A Client Tracking For Economic Development

Abstract

The work of an Economic Development Professional (EDP) is both complex and extremely rewarding due to the variant intricacies that they face in their everyday career. In the late 1970’s and 1980’s, local communities experienced a significant collapse in economic growth which led to Economic Development professions being heavily scrutinized. This paper provides the framework of a model developed by the Sudbury Regional Development Corporation (SRDC) that quickly and accurately provides a base level assessment of measurable components of an economic development organization’s performance. This assessment tool was created to streamline the work of the EDP’s, remove inefficiencies, and promote transparency between economic development professionals and their shareholders. As mentioned in the article, the success of an ED firm can be measured by the amount of completed projects in a given year. By compiling and analyzing the relevant data on clients, EDP’s can effectively track their involvement and measure his/her effectiveness in the economic development process. The article provides some in-depth detail about the structure and various columns/headings used by ED’s in the assessment tool. Lastly, the article discusses some of the benefits of using the Client-tracking model such as ease of data entry/manipulation, assessing EDP efficiency, increasing EDP accountability, and finally, asses the impact/success of economic development programs.