This study uses the Business Development Services (BDS) Performance Measurement Framework (PMF) to compile trends, lessons learned, and challenges facing BDS practitioners who help small and medium enterprises (SME) and smallholder farmers gain access to markets for their products and services.
* PMF uses a common set of indicators to assess the performance of BDS programs;
* It enables the user to compare program performance objectively across a range of common goals and indicators.
The framework is structured around the concept that business development services are a commodity and that the overall goal of any BDS program is to develop a sustainable, competitive, well-functioning market. It outlines three sub goals and indicator categories for this overall vision:
* Increasing program scale and outreach - measured by assessing the development of a BDS market;
* Developing program sustainability and cost-effectiveness - measured by assessing the performance of BDS supplier institutions;
* Assessing the program�s impact on SME customers.
Finally, the paper reveals interesting observations about performance, such as:
* Programs focusing on market infrastructure development reach a larger scale than other programs.
* Reaching the poor is a matter of choice, not of sustainability.
* Large programs seem to have less of an impact on clients than do small programs.
* Cost-effectiveness is unrelated to scale or program model.
* Marketing businesses reach sustainability more easily than other models.
* Small programs reach sustainability more easily than large programs.
