooks, released under the Business Edge brand, cover finance and accounting, quality improvement and personal productivity skills such as effective writing, problem solving, and public speaking. Each workbook, which sells for less than $2.00 is designed to be completed in approximately eight hours of study. The four workbooks on improving personal productivity are on sale now and the remaining 16 on the other topics will be released between now and the end of 2004.
In addition to selling the workbooks for self-study, MPDF is designing training courses around them. Although the courses will cost more, they will be affordably priced for the Cambodian market. Courses offer the advantages of giving participants the chance to learn from each other’s experiences, to ask questions if they are confused and to tailor material to participants’ needs. The courses also enable MPDF to evaluate their impact and use this to improve Business Edge materials.
